Classicsat:

Very similar here.

Internal domestic or similar wiring is 3 twisted pair (solid copper core) or Cat5. It's been 2 or 3 twisted pair since the late 1970s / early 1980s.

Older cabling tends to be heavier open twisted pair with a solid copper core grey and white coloured. About the thickness of bell wire.

Any non-twisted pair cable was not installed by Telecom or to Eircom/Telecom specs.

Telecoms cabling is either ducted/dropped loose underfloor boards, thru the attic or behind plasterboard walls.

or, more usually, stapled with round cable staples into the grove of the skirting board. If it has to come down from a ceiling it's usually stapled along a door architrave to hide it.

The old and the new cabling systems are pretty neat though. It's usually pretty narrow round beige cable and is easily painted over.

The new NTU2001 main phone socket is a big brute of a thing though. About 1.5" deep when not flush fitted.. the DSL splitter version is 2" !
Flush fitting's rather tricky too as eircom require an extra deep box.

The old sockets were much neater... square (about the size of a UK lightswitch) rounded beige box surface mounted it only protruded about 1cm.

In general in Ireland Eircom / Telecom were never very fussy about what DIY work people did. Provided you left their main socket connected as the first point you could always do what ever you wanted.

They always sold DIY self-install extension kits which contained 3 RJ12 (6-way) sockets a load of cable and a tool for pushing cable into those little connectors they use. You didn't even have to pare the cable.. just push it in. Each socket has an IN and an OUT side you simply daisy chain them along. Considerng that my grandmother managed it it was pretty simple stuff [Linked Image]

There's also a DIY PBX.

1 line + 4 extensions.. it's been around for years and is made by a company in Ireland called MDS.
Basically a very small digital switch in a 10cm X 10cm wall mountable box.
Plug a phone line in one side. 4 Extensions out the other. "Interlink 1+4"
The fancier version included a printer socket and was aimed at small guest houses / B&Bs. Called "Interlink 2+6" (2 lines + 6 Ext)

They retailed at about €100 - €150
and shipped with EVERYTHING in a box..
1 X PBX
1 X AC adaptor
4 X standard eircom sockets
and plenty of cable.

You had to provide your own phones and you programmed it from extension 1 with */# codes.

There were a list of standard phones: (Quite a pitty that these are no-longer available they were FAR better than any of the cheap rubbish on the market today) and had weird celtic names [Linked Image]
Oisin, Aisling, Shannon, Boyne, Aires (DECT), Contempra and Harmony

Those interlink systems were EXTREMELY popular and you'll still find them in homes, small business, doctors surgeries, shops, restaurants, B&Bs everywhere.

These days it's an ISDN PBX or Eircom Netlink (Small IP based PBX) else they push their re-badged Siemens Gigaset (DECT) systems.

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 01-15-2004).]