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Our BT telephone cable enters the house through the side of a window frame. Said frame is knackered and needs replaced so I need to move the cable (BT/Openreach) not available to do this currently. Is it as simple as just disconnecting from the junction box in the house, making sure the wires don’t touch each other, re-route and reconnect? The last thing I need currently is the internet going down, so need to be sure there isn’t much more to this...
That's what the Openreach guy did when he moved ours.
OK. So now you have disconnected the cable and pulled it through......then what?
What plan did you make to feed the cable back into the house?
Another hole in the wall?
I've moved mine before, take a photo before you remove the cables from the connections. Replace and use a terminal driver to slot them into place if you don't have the special tool (just a piece of plastic that pushes both sides of the cable into the joint).
And yeah I drilled a hole through the front of the house to pass the cable through, it needed a massive drill bit and was fear inducing as I don't normally drill through the most expensive thing I own/owe money for! All worked ok though.
Yep take a photo, pull the wires out (it doesn't matter if you short them together), new hole through the wall, drill from the inside and once you've gone through the plaster, raise the drill so you drill through at a downward angle. Mark the drill bit with tape and turn the hammer off for the last 30mm to avoid blowing the outside brick face to smithereens.
It is bad practise to route the cable through the window frame anyway.
When you put it back together, put a little drip loop at the hole if needed to ensure the water cannot run into the wall. Seal it with silicone.
If you socket has IDC connections instead of screw terminals, you should get a punch down tool. If you are desperate, you can try pushing the wire down either side of the jaws, but DO NOT push the wire in with a screwdriver, you will splay apart the IDC and ruin it. Leave the insulation on for IDC, do not strip it.
Tidiest method is to bring the cable directly into your socket back box so there is no internal cable showing.
If its overhead cable, go careful as the sole purpose of the steel suspension wires is to induce pain and blood loss.
Are you a telecoms engineer Spooky?
It is simple.
It's also illegal.
BT wanted £140+ to do similar when my folks replaced their windows so i bought a cheap punch down tool from eBay and rerouted it through wall as above - very simple to do
Simple yes.
Illegal? Not so sure, but they do class it as their own kit so are very keen that you don’t touch it (so that they can charge lots for a simple fix maybe?).
If I had to do similar I would make sure I reused many parts and made it look a bit weathered just in case....
PS some phone extension kits come with a plastic punch down ‘tool’ that is probably just about ok for terminating one cable. In the past (when working on internal cable with minimal tools) I managed to press either side of the individual connection with a small pair of pliers.
Thanks all. The biggest worry was shorting and causing a problem upstream. 1m long SDS drill at the ready, fat stone wall...
Good guidance from Spooky , The Steel support wires are always looking to draw blood,dont put the working pair on your tounge and ring your number.
Are you a telecoms engineer Spooky?
Or takes care of the alarms in a gang of International jewel thieves 😕
There does seem to be a wide spread of professions on this forum. You never know for the minute 😯
I use to do Telecoms, but I do business fibre now. I wouldn't normally suggest working on the network side wiring normally, but you need it moving and you can't get an engineer.
They don't want you doing it yourself in case you make a hash of it and end up raising a fault. Builders and shopfitters don't think twice about stripping everything out and chopping the cables flush to the entry point, and then plastering everything smooth and then get upset when you suggest running a cable back through the building!
Rerouted mine. Came out by a window in the middle of a wall. Took a photo of the wiring at the socket. Disconnected, pulled the cable back out, drilled a hole in the wall so it would come in at the corner of the room. Pushed cable in so it came in the back of the socket, mounted the socket, punched the wires down in the terminal and a bit of silicone mixed with brick dust around the cable on the outside wall.
Easy peasy.
All sensible replies, but when I was still on the tools in my BT days, if I attended a domestic line fault usually a short circuit (perm engaged tone) or rectified short circuit (ringing tripping out) and saw new window frames I knew exactly where to look for damage on the cabling and it would be there every time.
There's lots of types of cabling, depending on if its overhead (from a pole to the house) if its black then it'll be pretty tough and you'll be good, if it's grey then treat if like you are doing a archaeological dig, as it will be dammed old and will have real brittle insulation. If the cable is from a small box somewhere on the outside of your house then it could be cabled with internal or external cabling, again it should be black, but could be grey or white. For this be careful as the conductors will be a lot smaller diameter and will be a lot more sensitive to bending, some of the real old stuff could be aluminium cores and will turn to dust given the slightest nudge.
