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ZL3AI > PHONE 31.03.07 23:34l 68 Lines 3662 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 9986-ZL3AI
Read: GUEST DK5RAS
Subj: Solder Ants
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Sent: 070331/2112Z @:ZL2BAU.#79.NZL.OC #:40518 [Waimate] $:9986-ZL3AI
From: ZL3AI@ZL2BAU.#79.NZL.OC
To : PHONE@WW
Solder Ants
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The following is taken from a Telephone New Subscriber Pamphlet dated April
1, 1997. It is appropriate to this group who must keep current on service
issues related to the Internet.
There is a serious side-effect to having the phone company blow or clean out
your lines. If there is a weak spot in the insulation anywhere between the
central office and your phone, it can cause an insulation break in your
phone line. Through this break, solder ants can enter thus causing an
infestation, especially when the insulation break is close to your house.
For the uninformed, solder ants, a close cousin to the leaf-cutter ant,
crawl through the phone lines and attack the soldered connections in phone
equipment, answering machines, telephones, modems, digital satellite
receivers (plugged into a phone jack) and home computers, especially those
using an internal modem. They eat the solder off of joints causing cold
solder joints and opens. Symptoms of a solder ant infestation are the
crackling and popping sounds heard on your phone, spurious reboots on your
computer and wrong numbers/incomplete calls on your phone. Remember the
electrical outage that affected nearly the entire western United States
several years ago? It was caused by solder ants.
Three ways to combat this pest are as follows ...
1. Cracks in your phone line insulation, the cause of solder ant
infestations, are caused by excess slack in cables between the central
office and your home. This slack causes excessive bending of the insulation
on your phone lines thus causing cracks thus allowing solder ants to enter.
In order to correct this, insist that the phone company pull all the slack
out of your lines from the central office end. This is not widely known, but
the telcos must do this at no charge to the subscriber requesting it.
Lobbying by the telcos prevented them from having to do this automatically.
2. Four to six inches from the device (phone, modem, etc.) tie a tight knot
in the phone cord to prevent solder ants from exiting to your equipment
(Make sure you loosen the knot when the lines are blown out!). This also has
the added benefit of preventing lightning from destroying your equipment. It
is a known fact that lightning must travel in a straight line and it cannot
make it around the bends of a tight knot tied in your phone cord. This is a
little known fact that companies such as APC, who make surge suppression
equipment, do not want you to know.
3. Insist that the phone company flush your lines instead of blow them out.
Chemicals contained in the flushing solution ward off solder ants and are
just as effective in cleaning out your lines. The only problem is that once
notified that your lines are to be flushed, you have the responsibility of
unplugging all telecom devices and leaving the phone cord ends extended in
to some type of bucket to capture the flushing solution. Otherwise the
solution will drain all over your equipment and require professional
cleaning. An environmental note: Smaller, less well-financed telcos use
cheaper, older, more dangerous flushing solutions. The residue left from
line flushing must be dealt with the same way you would deal with any
petroleum based solvent. The easiest way to get around this is to insist
that your telco use environmentally friendly subscriber line flushing
solvents.
Warning: Do not attempt to blow out the lines yourself or try to look into a
line that is being blown clean. You could destroy your phone equipment or
injure yourself. It is best left to the experts.
73, David ZL3AI.
http://www.geocities.com/zl3ai
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