Telephone cable question

This isn't an electrical question, but I didn't see another forum where it really fit.

The telephone cable to our upstairs currently runs up the outside of the house. I've got a wall open downstairs that I'd like to run a phone cable through so that I can eventually have all the phone wiring inside.

I've got several long telephone extension cords that I've accumulated over the years; can I use these to run my lines to the upstairs, or do I need to get a special cable for this application?

And can I run just one line, then split it off for two phone jacks; or should I run two lines?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

Use phone line with four color-coded wires, You only need to run one line (and jump from the first jack to the other jack). This will give you two separate phone lines.
Good luck!
Mike

 

Yes, you could use those cords and it would probably work fine. However, if you wanted to do it like a pro, you would purchase a length of telephone wiring and use that. It is probably more durable and is round and less flexible--easier to fish thru a wall. Not to mention it is cheap and readily available at the home center. Your extension cords may also be a bit more susceptible to interference than the regular telephone wiring would be.

I have run one line and split it into two jacks and had no problems. As long as you've got a good signal from you phone company and don't have 10 extensions and 20 miles of wiring, you should be okay.

 

Thanks for the info. I was going to use the extension cord because I wanted to get the thing run today; but I've got plenty of other things to work on, so I'll probably wait until I have a chance to pick up the cable.

 

You would be much better off to run alt least 2 cables, one to each jack. Daisy chaining phones is not done any longer, all wiring should go to one central point. Use at least CAT 3 wiring, DO NOT use the silver phone extension cords unless you like to have interference on your lines.

 

The wire guage in the extension cords is much smaller than the guage of the phone cable. The cords are meant to be installed from a jack to the phone - at the END of the run.

 

The extension cords are ribbon cable (side-by-side), while the installation wire is twisted pair. Twisted-pair wires help prevent EMI and RF interference from entering the signal lines. (It's called "common mode rejection".)

Both are usually 24awg. Extension cords are stranded; installation wires are solid.