We have old aluminium cables. The land line is just about un-useable and before we switched to fibre broadband, we were lucky to get a meg.
Sorry to dig this up again ....
I got some new sold as 'BT manufactured exterior cable' but the colours don't match.
In light of
If I had to do similar I would make sure I reused many parts and made it look a bit weathered just in case….
is there a recognised mapping from old to new?
Are you a telecoms engineer Spooky?
Or takes care of the alarms in a gang of International jewel thieves
Spooky's extra-curricular consulting activities for the criminal underworld is just to finance his lavish lifestyle, homebuilt camper vans and the occasional very bling single speed... :O)
Openreach replaced the old drop cable with a different coloured one when they fixed my line. I don't think you'll have a problem if the cable colour has changed.
I'm a bit rusty but external overhead cable is orange, white, and green, black. Orange/White is pair 1. There are also 3 steel suspension wires.
External underground cable is jelly filled, various sizes but pair 1 is blue/white, pair 2 is orange/white. The whites are lightly twisted and you need to cut back some insulation to work out which white belongs to the colour.
The old colours...well let's just say that's a whole education of legacy cable and you really need to do the work to understand/get it, and it's not likely you've got paper insulated pairs, concentric cables and lead sheath cable at home 🙂
Guy, times are tough, the criminal underworld has been affected badly by social distancing and the move to cashless transactions 😉
I work for the glorious O/R as an engineer ,I’m so proud😁 Overhead cable is either,
old single pr,no colour code looks like speaker cable.
dropwire 10 pr 1 orange white,<span style="font-size: 0.8rem;"> Pr 2 green black</span>
Dropwire 14 pr 1 orange white pr 2 red slate
pr 3 blue brown, pr 4 green black.
underground feed old pr1 o/w pr2 g/b(or last pr)see above for code
ug new pr1 white/blue pr2 white/orange pr3 white/green pr4 white/brown pr5 white/slate
pr6-10 red intead of white A leg
newer internal as above but striped
old internal pr1 orange/blue pr2 green/brown
👍🏼
Openreach replaced the old drop cable with a different coloured one when they fixed my line. I don’t think you’ll have a problem if the cable colour has changed.
Yeah, ultimately its more about keeping it looking not too dis-similar. I can't see the actual current caring about the colour but if there is some sort of convention I might as well try and follow it.
The old colours…well let’s just say that’s a whole education of legacy cable and you really need to do the work to understand/get it, and it’s not likely you’ve got paper insulated pairs, concentric cables and lead sheath cable at home 🙂
Coming in we have Wh, Bk, Or, Gn (plus an un-used white cut short to the shielding) into a weather sealed tube that clips open. This joins to the 'original' (when we moved in) At the other end only 2 of these connect to the master socket. (I'd need to remove the master socket front again to see which - probably hacked by the last owners anyway as the master socket is in the garage or part of garage we use as laundry room)
The wire I got is Bl, Gn, Br and Or and I have some jelly clips to splice them.
Any ideas... is the colour of the wire I got just completely rubbish or is there a set of pairs of what should join to what?
o/w coming in is pr1 gn/blk the 2nd odds on yours is working on pr1.the other cut short are the suspension steels(usually 3) they will bite you given a chance!!
As to your purchased cable,Have a look at the bottom of my post above🤔 is the external casing white? If so it is internal cable,and uv light will degrade it pretty quickly,and is not used by O/R,Also the older stuff you have the pr’s are not twisted very well, and will if used at any great length,>3m, will allow noise induction, and could affect adsl/vdsl speeds/stability
Cheers, nothing I can do about the older stuff as that's going to the pole and from the point it lands on the house the current cable into the garage is redundant.
My own stuff is black outer ... I got 10m but won't need more than 5m now I worked out where to move the master socket to. Don't even need to drill as it happens since the floor is up and there is already a hole it can go through.
Make sure the stuff you got is twisted. The colours are not standard but you may find they are gently wrapped in pairs. If its not twisted, it'll probably work but it's not to spec, and could slow your internet.