We’ve struggled along for a few years with a Sky router (one of the original Sky Q Hubs) and BT Whole Home mesh discs in our home. It’s two small stone houses knocked through into one to create a long and thin house. Broadband enters at one end and there’s a 1m+ solid stone wall down the middle which I’m guessing causes the biggest issue is getting signal in the other half of the house. We’ve put up with it for now but have recently switched to smart TRVs which causes a problem – the boiler is in the side of the house with poor signal and we’ve suffered multiple nights where the boiler hub lost connection with the TRVs and we ended up freezing. I think the problem with the BT mesh system is is the “parent” disc needs to be physically connected to the router which then has the same issue trying to connect to the next disc behind the thick wall.

I’ve ordered an above-basic Wifi 6 router (Asus RT-AX86U) with the hope that it’ll be better at getting a signal over to the other side of the house but short of running a network cable across to the other side is there anything I can do to boost coverage?

Doesn’t BT Whole Home guarantee to solve exactly this sort of problem? Worth getting on to them?

I’ve no idea whether it’s relevant to you but I have similar internal wall issues, I live in an 1890s property which is two small terraces knocked into one and the walls were mined from Moria. Of particular note that my (similar Asus) Wi-Fi is both 2.4GHz and 5GHz using “Smart Connect,” it works great for regular devices but cheap IoT stuff really doesn’t like it. I dropped in a second 2.4GHz-only mini router and it’s night and day. I’m giving serious consideration to turning off the band switching and running separate 2.4 and 5 networks, 2.4 is slower (who cares when it’s connecting bulbs) but the penetration and range is far superior.

I don’t like them generally, but in your specific use case I might be tempted to bridge that wall with Powerline adapters.

I’ve used a tp-link plug in booster, had no issues cost about £20 I think.

Is running an ethernet cable out of the question? cheap as chips and full speed all the time.
I’m kinda lucky in my current place but i’ve run ethernet cat5e out and up up the exterior walls, and back in before (not even the ‘out doors’ grade stuff) and it worked flawlessly.

That’s the other issue. I’m not sure power line adapters will work as each side of the house is on a separate wiring loop from the fuse box.

I believe I can set up the 2.4 and 5 GHz as separate networks on the Asus router. Would it be an idea to do that and use the 2.4 for the “smart” stuff in the house?

Powerline adaptors work well in our stone house. The (old) TP link ones we’ve got can be wired into stuff (like this computer, the Fire Stick) and also repeat the wi-fi signal, albeit it’s not a mesh system so sometimes you can lose signal moving around.

I also bought a range extender https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08Y5YB5D1 recently, as the powerline signal went flakey in the garage, 25-30 metres away from the house, and that’s helped a lot there. But it is sat in an upstairs window, so it’s not fighting the stone.

That’s the other issue. I’m not sure power line adapters will work as each side of the house is on a separate wiring loop from the fuse box.

The garage is on a whole separate circuit from our board in the house – then there’s another in the garage. It was working fine until late last year, and i think the problem may be down to the socket rather than the system, if you see what I mean, I think it may have got slightly damp/corroded as the wall there is damp. (Stopped using that socket. Must check it/change it sometime…)

I think in theory your neighbours might well be able to pick up your powerline signal, too, if they had paired adaptors handy…

Could you borrow a pair and try them? Takes maybe 5 minutes tops to pair them up with your router and each other.

I’ve no idea what the point of “gaming” routers is beyond being gimmicky – it’s not like they’re cheap, and yet if they were any good you’d see them used in professional environments, but of course you don’t.

The best solution is some kind of mesh system with a wired backhaul, either go through the thick internal wall or outside & back in again.

Specifically with the OP and losing connection with smart TRVs, are you sure they actually use WiFi? What system is it? Most use a proprietary version of Zigbee or some other non-WiFi protocol.

You could try the UniFi Dream Router and one of their long range WiFi 6 access points to replace the whole current set-up assuming the Sky kit can just do modem mode. The access point will require mounting on the ceiling upstairs and an ethernet cable running to it (PoE).
The Dream router should be somewhere a constant blue LED is not going to annoy people. IF you’re having problems connecting 2.4GHz devices it is easy enough to cut the 5GHz transmission for the time it takes to connect.

have recently switched to smart TRVs which causes a problem – the boiler is in the side of the house with poor signal and we’ve suffered multiple nights where the boiler hub lost connection with the TRVs

My (Drayton Wiser) TRVs don’t use WiFi to talk to the hub. It may be that yours don’t either, and if so fixing your WiFi won’t solve that issue.

Few bits and bobs;
– As above – what is your heating system? For instance Tado also sets up it’s own mesh (low powered 6LoWPAN, so not interfering with your wifi).
– Don’t discount powerline adaptors. I’ve found they work really well sometimes in situations they shouldn’t (and visa versa). I suggest buying a pair from a place you can return them easily and see how they work.
– I wouldn’t be investing in a different router to just potentially improve stuff at the very end of the house – I think you’d be better investing in additional mesh nodes (unless you can bridge the wall with powerline adaptors).
– If you can get the SkyQ box wired (eg by powerline), then that would allow you to turn off wifi on the Sky box completely – I think they always try and set up their own wifi mesh to connect to other Sky hubs, and if you can kill the competing wifi signal that might help.
– Any, yeah what Cougar said – I thought BT offered some kind of guarantee?

