AboutDave Neuweiler Expertise The design and application of burglary and fire systems for homes and businesses. Helping alarm owners understand how their system works. Helping to troubleshoot false alarm problems. Questions about monitoring issues.
Experience Over a quarter century in the industry. Experience in installation, service, and monitoring centers. Training manager for a national protective services company; director of education and training for a national trade organization for for alarm dealers.
Question We bought our house about eight years ago. It has an FBI XL 3 alarm in it that was in it when we bought the house. We have never used the system. The box has been disconnected and removed. Now our phones do not work. Is this a common problem? Any suggestion as to how to fix this? It looks like the wire that was connected to the alarm box runs to the phone company's box on the outside of the house.
Answer Hello Thomas, and thanks for your question.
It's not a common problem, but it is one that's caused by disconnecting things that need to remain connected.
The line from the outside telephone box to the alarm should have terminated in a modular telephone jack (called an RJ31X), which is mounted next to the alarm control panel. A cord from the alarm control panel plugs into this. Here's a link to a picture of what you should have seen:
When removing an alarm system, all that needs to be done for the telephone line is to unplug the cord from the alarm panel. Your house phones will work.
Now, if you've cut the alarm cord or telephone line and/or removed the RJ31X, you'll have to strip the insulation from the end of the line that's connected to the outside box. There should be four wires there; strip the insulation (about a half inch is good) from each of them.
If the normal color-coding was used by the original installer, splice the red wire to the yellow wire, and the black wire to the green wire.
Check your phones; you should now have dial tone. Be sure to wrap the splices that you made with electrical tape.
