DIYbanter - View Single Post - How to Extend 5 Phone Lines by 15-ft?

wrote:
I'd use good 'ol twist-n-solder with heatshrink
tubing over the splice. Excellent connectivity,
you can maintain the twisted-pair turns, water
resistant, low bulk, nice looking, cheap....

I took your advice and extend the existing phone lines using
twisting-soldering-and-heat-shrink-tubing. This way works great and is
much cheaper than the jack-and-plug approach that I originally planned
to do. Everything works (voice/DSL) after I have extended the phone
lines and relocate the control panel to an easily accessible location.
I just feel great when everything works.

The downside of using the twisting-and-soldering approach is that I
cannot twist the pair together. And I see no way to even attempt to
twist the pair together if there are two or more pairs of wires in the
cable. The result is that I end up having a long section (around 4")
of untwisted pair of wires. This is probably not good for more
demanding application (such as computer networking). But this doesn't
seem to cause any problem with phone-connection and DSL connection.
If I was trying to extend a section of cable for computer networking,
I would likely choose jack-and-plug approach that can have very short
section of untwisted wiring (like 1" or less).

My home wiring project is still not 100% done yet. But getting the
phone central panel to the correct location and having the panel
organized is a good step forward.

Thanks for your suggestion.

Jay Chan

Hi Jay -

Glad to hear that it worked out.

FYI in future jobs - I've had good success in offsetting the splices and
maintaining the twist in the two wires in each pair before soldering. It
isn't necessary to twist the pairs around each other in order to achieve
contstant impedence and avoid crosstalk. But as you say, maintaining a
perfect continuous twist really isn't necessary in this case anyway.