A few years ago, I was called out to help a homeowner install a massive television in his theater room, along with upgrades to his surround sound and whole-home music system.
The house was incredible.
It had a home gym, a huge kitchen, a beautiful pool, vaulted ceilings, and just about every luxury feature you could imagine. If MTV Cribs was still around, this house would have fit right in.
As I walked through the home, one thing caught my attention. The kitchen had so much granite that I found myself wondering what kind of load calculations had been performed to support all that stone. Everything about the house had clearly been planned in detail.
The structure was engineered.
The finishes were carefully selected.
The audio system had speaker wire run throughout the house back to a central utility room.
There were even audio control panels installed in multiple rooms.
Unfortunately, those control panels started failing after only a few years. The original installer was nowhere to be found, and the homeowner eventually replaced them with blank wall plates.
But what really surprised me was what wasn’t there.
There was no Wi-Fi plan.
No Ethernet runs.
No wireless access points.
No structured cabling.
The entire home relied on a single wireless router sitting in the basement utility room.
To be fair, it sort of worked.
You could browse the internet from most areas of the house. Email worked. Basic web browsing worked. Nobody was completely disconnected.
But nobody was getting the experience they should have expected from a home of that caliber.
The master bedroom had spotty coverage at best. Depending on where you were standing, you might have a connection or you might not. Speeds were inconsistent and reliability was hit or miss.
The master bathroom was even worse.
There was no Wi-Fi at all.
Not a weak signal. Not slow speeds. No connection.
For most people that might sound like a minor inconvenience, but it was the homeowner’s biggest complaint. In a home where every detail had been carefully planned and engineered, one of the most frequently used areas of the house had become a complete wireless dead zone.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
Someone had taken the time to calculate the structural loads for thousands of pounds of granite. The builder coordinated electrical, plumbing, HVAC, luxury finishes, and whole-home audio. Yet nobody stopped to ask a simple question:
“Will the Wi-Fi actually work everywhere people use it?”
Working within the client’s budget, we developed a creative solution that dramatically improved coverage throughout the house. In the end, the problem was solved.
The frustrating part is that it never should have been a problem in the first place.
A simple Wi-Fi evaluation during the design phase would have identified the coverage requirements long before construction was complete. A few strategically placed Ethernet runs and wireless access points would have provided excellent coverage throughout the home.
The easiest and least expensive time to do this is before the drywall goes up.
Once the walls are closed, every cable becomes more expensive and every improvement becomes more difficult.
A properly designed wireless network should not require constant reboots. It should not have dead zones. It should not force you to disconnect and reconnect as you move around the house.
A good wireless network follows you from room to room without you ever noticing.
In fact, the best wireless network is one you never think about at all.
It just works.
If you’re building a new home, planning a renovation, or adding onto an existing home, now is the time to think about your network infrastructure. The cost of planning is small. The cost of fixing mistakes later is not.
Divinsky Computer Consulting can perform a wireless evaluation, develop a network plan, and help ensure your home has the reliable connectivity modern families expect.