Newhouse Farm

[Bobby Ewing]

Is there anyone here who can give advise on setting up an internal telephone system, or whether it is even possible?
We have mains electricity and though we have phone sockets in the house (plus a line to it) we do not use the telephone and it is not connected to the BT telecom network.
We have a large garden to which I have electricity connected to an outbuilding. So that my wife and I can contact each other I would like to know whether it is feasible to set up an internal telephone system between home and garden building. If it can be done can anyone advise on how to do it and how much electricity it would use please?
Thank you.
Andrew

[nick]

Yes.

Very little.

However, it might be easier to buy a couple of those intercom thingies which just plug into mains sockets. As long as the sockets are on the same circuit, they "borrow" the cable to connect to each other.
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[Mike&Penny]

Depending on being able to find the right (old) equipment, the phones themselves would need no (external power over such a short distance. The power of the moving air from your voice moving a diaphrame with coiled wire in a magnetic field is a micro generator able to power the micro speaker at the other end when it's just a couple hundred meters of wire between.

But not enough power for the "ring" which is why in old time movies you see them cranking a hand powered generator for that. But in this case you have power available at both ends.
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There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave.

[Bobby Ewing]

Thank you so far.
The phones are not that old! It made me think though, maybe I ought to use two tin cans and a piece of string.
Andrew

[happymama]

Baby listeners.
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People will continue to commit atrocities, as long as they believe in absurbities. (Voltaire)

[Mike&Penny]

I don't know all about newer phones (last several decades) but I'd be mildly surprised if you couldn't adapt them. The most obvious mod being taking one off the hook makes the other ring (and that requires some external power source). Instead you might be ignore the "hook" relay and simply wire a doorbell circuit so you push a button to ring the other end indicating "pick up the phone". I do know that even with modern phones were it not for the dial tone drowning this out if two people each pick up a phone extension in the hosue they can talk to each other. Not unusual for Penny and I to both answer a ring but nobody on the other end of the line.

However as others have indicated indicated you can possibly more easily adapt something other than modern phones.

You didn't indacte how much communication capability was needed. Chatting between house and outbuilding? Or just exchange of signals taken from a small set? In the latter case. just the doorbell circuit by itself might do (eg: long, short, short => "dinner is ready")
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There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave.