We have a situation with a client who has numerous phone outlets throughout his house all star wired with cat5e and punched down on a open house system, however all cabling had to be pulled through conduit to ditribute through the place. One major conduit unfortunately exits right next to an ebos lighting system. This is where I suspect I am getting a lot of audible noise entering the phone system.
Has anyone had a similiar problem and any suggestions to remedy it? (short of digging up his floor and rerunning the cat5 to a different location that is)
Thanks

Are you using stand alone telephones or a telephone system with a KSU? I've found rather than inductance causing problems through the cable it is more often a particular phone or phones acting as an antenna causing RF generated noise to be the culprit. Disconnect all the telephones at each individual jack and monitor with a butt set at the head end. If there is no noise add the telephones back one by one untill the noise re-occurs. If this doesn't pinpoint it disco all the cables and follow the same procedure. Some guys recommend grounding all the unused pairs in the cable but I've never seen that work. Good luck.

Shoe has good advice. Unplug everything everything, including any computers and satellite receivers. Check with the butt set.

Before you do any of that, make sure you go out to the telco box on the side of the house and check the noise level of the incoming lines. I was on a job Saturday that had no noise on the first line and lots of hum on the second line coming up to the house. Verizon problem.

Any Vtech phones in the house? They're my favorite. :)

Thanks.
2 lines in, both are noise free into the house.
Have disconnected everything as suggested but still have noise.
Standard phones in use with no pabx or similiar.
Could the lighting dimmers be causing this? When I comissioned the system it all appeared ok but at that time the lighting hadn't been made live.
The "noise" sounds like running water according to my customer. Unfortunately he lives over an hour away which makes it difficult to schedule a service call when I don't have a solution to rectify the problem.
I'm open to any other suggestion and ideas.
Thanks
Bri

I am not clear from your response if you are trouble shooting each individual cable without the phone attached as well as with. It can be one cable causing the trouble. It is laborious but necessary to do it one cable at a time. You might as well bite the bullet. I have also gotten interference from dimmers but eliminating that one phone can solve the problem. With the dimmer it is usually the telephone that is causing the problem.

I agree with the above.

1. Isolate problem; is it one phone only? Is it one jack only? Is one phone causing the problem at every jack?
2. If one phone only, replacing phone with different phone solves problem?
3. If replacement phone has same problem, go to head end and remove from distribution. Confirm problem is gone at other phone locations. Ground unused pairs at head end only on problem extension, reconnect, test.
4. If more then one location has problem, remember the problems are cumulative.
5. Check system with lights off and lights on, as it may work great in the middle of the day, but when you are an hour away and the buzz comes back when the customer uses it at night, you've got a problem.

you get the idea. PITA

ouch. that bullet gonna hurt.
Thanks for all input. I will try these when I can schedule a service call.