phone sockets in house

P

pgl

Guest
Hi
Just recently moved into a new build. After a few weeks we realised that the phoneline socket in the living room wasn't working. I rang eircom and was told that although the house has several connection points, only one is activated, they failed to tell me how to activate it.
Any ideas?
Thanks
p
 
Your electrician should be able to sort it out, it just needs to be connected
 
This happened to us in our new build. We solved it by turning the all the power off in the house at the switchboard (v. important just in case) and then unscrewing the phone socket panels.
We discovered that the lines were in but weren't connected to the socket itself. Easily sorted with an electrical screwdriver.
HTH
 
I have moved telephone sockets in our house and have never bothered to turn off power as I am confident that the telephone lines are not connected to the mains electricity supply. I do of course live in England so maybe it's different in Ireland.
An easy way to check is to turn off the power as described by mo3art and then pick up a phone to see if you have a dial tone; if you have then no problem; if you haven't then it is different hwere you are.
 
Sorry I didn't make my point clear. In a new build in particular you're better safe than sorry and turn off the sockets just in case there are other electrical wires on close proximity to your phone sockets!
Most phone sockets in Ireland don't have power in them either....
 
Many newer cordless phone sets only require 1 working phone socket. You connect the base station to the working phone socket, and you can plug in the other charging units into any power point, anywhere round the house.
 

No phone socket should have mains power connected to it, anywhere. There should be no risk whatsoever in removing the cover from a phone socket.
 
I'm not an electrician but I have often done work on telephone sockets and have never had any worries about electrical shocks. The only time there will be any significant voltage on the line is when there is an incoming or outgoing call; but at that the voltage is low. If you were to ask Eircom to connect the other sockets you will pay a technician's call-out fee and probably a monthly rental fee for the additional outlets- which is crazy of course.
 
Recently V Jnr decided she needed to stick something in the phone socket in her bedroom and jiggle it about thereby knocking out our phone completely. Got the eircom engineer out to look at it as we took out the wires and insulated them and still wasnt working so he checked and said that probably when she was messing with the socket it caused a power surge and blew a fuse on a pole outside. So I asked him if there was any danger to Jnr but he said that there is only a very small amount of power- and, as Carpenter said, a little more if the phone is ringing- not enough to do any injury, maybe just enough to get a little shock.
 
There are 20 volts on a phone line and current is tiny. You will get a shock from it if you put it on your tongue like a 9 volt battery. It is completely independent of the electricity supply.
 
i wasn't suggesting that there was an electrical charge in the socket, just we didn't know what way the house was wired and needed to be sure there was no electrical sources close by!
 
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