Communications: Voice, Radio and Data - Phone Line Filter for Advantex Pump Septic modem line

Hello,

I'm not sure if this is the right spot for this question and warning its a long one!

I have a lot of hum in my home phone system.

Main feed from road to the outside "box" at house is clean dial tone. I checked all of my jacks in the house with no issues.

I finally linked it to a phone line that runs to my pump septic system which is on the same “hub” with the house phones. (To explain - I have an Advantex Septic System which has a weather tight electrical housing where a small “motherboard” for solenoid controlled timers to cycle the pump system. This board has a “modem function” interlaced which dials out to the contracted annual maintenance technician’s computer system. I believe it dials out once a day at 4AM and if error code is reported would flag my “number” and tech support supposed to call to see if everything is Ok). Kind of like OnStar for poopoo.

Anyway….when I disconnect phone line to Advantex the hum in the line goes away and very clean dial tone with all house phaones and when I hook up the Advantex line back up it hums.

There is no issue leaving the phone line unplugged to the advantex system as it has no impact on how the system operates (other than it wont be dialing in – oddly enough it should be reporting an error since it is disconnected the past couple of weeks but the tech has not called)

The advantex system is just over a year old and I have had to replace the motherboard once already for $500.00 bucks and I don’t want to spend that money again if that is the problem.

Finally the Question: Is there a line filter I can buy that might filter out the hum if connected to the pump phone line?

It sounds like you have a short , no filter is likely to fix that

when you say "when I disconnect phone line to Advantex the hum in the line goes away and very clean dial tone with all house phones and when I hook up the Advantex line back up it hums."

where are you disconnecting it ?

you need to disconnect it at the modem not the cable going to the modem

if the hum is still there then the cable is bad , if not the modem is probably bad

is this device away from the house or connected to it ?






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I unplug Rj11 inside the Advantex box.....the phone cable is still wired to the hub/box on side of my house. When I unplug hum is gone and when plug it back in hum comes back.

Inside the Advantex box There is a Phoenix Contact UMK-SE 11,25-1 that is separate from the board, it has two RJ11 ports on it, one is where the "line in" from house run plugs in and the other port has a short RJ11 jumper cable that goes to the mainboard. The mainboard is about the size of an old $25.00 56K modem or video card with about 1/10 of the chips or capacitors or whatever.

Do you think Phoenix Contact piece could be bad? It looks easy enough to replace....just don't know where to find something like this.

I can post a picture if that will help. I just hope I can do something with out getting the expensive Advantex parts and service agreement people involved.

Thats why I was hoping a filter might cure it.

Thnkas. FF

Smart thinking!
If ju just unplug the mains from the Advanex box, does the hum stop?

IF so the hum is probably generated from the mains. Then a privacy filter may solve it. (It is just a triac)

Sandman.com has a lot of articles about this.

The problem will often be to test, and if it not works test somthing else..

dsk

I don't see it as rf related
(which is all a "filter" can filter )

if the hum is only when plugged into the device then I would say the device is causing it and needs to be replaced

you might check to be sure the device is properly grounded

since the device is away form the house what type of primary and secondary surge suppression is in place ?


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I unplug Rj11 inside the Advantex box.....the phone cable is still wired to the hub/box on side of my house. When I unplug hum is gone and when plug it back in hum comes back.
Coud be leakage currents using any phone line probably due to at least two defects. But only the right combination or disconnects shows the defect. A defective could even exists on any interior wire but not make noise until the pump defect also exists.

Hum is due to something such as a ground loop. Everything powered and on that phone circuit must be grounded to a common point. Even the phone line must be grounded via its NID protector. Is it? Does each ground eventually meet at the same ground used by the phone?

For example, is the pump's safety ground properly installed so that it is visually connected to the breaker box bus bar? Is the breaker box earthed to the same ground used by the phone NID surge protector?

Another test - if you swap wires on the pump, does that mean the noise goes away? Or selectively disconnect only one phone wire to the pump and test. Then disconnect only the other wire. These tests do not fix it. May only identify something else (a phone wire somewhere) that has improperly connected to something else. For example, a calcium trace created by incidental moisture has formed a poor but still conductive connection to a phone wire inside a junction block. A problem that will only get worse and may eventually cause other phone line problems.

If you have a multimeter, temporarily disconnect from the telco, then measure ohm shorts to safety and earth grounds. You should measure greater than 10 megohms. If lower, you also have a wire defect in combination with excessive leakage from the pump. Reason for leakage current to travel on phone lines.

Suggested is that your problem is due to at least two failures. For example, stray electric currents not properly safety grounded are finding a path to the safety ground system via a partially connected to something phone line.

Swapping or disconnecting one wire at a time to the pump is one test. But also temporarily disconnecting various lines to other phone equipment (where each wire connects to the telco so as to test the entire 'in the wall' wire) may reveal the other side of that problem.

What you know - current from the pump is, for some reason, is traveling through a phone line when the phone line should be completely isolated (except for the 'whole house' protector). Currents that normally would not exist if both phone lines were truly isolated and if the pump was properly safety grounded.