More Tango, Rain Threat

I had brilliant telephone and internet service for the first part of the week, but on Thursday morning I once again had no dial tone or voltage on the telephone line.  (But I still had internet service, running at half speed.)  So I put in a call to Exetel, they reopened my case, and a few hours later I agreed to be at the house yesterday (Friday) between 8 AM and noon in order to let the Telstra technician into the house.

I arrived at the house at 7.55 AM to find the Telstra technician wandering around.  His first statement did not impress me: he told me that he could not find the telephone pit to my house which meant that he couldn't locate the line into the house.  I pointed to the archaic overhead telephone wire and told him that it extended all the way to the pit in front of the school.  Duh!

We went into the house without my having had a chance to prepare for his visit by checking the telephone and voltages and moving my telephone base station to the primary phone jack in the dining room.  To make things worse, this man was not a talker.  Once he discovered that my phone was in the bedroom he went to that jack and found the line dead.  Back in the dining room he replace my old-style jack with a new one, mumbling that it might help a bit.  While he was working I asked him if the telephone extension lines were shielded and his reply was "What does shielding mean?", I kid you not.  After I explained the term he told me that no the cables were sheathed in rubber only.  

Then mysteriously the line started to work again.  He went to the bedroom, found that the extension was still dead, told me that the extensions were my problem, that there was something wrong with my extension cabling, and walked out without even putting screwing the plate back onto the jack.

I was not very satisfied when he left.  First of all, would Telstra stick me with a $130 charge for a false call?  And was there really something wrong with my extension cabling?

I decided to visit the under-floor cavity and map out the sequence of wiring to the 6 telephone jacks in the house.  I found the area to be remarkably clean, probably because in 1975 I had nuked the area with an evil mixture of dieldrin and diesel oil.  There were very few spider webs and no evidence of rodent activity.  I mapped out the circuit, which for the record is: From dining room to lounge to a joint where one wire goes to the little room next to the dining room (which used to be my office) and another goes to the front bedroom. From the front bedroom the cable goes to the second bedroom, then from there enters the conduit for the long span to the 6th telephone jack in the garage.  I was impressed with the neatness of my cabling work of the 1970's.  Everything was well supported on the runs along the timbers and nothing was sagging or stressed. 

Then I made a snap decision which may have turned out to be the smartest thing that I've done for a month. I figured that as long as I was down there and focused on the problem I may as well take the opportunity to cut out the long run to the garage.  I knew that 6 phone jacks was pushing the limit and the long run to the garage would provide a potentially big source of noise on circuit.  It was not as simple as cutting the cable and it took 30 minutes to gracefully remove the wires from the phone jack and store the excess cable neatly coiled up on a joist.

I had a look around and was pleased with the sturdy foundation laid down by that English migrant couple working with their bare hands shortly after WWII.  All of the stumps (supports) are of brick and capped with metal.  The perimeter of the house lies on stone.  These measure keep the house above any ground moisture and more important, provide a formidable barrier to invasion by white ants (termites).  With the bright lamp I could see no evidence of white ant activity, even though the house had not been treated for 35 years.

I had made a run into Midland to purchase a new multimeter to replaced my failing one and with the new instrument probed the first telephone socket and got a reading of 52.7V.  I then went around the other 4 extension sockets and was surprised to read 52.7V on every one of those.  I then plugged the telephone onto the 5th socket in the side bedroom where my office will be and the telephone worked.  I ended the day set up in the side bedroom with a working telephone service and the same fast internet as before. 

My best theory is that the cable run to the socket in the garage was causing problems triggering some sort of cutoff at the exchange, but time will tell.

The icing on this cake was a message from Exetel that Telstra would not be charging me for the callout.

Things have stopped for a while on the renovation front.  Scattered thunderstorms were forecast for the afternoon and Paul did not think it wise to do any roofing.  He told me that he might come in on Sunday but to not expect the full crew until Tuesday.

Thanks to the loan of Peter's industrial grade Stihl whipper snipper (weed eater) I was able to finish off all of the landscaping work and now I will go to another phase of my work, the belt sanding of the wall panels in the dining room followed by re staining and varnishing.