tim_n

Hi all - I recently bought a house which was wired by the electrical engineer who lived there.

He obviously had different standards to I, a non electrically qualified person.

He also took it upon himself to remove the BT master socket and rewire it with old bits of cables joined together. I have so far found six seperate junction boxes which join the various bits of speaker wire, old Cat 3 and in some parts entirely bare wire nailed to the rafters with metal pins.

I am suprised I match my neighbours 2MB speed. However I have signed up for Fibre and it will be installed next week.

This in mind I have located the BT white junction box and have got a standard NTE5 box which I'm going to run cat 6 cable to.

Effectively I'm aware that interfering with the box is illegal, but seeing as it has already been stripped from my property (I have no evidence it ever existed) by the previous owner and the ancient wire is in evidence, will a BT engineer who is merely popping in to change a face plate going to make an issue over it for me (and I guess fill in all the paperwork associated?) or will he be happy that:

a) it works and
b) he can just swap over the faceplates?

Should point out I'm adept at making/installing cabling - used to do a fair bit of network wiring so this sort of job isn't a toughie.

Cheers,

Tim

NB after the 'shocking' discovery of live mains wires hidden in a telephone extension socket last night I have finally decided the next big job will be a house rewire...

Not all homes were ever fitted with an NTE5, so engineer should have one on the van, and be ready to install it, hence regularise the installation.

Get them to ignore any extension wiring, just put in the master socket, and make sure that that works. Then you are free to install any phone extensions that you need from its faceplate. Also avoids any side effects from bits of old wiring you have not found yet.

Make life easy by identifying where you think the master should go, most likely replace the first junction box inside the property. Move furniture of the way etc

I need to rerun it into a more sensible place anyway - it's currently running into a socket by the tap (another excellent decision by the previous owner)

I'm going to try and run it through the conduit of an old extension cable (no electrics in it as far as I know)

Thanks for the reply Mr Saffron!

As Mr S says - get it "Regularised".

Make sure everything past the first box is disconnected and tell the technician it was an awful mess when you moved in xx days ago. Tea and biscuits will not go amiss and if you need any you might even get some CW1308 to extend your phones.

As for the Cat6 - terminate that in a box adjacent to where the NTE5 will be and use a patch lead - make it easier for disconnecting or removing the face plate.

hmmm. Don't know what regularised is! Do you mean standard BT cable? I have no idea what that looks like as I don't have any here!

I took out the old rubbish and replaced with Cat6. My broadband speed has jumped from 2mbits to 4mbits. Ping over wifi is 49ms which is better than the 65ms it was before!

I can run the 'regularised' cable to the new box instead if need be - will they mind the cat 6?

"Regularised" means that the incoming wire is terminated in a BT supplied NTE5 and all other wiring removed. Everything is then clean and no third party rubbish remaining.

thanks - where do I get hold of a BT box? I've bought one from Maplins, but it's unbranded. Ebay?

Sorry, probably not as clear as I should have been.

The BT Line comes into the property and terminates in a 4 way box. The rubbish wiring comes out of that.

I have replaced the rubbish wiring with the Cat6 from the BT branded 4 way into a Maplins non branded NTE5.

The ADSL router is now plugged into that. No extensions - we have a DECT phone we use so no need.

I do have additional Cat6 which goes off to a computer.

You don't need to provide the NTE. Where the wire comes in, BT will install their NTE5 and that is the demarcation point. You can do what you want from the front plate onwards but can do NOTHING to the incoming wires or termination.

Where does the BT line enter the building? Where do you want the master and/or the modem, and then the router?

It sounds probable you are doing unnecessary (and illegitimate) work, but also might as a side-effect be installing some CAT6 that could prove very convenient.