Replies

1. 
   cameraman | Dec 21, 2009 11:11am | #1

   I am not a phone expert, but when I remodeled my 2 story soild brick, I pull pull 2 pair phone wire to every room.

   Now the phone tech. has improved greatly we don't use the jacks at all. We use the main jack in the kitched and then the cordless that only need a 110v plug. We get great reception, no dead spots in the house at all, and our phone system is old.

   What I have learned is you need a pair of wires for each line and then an extra pair is wise. The cordless on the market also have 2 line phones.

   Now smart wiring with cat6 cable is a different ball game, but if you are just talking phones, we have been very pleased with the cordless,

2. 
   xxPaulCPxx | Dec 22, 2009 12:18pm | #2

   Your normal phone jack line has the capability to run 2 lines at each port. If you look at the connector, there are 4 possible wire locations, but usually only the center two are used. The outer two would be for line 2.

   http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Uniden+-+Corded+Phone+with+5.8GHz+Digital+Cordless+Handset+and+Digital+Answering+System/9145533.p?id=1218035527473&skuId=9145533

   We have this Uniden system, phones and voice quality are great, and you can buy individual handsets cheap if you need replacements.

3. 
   popawheelie | Dec 22, 2009 01:33pm | #3

   Paul, Our house has gone completely celular so our corless phone is sitting there collecting dust.

   It is a Panasonic KX-TG2584 if you are interested.

   The reason I bought this one was because it has longer range. It has two anteanas on the base unit.

   You can have it for a song if you like.

   It's a good system. We had no problems with it at all.

   
4. 
   barmil | Dec 22, 2009 04:27pm | #4

   I love this. Many moons ago I suggested to the marketing people at AT&T that if they came up with a household cordless phone with a base station and remotes that could be in rooms not wired for a phone I'd buy it. No response. About three years later, guess what? I think there are multi-line cordless phones now available. Recognize, as Paulcp wrote, that a single phone wire bundle has four wires, each capable of a separate phone line. So you could have two separate base stations transmitting to separate phones in the same place. Do you really need two phones in each room? I don't believe we're getting the whole story.

   As a precaution, I always keep a good old plug in phone on hand, because when the electricity goes out, so do cordless phones and cell phone chargers (unless you use the car for recharging). The old phones will still work, however.

5. 
   Nuke | Dec 24, 2009 08:01am | #5

   John, when certain stages of my basement project fell into place I brought in someone to install structured wiring into my home. The installed ten (10) drops in the home and each drop consisted of 2 x Cat6 and 2 x Quad-Shielded RG6.

   One of the Cat6 is punched down, at the structured wiring panel in the basement (underneath the staircase), onto a standard telephone block and the home's original telephone wiring mounted as well. This means I now have 13 analog telephone locations.

   The other Cat6 endeavor was for data. I have since move the cable modem Internet entry (service) cable to this panel, installed a new Gigabit router, and if I choose to move to Voice over IP (VoIP) I am ready.

   If I had a need for multiple lines I think I would seriously consider moving to VoIP as it is by far a more intelligent system. In my home office I use a dedicated speakerphone and I use it's Aux port for a Plantronics hands-free wireless head/mike set.

   For all other parts of the house I use a couple of multi-handset cordless units that establish connectivity to their respective base-stations.

   I do feel that I will move toward VoIP as the services are all affording the ability to check voice messages by means of webpage audio files.

6. 
   xxPaulCPxx | Dec 24, 2009 11:05pm | #6

   BTW, it only costs about $10 more a month to add another line to our cell phone plan. You can use your existing home number too. Plus, there are bluetooth devices for $99 that will allow you to connect a cell to a regular phone line.