In alt.home.repair on Sat, 20 Aug 2005 23:30:31 -0400 Jeff Wisnia
posted:

meirman wrote:

The neighbor's contractor cut my phone line

Is soldering and taping good enough for an outdoor phone line repair?

Or should I have the phone company come and do it according to its
standards?

I don't want to get stuck paying later, when the contractor is long
gone and maybe the neighbor too.

......


(The contractors didn't cut a buried wire. They knew the wire was
there and one was holding it out of the way, while the other used a 4-
or 5-foot rod to jab at the cement left in the ground from a fence
post. He hit it several times before he cut the wire. ) They
should have used a rod that they held in place, and hit it with a
sledge or something, instead of moving the whole 5 foot pole, right?

(FWIW, they also didn't tell me they had cut my line, didn't apologize
when I found out (I was 15 feet away and on the ohter side of bushes,
but I heard one talk to the other), didn't tell me they were going to
"fix" it or when, and I was going to call the phone company when I
went outside again to do a temporary repair, and saw that they had
started their repair. I don't think they planned to tell me at all
that they had cut it.)

Thanks.

From the way you describe the repair I think it should hold up fine for
quite a while. as long as it stays above ground.

Well I don't have to look at it. It's on their side of my bushes.
FTM, they had bushes or plants there too and plan to plant new ones.

But someone might bury it, come to think of it, if not them, whoever
comes later.

If it was me, I would have slid an appropriate diameter piece of heat
shrink tubing about 6" long onto the jacket on one side of the break,
made the four staggered in line soldered splices each covered with heat
shrink tubing, and then slid the larger heat shrink tubing back over
those four joints and over the outer jacket of the wire on the other
side of the splices and shrunk it in place. That should last as long as
the original wire itself, particularly if it's not buried.

I normally do all this when fixing something indoors or in my car. I
hate to say it, but I was intimidated by the fact that the 2 guys were
waiting. And that all four pair had already been twisted together.
Then again, they probably could have found something to do.
But they didn't say anything like "Take your time" and one even
insisted that twisting the wires and taping was good enough, and I'm
sure that's not true.

But then, I'm anal about those kind of things.

I think you do it right.

Jeff


Meirman
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