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An elderly relative was fed up of paying the 18 pound monthly
maintenance charges for her British Gas alarm system, and asked to have
the system disconnected.

The disconnection by British Gas comprised disconnecting the power from
the system, and letting the backup batteries run down while the alarm
bells sounded!

I disconnected the telephone connection from the control box, but the
phones in the house then went dead. I disconnected the bottom bit of the
BT master socket and plugged in a phone to the test socket, but this was
also dead. Reconnecting the wires to the alarm control box got the phone
working again.

I have not seen this configuration before, since I know one is not
supposed to mess round with the phone connections before the BT master
socket, but how do I disconnect the alarm system while allowing the
phones to continue working.

It would appear that the phone line loops through to the alarm system
control box before being patched through to the master socket, but I
cant see how this could be done. In the alarm box there are four cores
from a wire labelled BT, and I wondered whether two were going in and
two going out, but patching them together didnt seem to get the phone
service working (IIRC the wires were orange + orange/white and blue +
blue/white).

Ideally BT could sort this out, but at a callout cost of over 100
pounds, this is difficult.

Any ideas?

Mark Ingle wrote in message
news:1ih3srf.1j4emzt17uu0gqN%markinglenospam@nospamfastmail.fm...

When you removed the cable from the alarm panel, were the wires touching
each other?

When you disconnect the bottom faceplate from the main BT socket, call your
number from a mobile - is your number busy?

Remove the top part of the BT master socket - are there 2 different cables
attached to the screw connections?

Find the point where the phone cable enters your house - there should only
be 1 cable out from there and it should go directly to your master socket.

HTH, Ali

It may be connected to a junction box first.
How old is the alarm, when was it installed?
The best way would be to trace the cable from where it enters the
house.
If you have a junction box then you should see one cable coming from
the street and one leading to your master socket, check to see if
there are two cables connected on the connectors.

--
http://technicianspot.blogspot.com/

Many thanks for your reply

Zomaar wrote:

No, I made sure that the wires were not touching.


Unfortunately I didnt try this at the time.

This is the odd bit. I did remove the whole BT faceplate, and there were
three sets of wires, two coming from different directions from the
inside (one had black insulation, and the other white). The third one
was mounted on the surface but DID NOT plug into the removable bottom
faceplate; this was the wire that went to the alarm. Also behind the
faceplate were two wires connected with those plastic connectors with
oil in them. At the time I thought this was rather odd because one would
normally just patch through the wire through the Krone connection.

Thinking about it, I now suspect that the main phone line going in would
be the one with black insulation since that type of cable tends to be
used for external wiring; perhaps rather than going straight into the
master socket, the cable was patched (with the two cable connectors) to
the alarm, then back again into the master socket? She has got an
extension cable upstairs which may explain the third set of wire coming
in.

Unfortunately I was so baffled by the cable configuration at the time
that I did not think of taking photos of it or tracing the colours of
the wires from the alarm panel which would have been useful.

Apparently, when the upstairs extension was fitted by BT, the engineer
commented that the cabling was done upside down or something to that
effect.
It is a relatively new build so apart from the wiring to the alarm panel
which is tacked onto the wall, everything else is concealed.

On Sat, 17 May 2008 21:34:32 +0100, markinglenospam@nospamfastmail.fm
(Mark Ingle) wrote:

Shouldnt BG have returned the phone installation to the state in
which they found it if so why didnt they ?give them a call and
chapter and verse when they answer I know I would .

mymail@hotmail.com wrote:


Good luck, I was unfortunate enough to have to work for
British Gas when they were promoting their shitty alarms, they
closed the entire alarm centre down and transferred it to the
central heating office, so now, loads of advisers who know
nothing about alarms have to answer questions on them, they
use a program for fault finding which is broken most of the time.

When I worked there they only had 5 alarm engineers for the
entire country, when someone wanted a service doing on their
alarm which was part of their contract they used to send out
the heating engineers To do the best they could

Steer well clear.

--
xCx
*Disclaimer* My opinions are mine and I do not represent
anyone or any company.

On Sat, 17 May 2008 23:56:26 +0100, xCx wrote:


Wouldnt have anybodies alarm installed here short row of five
terraced houses three are alarmed four businesses the other side of
the street each alarmed and we are guaranteed to be woken in the
middle of the night by two of them each and every month for no good
reason.
You ring the police and the stupid bitches in the police call center
say it will stop in twenty minutes sir !! . Does it really matter how
long it takes for them to stop once the damn things have woken you up
at 1,2,3 in a morning !!, then they say have you seen anyone around
sir? how stupid of them to have expected me or anyone else to have
rushed out into the street in boxer shorts and nothing else on a cold
winters night looking to see if anyone is aboutbefore ringing them .

On Sun, 18 May 2008 00:11:42 UTC, mymail@hotmail.com wrote:


Yes, Ron.
--
Bob Eager
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org