A partially-sealed space, such as a terminal box, tends to be subject to the ingress of water vapour etc, leading potentially to (further) corrosion of the conductors and screws, from electrolysis and other chemical actions.

I have seen conductors literally fall apart as a result of such corrosion, not often; but it does happen.

And there can be a lot of water vapour in a house, given particularly the use of showers in recent years.

Mineral oils generally adhere to the metals involved (and the insulation, made from mineral oil as a rule), very much reducing the chances of this happening. Also those oils generally do not absorb water.

(Other non-mineral oils tend to rot quite quickly, the break-down products themselves giving rise to corrosion of the conductors etc. Most non-mineral oils absorb water, aggravating the situation.)

I suggest that you read through the following thread, noting particularly the cause of the OP's problems over a period of three years; and the gratifying results, both technically and monetary -

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/general/f/4260951-s...

I recommend a switch cleaner available in Maplins rather than mineral oil.

Best to cure the symptom of ingress rather than try and force the water out later.

It's a 4 page thread! What's the point you are trying to make? Just one sentence will do

In my many years as a comms engineer, (often in harsh salt laden environments), the only time WD40 was used was for drying out distributor caps on vehicles prior to cleaning with a solvent and then painting with a varnish. Use it an electronic kit and I'd have been down the Job Centre

Very difficult to achieve on a commercial item.

Sort out the internal wiring first,as it does not seem to be normal; and if the line noises persist, call in the ISP, SKY, hence BTO.

(The one sentence answer)
==============================

Alwall - Thanks for your experiences with WD40 etc - I have not encountered such problems on "electronic kit", as I have used it mainly on the generally robust terminations as found in Junction Boxes and the like, plus other non-electronic items..

I have not used it on in/active electronics; and was not advising that.

======================================

The other thread clearly demonstrates the need to have those fundamental problems attended to first; and what can be achieved by doing so.

Edited by deleted (Sun 06-Oct-13 21:23:26)

Hi all

Had the engineer around here today, first one came, then he had to call for another as he wanted to go up a pole, but the pole didn't have a safety check on it so had to call another with a cherry picker. They decided to put in a new wire from the pole to our house as he said the wiring was ancient, took them 3 hours to do it all, will cost Sky probably £300, though they have had enough money from us over the years to cover that!

Haven't had one disconnect since and I'm fairly sure its rained today (wasn't in to confirm) so everything looks OK.

They put the wire straight in behind the socket, so we no longer need the "little green box" we had, whatever that was for! (I thought he mentioned something about earthing in regards to it)

Now have a BT openreach socket, the very back of the socket is still original, then the bt openreach and then my faceplate filter (he didn't change it).

Couldn't hear any noise on the line and its connected at our maximum DLM is giving us for this month, hopefully we will go up a Mb or two now.

Edited by deleted (Wed 09-Oct-13 23:34:58)

If it's stable for a few 100 hours DLM might re run, you can get an SNR as low as 3db if it's literally never dropping. Trick is to never turn the router off to get the best speeds. The Sky Hubs very stable so that shouldn't be a problem.

Morning MikeL

Good result.

Just a reminder for the future, although some may think it is stating the obvious - if you ever take the Faceplate off to access the Test Socket, all of the other phone/modem sockets in the house should be disconnected by that simple action.

If this does not happen, your internal wiring would still not be normal.

However, by your description, the BTOR lads appear to have corrected that.



Also with the ADSL Splitters and the Faceplate, the small Modem/ADSL Socket is the "Straight-Through" connection without any filtering; whilst the larger Phone Socket is the filtered Phone (+ Fax etc) connection only.

This always seems contradictory.

The first socket, the Test Socket, is a "normal" Phone Socket in design etc; and has all of the signals, Phone, BB, Fax etc on it.

Yet all of the other "Phone" Sockets downstream of it only have the Phone etc - and no BB.

And the smaller, downstream, Modem/ADSL Sockets have the full set of signals, Phone etc plus BB!