Most smart TRVs use Zigbee which is a low power mesh network, you can get USB plug in repeaters for a tenner. In the case of Drayton Wiser they have a repeater built into their smart plug.

The Dream router should be somewhere a constant blue LED is not going to annoy people. IF you’re having problems connecting 2.4GHz devices it is easy enough to cut the 5GHz transmission for the time it takes to connect.

you can turn the LED off in the settings! Also it can run multiple different SSIDs with different settings (i.e. one for 2.4, separate one for 5Ghz) so you can force clients to connect to a specific one, but they’ll all end up on the same network (or a separate one, if you wish, which some people like to do for IoT devices). Anyway, really pleased with mine, have had zero problems or downtime since getting it & I have a fair few clients now both wired & WiFi!

Slightly confused as the Drayton website says the thermostats use the home WiFi. Never mind, I’ll try the Wiser smart plug as that looks like it’ll boost whatever signal the TRVs & hub use. Still need to improve the WiFi signal though as the Wiser hub continues to lose connection to that fairly regularly. I’ll try the power line adapters for now.

Cheers all.

Slightly confused as the Drayton website says the thermostats use the home WiFi.

I just read it, the hub at the boiler appears to connect direct to the WiFi, the TRVs and other bits and pieces use either ZigBee or A.N.Other 433MHz type of communication network to communicate to the hub. Much like most smart home networks.
So each TRV should act as a repeater, but that big wall in the middle is the problem. Small, battery powered transmitters/repeaters simply don’t have the grunt to get a signal through it. FWIW i had a ZigBee bulb outside that is only about 10m from the previous repeater/bulb and that dropped out ALL the time. So i changed it back to a normal bulb and put a smart relay on the cable (that’s in the utility room). I get full WiFi signal (2.4GHz) strength in the forest up to 20m from the house…

TBH, the fact that most TRVs are battery powered is a bit of a give away, WiFi isn’t exactly a low power comms system. Bluetooth/ZigBee/Z-Wave and various other 433MHz protocols are designed around low(er) energy consumption in the first place.

Slightly confused as the Drayton website says the thermostats use the home WiFi. Never mind, I’ll try the Wiser smart plug as that looks like it’ll boost whatever signal the TRVs & hub use.

it’s WiFi between the hub and your router and a (proprietary) Zigbee mesh between the TRVs & Wiser smart plugs. As said the plugs act as a repeater so will improve the connection between TRVs and and hub.

Contrary to the above, no battery-powered Zigbee devices act as repeaters, they’re only end devices. That’s why you need something that plugs into the mains i.e. the Wiser Smart Plug as a repeater.

There’s also a separate issue whereby the hub occasionally loses WiFi connection to your router, for a few minutes or hours, although AFAIK this shouldn’t affect scheduling etc (as long as the hub can still contact the TRVs) so most users may never notice! Mine is on a smart-plug though so reboots itself when the connection drops. Wiser are working on a firmware update which will supposedly fix this issue! https://github.com/asantaga/wiserHomeAssistantPlatform/issues/307

If they are using Zigbee then any changes to your Wi-Fi coverage isn’t going to make a fig of difference. You’ll need some sort of Zigbee repeater I imagine.

Contrary to the above, no battery-powered Zigbee devices act as repeaters, they’re only end devices.

Good point, forgot about that. Only the mains powered devices (and not even all of them) are repeaters.

What sort of signal drop-off do you get with Powerline adapters? Best case, average case? 20% down at the other end? 30%?

We’re on a free trial of 900Mbps fibre, running out soon. In several rooms we use it in, we’re down to 100ish, which is fine most of the time. I’d rather drop to 250 and get 200 than start paying for 900 when I only get 5-600 if I’m stood next to the router. Looking at wiring switching to the three points it’s most important, but it’s not straightforward to get round the house, so might give the powerline adapters a go.

Wires all the way. I run a wire from the router to the smart TV. Then a wire upstairs to a switch with my wifes PC and NAS wired in, and PoE connection to a central WiFi point.

The router in by the door, and we have 3 floors in our house, so getting the WiFi signal to the top is a pain. I put a TPLink wifi access point in the middle of the house, wired in and that works great.

For me, run a wire to the far side with a wifi access point.

The vast majority of IoT devices are only 2.4GHz wifi capable, splitting the bands / ssid’s will have zero impact.

Where splitting the bands can help is when you have devices that fail to make a connection at all & that is relatively rare these days.

If you can’t run a cable then powerline is worth a try, it imho stands more chance than a wifi 6 platform, wifi 6 will still use the 5GHz frq as the wireless backhaul the same as your current bt disks & as wireless transmit levels are limited by law most devices are around the maximum out of the box, so the new set is unlikely to be a significant improvement.

I would try a three pack of powerline devices & use ethernet to all the bt disks, I’d buy from Amazon for the return policy in case it doesn’t improve.

If it doesn’t I’d try getting the master & 2nd disk closer together.

Failing that it’s likely cable time.