Connecting a garage with HomePlugs

Hi,

Hopefully somebody can help.

My granddad is looking to get online in his garage and shed (which is directly behind the garage)

The garage is perhaps 10 meters from the house with a clear line of sight. At the moment they have wireless outside the garage but as soon as you go in you lose connection.

I wanted to explore HomePlugs and wondered if anything would be suitable to get internet over there. Their home connection is only around 1.5Mbps due to being in the middle of nowhere in the Scottish Borders, so a dramatic loss of speed wouldn't be an issue.

There is a fuse box in the house feeding a fuse box in the garage which feeds another fuse box in the shed (see images below)

House

Garage

Shed

Are there any home plugs that would do this? It isn't possible to run an Ethernet between the two points as this would be too much work to undertake.

Thanks

It really would be a case of try it and see.

Firstly it will depend on which circuit the router/hub is plugged into in the house ... the signal could then have to pass through 2 RCDs before going to the garage. Then when it gets to the garage another RCD and I cannot see if there is another in the shed.

Each RCD is very likely to degrade any signal by a significant amount and I would say it probably would not work.

One reason the signal is lost in the garage is the Celotex insulation - foil covered on both sides which will severely attenuation the WiFi signal.

Ethernet is probably the only way.

Does the wireless have to travel through lots of walls before the garage?

Could a solution be to install a booster on a wall which faces the garage?

Would the Ubiquiti kit mentioned in this thread be a possible solution? Presumably you would need ethernet cabling or another WAP in the garage/shed.

I don't think HomePlugs would be suitable for this situation and it looks like you've already tried wireless. So the next step would be Ethernet cable.

At least if you installed Ethernet cable it would be future proofing if later the broadband speed did improve.

Also once the Ethernet cable is installed you could always use a wireless access point in the garage for any wireless devices.

Yep, I second your thoughts, 10m and ethernet will remove all the buts and maybe's.

while I dont really like the powerline extenders, I think they would be fine in this case.
they are not expensive to buy, and some places may take them back if they are unsuitable for your environment.
edit sp

Edited by ggremlin (Thu 27-Jul-17 19:53:04)

Agreed. Easier to try it and see with Homeplugs and return them if they don't do the job.

Thanks for the advice. Have ordered a pair of homeplugs to be delivered to him tomorrow on the basis we can return it if they don't do the job.

Good luck

Let us know how you get on!

It works!

I don't have many more facts other than it works, was going to ask for a speedtest but a little beyond them I think.

In reply to a post by brandscill:

It works!

I don't have many more facts other than it works, was going to ask for a speedtest but a little beyond them I think.

Brilliant - there are cases of users ending up on next doors connection with homeplugs etc, so they certainly sometimes do work beyond the expected.

I'm glad they did. All they wanted was Spotify free tier on an iPod touch whilst my Grandad worked in the garage.