atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Cabling Telephones Systems Wiring Phone service to detached garage

I may be a little crazy, but here's my question. Currently I have power to my garage in an underground power cable (type UF 12/2 w/ground). I am going to have a new meter installed at the garage and will no longer need the 12/2. Can I re-wire the garage and house for a phone via that old power cable?
Sure would be nice to get the house phone out there.

You'd want to transition to much smaller cable on both ends but I can't see why it wouldn't work.

Other than the lack of twisted pair, which, depending on length, may or may not cause noise to be induced into the line. It'd be worth a try, you've nothing to loose.

I did a job back in the 70's where I had to run a telephone line to an elevator. This particular model in order to get the phone into the traveler cable we had to run it through and around the elevator control board which was loaded with high voltage circuits. I used 12/2 TW wire for it and it worked fine.

Sam

In some of the more rural areas around here, the telephone coop that serviced them (Piedmont Telephone COOP) used 14/2 UF cable for long buried drops. Those areas have since been taken over by Contel, then GTE and now Verizon, so I would imagine these have been replaced. It must have worked at one time.

Also, let's remember that aerial drop wire used to be just two 18.5 gauge parallel conductors with no twist whatsoever, so I can't imagine a few hundred feet of non-twisted pair cable is going to hurt anything.

In the "how I solved an installation dilemma with weird wire" department, I was sent to install a brown 2554 set in the newly-renovated and decorated lobby of an ultra-fancy apartment house in Manhattan. The walls, of course, had just been refinished, "just after the nick of time" when they decided that they had forgotten to pre-wire for the phone.

The walls were dark brown anodized aluminum, with vertical scoring every half inch or so, sort of a fancy, miniature, version of T-111 siding. The wiring for the original phone was still coiled up in the dropped ceiling, but there was no way to get the pair down the wall, either inside, because the aluminum paneling was glued to the wall board, or on the surface, because they didn't want to see wire-mold.

I put the job on hold for the day, explained the problem to my boss, The Man With The Great Big Head, and he said "go home and think about it...I know you'll think of something."

When I got back to my apartment, I dove into my wire junk box, and dug out a 6-foot length of antique TV twin-lead. For the youngsters in the audience, it's dark brown, 2-conductor, and flat, about 1/8th of an inch thick, and a half an inch wide. I bought a tube of dark brown PL adhesive, "demodularized" the wall phone so that it would sit close to the wall, and glued the twin-lead down the wall, into the top of the phone, and spliced it in to the I/W in the ceiling.

It was brown, it was the same width as the pattern in the paneling, and it was 2-conductor. What more could one ask? It passed the "50-50" test (50 feet at 50 MPH) and everyone was pleased with the result. I even got a half an atta-boy from the Great Big Head.

Arthur,

Black and White were also used for "Bright-Pix" twin lead antenna wire. I have also used "rotor" wire, both 4 and 5 conductor to get to a phone.

In rural Western PA, there are still some places where open wire is used along railroad tracks for telephone distribution. This could go for miles and miles. Telephone poles, not unlike the old "antique" New York "fish tails," ( Click Here) run along rail road right-of-ways. An 80' pole with 12 cross arms and 10 open wire "pairs" per cross arm. ( By the way, there were no bucket trucks back then. The lineman crawled out on the cross arm to get to the conductors) A lineman, working on this distribution and having a shiny new Beco butt set (affectionately referred to as "the nut cracker") would tap a line for testing. If it was raining, the technician would run the risk of getting 80 to 120VAC to the ear when the switchman "goosed" the line and the technician had that Beco butt set cradled in between his shoulder and ear. Ah....the bad 'ole days.

Rcaman

That is is the only acceptable method by Code. Unless there is a partition within the enclosure or the phone wire is separated by so many inches from the HV you can't run communications (type CM) or CL2 wiring (which normal phone wiring is) with the line voltage stuff. In the unlikely event there was a problem with hum you could always chuck one end of a length of the two conductors in a drill, stretch it out and give them a good twist.

I just had this very situation the other day with an Otis customer. Elevator phone was not working and I find a tail of 4 pair coming out of the control cabinet with a note on it from Otis "no dial tone, no voltage". I thought that it was from the elevator phone when I opened up the cabinet it went into the Panduit wire way then into the duct that went out to the traveling cable. But then I began to think that the moron who did the LV cabling in the building was told that there would be an elevator phone so he ran the cable into the elevator shaft. The original elevator installer probably snuck it into the wireway with the wiring for the traveling cable, back to the control cabinet where it landed on a terminal block to pick up a pair of wires on the traveler. Ain't supposed to be there!

Long story short I ran a new drop into the machinery room next to the control panel from a new dedicated line and left my own note for the Otis guy to connect it.

Normally I see THHN or TFFN coming out of the elevator control which is spliced outside to the normal phone wire or the phone wire runs inside but is away from the line voltage stuff.

-Hal

When it comes to elevator wiring, the inspectors here in western PA are really diligent to make sure the LV is separated from the HV AS WELL as the phone cabling. As Hal said, 99% of the time, the elevator mechanics will provide a box with THHN or some other type of wiring for the phone. Absolutely no cable may be in the trays with the elevator power or control wiring.

That said, I was called to an old hotel in McKeesport one day for no dial tone in the elevator phone. This was an old, old building with solid walls and very few conduits. The previous tech was a Bell Telephone tech and the wiring was bridle wire strung around, as best as possible, in an open equipment room with 480VAC bare buss bars and a multitude of open relay racks and bare buss bar connections. The maintenance man thought he would "fix" the no dial tone by connecting a piece of JKT from a terminal on the 4th floor to the waiting car.

When I got there, I discovered the JKT, alright, that was jammed through the door trim and sheared off in the pit. The maintenance man connected the telephone cable to the car....not to the connection point on the roof.

Fortunately, the elevator mechanic happened to stop by and, together, he and I found an open tip on the bridle wire that had rubbed through a bridle ring because of the vibration. The cloth covered, rubber insulated bridle wire disintegrated in my hands. I was able to find a spot where the insulation stayed on the wire and spliced it there. I asked him if he wanted to open the J-Box where the connection went into the car control wiring. His response was: "If I open that, the world will come to an end." We both left.

Rcaman