Phone circuit hardwired to garden bell - Filter?!!

Hi broadbandthinkers,

I am ex dial-up, a newbie to "Max Broadband" and I am satisfied with my performance, which has turned out to be "up to 3Mb". (given that I'm probably the last house connected to the exchange and I can see two repairs to BT's 60's wiring on my house!)
HOWEVER, the circuit inside the house consisted of the BT master socket in the hall, hard wired to a socket serving a "study", It then continues for another 4 meters thru the wall. Here a couple of push fit connectors wire it to an exterior bell. The bell unit comprises: a coil driving a clapper that vibrates between 2 concentric bells 12 & 15 cm in diameter. The bell is wired across terminals 5 & 3, in the extension socket, by what looks like BT 6 core wire.
I think this circuit has worked like this trouble free for (say) 15 years, it has the old BT logo.
I DISCONNECTED THE GARDEN BELL DURING BB SET UP TO THE MASTER (HALL) SOCKET.
The BT engineer who called to removed the DACS on the line, did not think it would be a problem HOWEVER Bell reconnection = BB speed dropping by 1/2 then the BB dropping out. SOLUTION: Fit the bell with a plug and plug it into the filter ? Wire something inside the bell housing ? (Can a hard wire be pushed into a BT plug, if so which 2 of the 6 or 4 connections?
Maplin sell a replacement plug in clear plastic, so one can see which wire is going where)

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Yes the bell must be filtered. The other alternative is to use an ADSL filtered socket with filtered terminals on the back such as the XTF-68.

I would take a slightly different approach, but since the OP didn't actually say where the ADSL modem was situated (I assume it's the study ?), and didn't say whether the study contained a phone, then it's hard to give a definitive solution.

Assuming that the OP's master socket is of the newer variety, I would fit an XTE-2005 filtered faceplate (which replaces the original faceplate). This has sockets for phone and ADSL on the outside, and also has IDC connectors for hard-wiring phone and ADSL wiring.

The ideal solution (if you want to squeeze the last drop of speed from the ADSL Max) would be to situate the ADSL modem adjacent to this faceplate, then run Cat5 ethernet cable back to where the PC's are situated. Then all the phones and the bell could be connected to the filtered (phone) output on the faceplate. The idea is to keep unfiltered wiring as short as possible, because this can pick up noise and degrade the ADSL signal.

Coincidentally my second socket (see "Any BT Engineers" thread) also originated as part of an internal Bell/Ringer. Check that you haven't got two master sockets like me!

The other worrying thing about your master sockets is that they don't appear to be wired to BT's wiring colour specs either. Could be a very old installation which has been modified.

Hi, good morning,

Many thanks to Going-Digital, zebedee & lorisavendu for your thoughtful replies.

Inspired by the extra information you were able to give me and fighting the acronyms etc I set off on a further surf to improve my education.

First, here are the answers to the questions you posed:
My new set up is the standard entry level kit from Madasafish: Voyager 210 router and two filters. One filter has been plugged into each of the two sockets. The master (hall) socket now feeds the router and a phone/answer machine, the second socket feeds the study's walk-round-the-house phone and the hardwired tail goes out into the garden to the disconnected bell.

The router is hard wired to a modern Dell PC by an ethernet ("patch" ) lead and Mrs Hound's laptop occassionally uses the USB connection. (Now that we are empty nesters we have a computer room as well as a study !)

The master socket looks like a surface mounted one of these:

http://www.adslnation.com/support/extensions.php

It must be an old one because, in the top righthand corner, it has the "T" logo, not the guy blowing a flute. The slave socket in the study is a cheap 50 x 50 mm box with the appropriate wires of the extension cable passing through its terminals on their way to the bell.

It looks to me as though I need a hard wire one of these (if I can find someone to sell me one not a gross) inserted into the extension cable after the slave socket:

http://www.adslnation.com/support/knowledgebase/ht016.php

It's a description of an in-line hard wired filter. If I wired one of these into the extension that goes out to the garden bell would that do the trick? I don

Harry, This site will explain how the BT distribution system works inside your home:
http://www.wppltd.demon.co.uk/WPP/Wiring/UK_telephone/uk_telephone.html

Because there is ~ 70V dc between the A & B incoming wires, and the Ring signal being generated by oscillating the voltage between these lines, the dc component needs to be filtered from the Bell. This is done in the Master Socket where there is a Capicitor between Pins 2 and 3 which feed the ac component of the Bell ring signal to the bell.

If you are using a Microfilter to feed the bell then you should note that the Microfilter has a Capacitor in it to generate the Ring signal so you need not wire the Pin 3 Ring signal to the extension socket. If you do, tat id OK too.

The other Gotcha is that the Pin numbering on a BT Plug and Socket are reversed betwee the Plug and Socket!!! Pin 1 on the Socket mates with Pin 6 on the Plug, Pin 2 with 5, 3 with 4, 4 with 3, 5 with 2 and 6 with 1. It's crazi I know but that's the way the student in the BT drawing office numbered them.

I hope this helps.

The easiest solution to your problem would be to buy another "walk around the house" phone (i.e. DECT phone), take it out to the garden with you, and do away with the outside bell completely, because you are probably paying BT a ludicrous amount of rental on the bell.

Edited by deleted (Sat 03-Feb-07 15:37:25)

Thanks again zebedeee,

At risk of getting right off thread, I would be very unhappy if I was paying rental on the garden bell and then being told by a BT engineer it did not need a filter !
BT is not my favorite company at the moment, not only did BT rent out "half" of my line to a local businessman by installing a DACS that halved the possible speed of my line (never could understand why last centuary I invested in Windows 98, Freeserve and a new fangled 56K modem and could not get anything like that speed from it) BUT some years ago mr businessman prospered and installed BT broadband and BT left me on the other half of the DACS which was up mr businessman's pole ! (and I am a BT shareholder...mind you the 02 shares did OK.)

Perhaps I should have gone for one of these cheeeeep offers, where in exchange for transferring all your telecomm business from BT, you get "only one bill" and supposedly save a fortune, but then I did not know then about all the help and support I could get from the "thinkbroadband" community.

Thanks again,

Harry

PS if anyone would like to post a link that explains what a DACS is/was - I would be interested.

Hi Wheel_Nut,

This is the most useful reply so far. It looks like I might be able to get away with buying a 2 GBP clear BT type plug and wiring the garden bell into terminals 2 & 5 and then plugging it into the existing filter to share with the walk-round-the-house phone.
The garden bell probably gives this information on the back of its housing (BUT I don't want to unscrew it from the wall if I can avoid it); will the one filter produce enough "RINS" to power both bell & warbling phone.

Now getting slightly off thread, can you help me with my historical understanding of wire3 (the ring circuit) ? Bare in mind that when I was at school in 1960, we were served up the type of electrical/electronic physics that would have beend scoffed at by a 1930's reader of "Practical Wireless".

In the old war films communications involved running out a telephone line under enemy fire that connected to a "daffodil" type phone boxed to the wall. The hero would then vigorously rotate a handle on the side of the box and a bell would ring in a distant dug-out and the two participants could talk. Presumably the handle was generating an oscillating current and at the far end a coil was vibrating a clanger against a bell. So on the GPO telephone system a call was prefaced by a burst of ossillating current, magnified by a capaciter (like the "starter" on a strip light ?) enough to jangle the receiving phone's bell? Lifting the receiver somehow told the exchange that the powerful ossillation could be turned off and the talk could be switched on? Why did the old GPO phone need the extra "ring" wire when it seems it is now redundant on BT approved equipment?

Regards,