How can I disconnect a home-fashioned phone extension without electrocuting myself?!

[concernedaboutheboy]

The previous owner of our house fashioned his own extension line from our main square white BT phone socket box thing (I've tried to upload a picture showing what I mean, the black line is the improvised extension).

I want to disconnect this extension as it runs up through the corner of our living room ceiling in an unsightly bodged manner, to a phone point upstairs which we never use.

Phone lines have electricity, don't they? Am I going to electrocute myself if I do it? I don't think turning off the consumer unit trip switch is going to be any use 'cos the current comes through the actual line, I always thought.

Any ideas which don't involve getting a spark in (costs too much round here, but of course I will do if I'm going to kill myself) :)

the voltage and current through the phone line is tiny and you won't do yourself any harm. So you can take off the front of the box and disconnect the redundant line.

BUT if you muck up your phone doing this ( the wires are thin and fiddly) BT will charge you for the fix.

so you might be better contacting BT for advice. This will be a battle to get past Bangalore but you may be in luck and get a real person round eventually.

Thanks v much for the quick response. I think I might risk it, purely for the fact that I bloody hate calling BT. They always always try hard to sell me something and then tell me they can do whatever I'm requesting, ooh, in about 3 months' time.

...which is how long they will take to fix your phone line if you break it.

No responsibility taken for the advice above which is given in good faith by a random on the internet.

Interweb suggests the current is around 50v DC; is that not quite a lot?

Physics was never my stellar subject. Can you tell?!

Don't worry, if I die no-one will know it was you wot told me to do it .

Joking aside, I won't really do it until I've got a few more opinions no disrespect to you special :)

it's not enough to kill you...I once was tidying up some wires in one of the many many random phone sockets in this house and kept getting a weird achey pain in my wrist as I dealt with the screws. Somehow or other I was dangling my bracelets on one of the wires.

it's certainly not in the same league as an electric fence.
...good luck!

no worries.

Go for it , I have both disconnected and reconnected telephone wires. Removed scruffy boxes insulted Virgin media call center ops . paid my bill way after due just to annoy Richard Branson. I am still here , my ex wishes I had turned blue with massive waves of current lighting up the street , seen from space even. Pull the mother off the wall you wimp

I can also confirm the voltage is no danger to a human! I recently removed metres of unused bt wires and lived to tell the tale.

If you don't want to mess inside the box itself just cut the bodge job wire coming out of it.

Disclaimer I had three pairs of rubber wellies on. and was wearing those gloves they use on the pylons

I did however manage to survive the Experience and I am thriving. This I know is a burden on the state cos they have to give me a wadge of pension . I am determined the phone wires are not going to get me,and have built a bunker in my garden

I haven't furnished it yet but I am determined to have umteen redundant bt sockets installed ,

Cough ,to keep me busy when theres not a lot on the tv

There's nothing to beat an evening un wraggling phone wires and causing a few major current blackout issues for the national grid

Nah 50v is nothing. You'll be fine. It's just like licking 5 of those square batteries at once!

Probably not a great idea if you have a pacemaker or something

Five batteries ? I buy them bulk buy and always have a drink to get the best hit from at least 10 batteries. I have to use the eye drops afterwards but hey my hair stands up and I swear my toe nails look like claws now. Now I think of it I am having to shave my hands too

You'd get about the same shock off a polyester outfit.

Roniek