Telephone wiring - two lines and alarm ?

[Jeff Westrop]

I moved into a house and have found a number of things that are confusing me with the telephone lines.

It appears that one phone line comes into the front of the house and is connected to the hall, lounge and front bedroom and this works fine.

It appears a second line comes into the back of the house and is connected to a master socket in the back bedroom - this is dead. There are no other connections to this socket.

In the cupboard under the stairs is another dead master socket with the blue and white wires connected and this is connected to a dead alarm system.

I have been trying to trace the wiring but the alarm wiring looks the same as the phone wiring and it all vanishes below floor boards or into walls etc

So my questions are:-

1) I have one phone line but I assume the previous people had two lines - it looks like there are two wires from the pole to the house. Would two phone lines be separated in this way ?

2) Would the alarm have a dedicated line or would it share a voice line ? Having 3 master sockets is confusing me.

3) If there are two separate lines and I link them together would this work or would there be a problem with the second dead line affecting the working line at some point away from the house ?

thanks

Jeff

[danny]

hi there,
1 it depends where the previous occupier wanted two different line in the property,
2 you can put an alarm system on a single line if you want, doesn't really require a second line,
3 not advisable to connect 2 incoming lines together as even though 1 is dead it may accidentally become active for whatever reason
if you need any assistance i will be more than happy to help!
d

[danny]

getting back to question 2 "read it again"
it maybe that someone didn't quite now what they were doing on the telephone system an just put masters in instead of secondarys,