half of our phones kicked the bucket

[ssaamm]

All of the upstairs phone jacks no longer work in our house. The basement and main floor work just fine. I assume some connection came loose. I tried my best to poke around the basement and follow a few wires--no luck. Anyone have any pointers as far as what to look for? Or, should I just call the phone company and be done with it. The previous owner and builder of our house was an electrician. Would he have installed the phone lines or does the local phone company do this? Thanks for the help!

[HaywardBound]

Start by unplugging all the phones in the house. Then with a known working phone, check each jack to narrow the problem down.

If you find a problem jack, take the cover off and check the wires (you can try to disconnect the wires).

Something to start with anyway.

BTW, I don't think you will get a shock unless the phone rings???

[upnorth]

If there is only one or two wires coming out of the main block, they probably daisy chained them and you can probably find the offending connection in the fashion HaywardBound suggests.

[ssaamm]

I checked the ones that work and those that don't. All different colored wire appear to be connected the same way. The upstairs ones do not work and the other main floor and basement ones work. Thanks, I am stumped.

[Zzapp]

I woul bet the previous owner wired the phones himself (Sparky's think they can do it all ) The phone company typically just gets the lines to the house, the builder is responsible for interior wiring.

It sounds like there is a main feeder line for each floor, the one to your 2nd floor sounds like it has the problem. After checking that all connections at the basement junction are tight, start taking the individual non-functioning jacks off the wall and checking them for loose connections. If you still have no working lines upstairs you'll have to try to chase the wire feeding from the main distro point to find the junction or break.

Good luck

[Jim Almquist]

what you first need to find out is where the Dmarc is (this is where your provider brings the dial tone in)It could be on the outside of your house or if you have a older home it would be in the basement.If all the wires are connected or wrapped around the screw terminal securly then you will have to take each jack apart because who ever wired it did it in series when you should run each as its own circuit.What might have happened is the first jack upstairs might have come loose causing the rest downstream to quit working.Unplugging all the phones is a good thing when you have no dial tone cause something is shorting the wires and this helps to find the culprit(Modem,Answering machine,Satellite box)If you have a open basement try to follow the wires to see where they go upstairs first.Hope this helps.

[Macattak1]

Greetings,

Often, nearly every significant wall in each room has a phone line droped down in it. So I would not generally expect that someone wired it themselves, unles we mean that they found it between the studs and pulled it through.

Peace and Blessings

[Macattak1]

Greetings,

A bad phone or other can cause you problems. I have had a phone mess up the line for the whole house for me before.

Was there something that occured to that caused this? Storm, new or old phone hooked up just recently, new Fax, Sat, anything that plugs in, kids up to something?

Peace and Blessings

[cold one sd]

If you have the same number an the upstairs phones as you do on first floor and in the basement, look for an open wire somewhere. If you have a short it would put all your phones out of service. Electricians are known for daisy chaining all the jacks together on the same wire and it can take some time to find it.

[92python]

He may have ran the the phone lines but they are different than electrical lines. The phone lines run on skinny wires called twisted pair. Very skinny wires compared to electrical wire (romax). Something came loose. If you can't figure it out call the phone company or buy some cordless sets with multiple handsets.

[ssaamm]

We did call the phone company. He looked and tried to figure out the wiring issue for quite a while. We then told him who did the wiring and electrical work. Ironically, he was at this guys new house fixing the same problem two weeks before. Evidently, there was a whole lot of splicing going on and it was not grounded either. It is fixed now. Thanks for the replies.