Phone extensions do not ring - please help

Icandothat

None of the extensions in my home ring! The BT Openreach socket has the white/orange wire in 2 and the orange/white wire in 5. If I plug a phone directly into this socket it does ring.
I have checked all the extensions I can find - there are 6 so far! None of them have a ring capacitor. All of them have white/orange in 5 and orange/white in 2, so the opposite way round from the BT socket. They all have two wires in each position except for one which has single wires which I assume is the end of the line. One of them also has two white/green in 6 and green/white in 1 and another has two white/green in 6 and only one green/white in 1. From what I can make out positions 1 and 6 do not do anything anyway.
Can someone tell me what I need to do to make them ring please? Thank you very much.

spannerzone

Presumably this phone you're trying is a modern one and not an old one with a real bell in it?

Modern phones only need 2 wires, connected to 2 and 5 and those are traditionally 2= Blue with white bands and 5= White with blue bands. Of course colours used are irrelevent if all are wired the same. I'd suggest disconnect all phones, wire all sockets with the 2 and 5 connections only and see what happens.

When doing work on the extensions make sure you've taken the front plate off the master socket as this disconnects all extension wires so they become dead while being worked on.

Orange with white traditionally went to 3, known as the ringer wire but this is required only for old bell phones. Disconnecting the 'ringer wire' is a way to also improve ADSL broadband performance in some cases.

before doing any changes make a note of each socket wiring as yours sounds like a bit of a rats nest of wiring...I'd start be looking at what's wired into the front of the master socket. Some more info here

Icandothat

Thanks spannerzone
I assume from what you say that the master socket is the one where only the lower portion comes off and it has BT Openzone on it. This only has 3 positions 2, 3 and 5. I have wired all the extension sockets with orange on 2 and white on 5. If I switch the colours around on the master socket (it is currently white on 2 and orange on 5) do you think this will do the trick? The extensions currently work, they just don't ring.

Dave_C_2

As the phones work on the orange/white pair (pins 2 and 5) leave well alone - all you are missing is the ringing wire (pin 3)

If you have phone line broadband, simply use a filter on the extension sockets - which you should be doing anyway. The filters have a ringing capacitor built in, which will ring the phone plugged into the filter. recommended to keep broadband speed high..

Otherwise connect pin 3 of the openzone socket (the bit that comes off) to the extensions. This is the ringing wire.

Swapping orange and white around won't make any difference.

Dave

Icandothat

Thanks Dave_C
I do not have broadband on this line, I have a separate line for that. However, I used a filter on one of the extensions and the phone rang! Brilliant! So I can use any wire in position 3, as long as I consistently use the same one throughout the house? I will try tomorrow. I think this will work from what you say.
Thanks very much to both of you, you have been terrific.

spannerzone

Yes, colour codes don't make any odds to the operation but there is a preferred way to wire up phone sockets. Yours is wrong but as long as they're all wired up the same (wrongly colour coded) it won't make any odds.

You'll obviously need to make sure pin 3 is connected to each phone socket around the house.