We are currently digging out our basement and I want to make sure we’ll have good wifi coverage throughout when it’s finished. What should I think about now in terms of cabling, sockets etc to make sure it’s as good as possible?
The basement will measure about 5m x 15m and will be split into 3 rooms.

You could just save the hassle and use a wifi powerline? All you’ll need is a spare power socket.

I did this for the multi roomed basement of a very old building and it worked no problem at all.

If your putting anything oldschool that takes a cable I’d pop a duct in for that. Then your either into power line of bridged connections to another WiFi Router.

As per @peterfile – put a powerline adapter in (£25) and then in the basement a Wifi repeater (£75) or just use an Ethernet cable if you are only connecting one device like a TV streaming box. One note is that if you are using powerline it works best if the mains electricity wiring is “clean”, so make sure the wiring is well conencted and ideally part of the house main rather than a spur, Electricians here can comment.

Unfortunately the particles that are used for “wifi” are really really light, and so tend to float upwards. This makes reception in Basements really tricky. I suggest moving your basement to the top floor of your house. Alternatively, move to Australia.

More useful consumer advice given next time……

😉

If you have the house in bits and can run some Cat 5 from your router in to the basement then I would do that.

While powerlines aren’t bad they offer no where near the speed of a length of Cat 5. If you run two, you can then run one as a spare port to plug laptop/media centre in to and run the other as a link to a dedicated wireless access point for the basement.

Thanks all (especially the bit about the lightness of particles – I was blissfully unaware!).
Yes the house is in total bits (ie no floorboards) which is why now would be a good time to think about this stuff.

somouk, can I ask a stupid question – where do I need to run the cat5 from? The first box where the phone line comes in?

Make sure you always run CAT-5 downhill as the electrons can’t go very fast uphill……

somouk, can I ask a stupid question – where do I need to run the cat5 from? The first box where the phone line comes in?

You’ll be wanting to take the feed from your router, which I assume is next to where your phone line comes in? Once you’ve got a port downstairs then you can either put a wifi repeater on it or just whack it straight into the back of a TV/XBOX/Whatever.

@eckinspain – from where the router is/will be (if you read @smouk’s post carefully that’s what he says)

Just to add something a bit different, you could use a 2.4gHz amplifier such as http://m.aliexpress.com/item/850867651.html although you might get a knock on the door from OFCOM because this will flood your home with signal and totally shaft your neighbours.