Your Own Telephone Installation Business

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Once you and the client have agreed on the particulars, transfer your thoughts to paper. From here on, your main responsibility will be to run the telephone wires accurately (and as inconspicuously as you can). The following suggestions should help.

Make your wire runs as short as possible, but keep them out of sight. Not only will you save time and materials, but you'll also win the respect of the customer by providing a custom look to the job. Make use of attics, basements, and crawl spaces whenever possible. If it's necessary to run wires along an inside wall, conceal them behind baseboards and molding. Nothing looks less professional than a wire strung along the flat of a wall.

Above all, never run wires under carpets or across walkways. The fastest way to go out of business is to have a customer trip over an exposed cord and present you with a lawsuit instead of a check!

Tack the phone cable in place with rounded staples, not flat ones. The curved fasteners cost a little more, but they'll save you time and frustration in the long run-especially since a flat staple can cut through a wire and short a circuit. Place the fasteners at threefoot intervals and at every turn and corner. (A staple gun will save you a lot of time.)

Sometimes you'll be asked to run wires outside a house. If this involves crossing a yard or field, it's best to bury the cable. Don't dangle the wires in the air; such installations tend to be insecure and unsightly, and electrical codes often prohibit them. Note, too, that burial requires a special cable, with different specifications from the indoor kind, and will also demand a bit more elbow grease.

When the wires are in place, you can install the phone jacks. There are two types: One, the conventional box type, mounts to the surface of a wall or baseboard; the other, the flat wall plate, fits into the wall. Wall plates are a little more expensive and take longer to install, but they provide a cleaner final installation because the outlet is flush with the wall. Of course, because of these factors, you should charge more for a wall plate installation. In either case, use the new, modular RJ-11 jacks unless the customer specifically requests something else.

The actual wiring of a jack involves only four connections, and complete instructions for the operation were given in "Install Your Own Telephone(s)!" in MOTHER NO. 86, page 144.

THE FINAL HOOKUP

Once you've finished the wiring, you'll be ready to put in the phone(s). This is done with an extension cord that plugs into the back of the telephone and into the wall jack. Some phones come with their own extension cords; others don't. In the latter case, you'll have to supply one.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print