Matt <spammers@are.bad.com> wrote:
> The phone line for the caretaker and ONE of the two office
> lines experience a continual hum as well as a click, click, click,
> click, click, every time the electric fence fires off. The program
> director does not experience any known issue on his line, and the
> other line in the office is fine. I find this very odd, since both of
> the office lines come in (presumably) on the same cable?
> Any thoughts? Verizon is kinda stumped on this issue, so I'm
> trying to see if I can figure anything out to help them out. Does
> this sound like a grounding issue? If so is it at the demarc box? Or
> on a line some place? Why only one phone line and not the other?
Many years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I looked after some
4-wire leased circuits that we used for data communications.
Occasionally, usually after a thunderstorm, one of those lines would
get noisy. I would call what was then a Bell company and report noise
on circuit number blah. The trouble ticker writer would ask for the
phone number, which I didn't have because it was a leased 4 wire, not
a real phone line, but they'd take down the circuit number and almost
exactly 20 minutes later I would get a call from a technician asking
me how I knew there was noise on that cicuit. I learned that if I
told them the truth, that I had put an oscilloscope on there and could
see it, they would get upset. After some further conversation they'd
go and check it out. After the techs got to know me, they would tell
me more and the noise usually turned out to be caused by what they
called "bad carbons." These are some sort of grounded protective
devices that apparently get leaky some times. I am willing to bet
that is what the problem is for you. Now, good luck getting anyone to
understand the old Bell System term "bad carbons." I assume these are
sort of surge suppressors of some sort, but what the modern phone
company might call them is anybody's guess.
Bill Ranck
Blacksburg, Va.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The most unusual thing I ever saw which
was sort of like that was when I worked for a place which used wire
contacts on their doors and windows for a security alarm company. One
night when it was time to go home, I could not get the alarm to 'set'
and had to call the alarm company to get them to come over and fix it.
The trouble when this happened was usually around the elevator doors
which would slide open and closed. For continuity in the wire, there
was a wire grill like thing which had to be put across the elevator
door opening when you were leaving the premises for the night. The
repairman came out (he had a buttset with him with clamps on the ends
of the wires) and he stood there at the elevator where the grill went
across the doors, clamped on his buttset and *talked* through the
wires to the office where he worked, where someone else was making
adjustments as they talked. Now that I think about it, I guess there
is no reason you could not carry on a conversation over the wires of
an alarm system. PAT]
ranck@vt.edu