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Hardwired vs wireless retrofit for a 40 year old house in Portland
Just wrapped a quote for a 1940s craftsman where the customer wanted a full system but refused any visible wiring. I went with a wireless setup from a brand I trust, but the old lath and plaster walls ate the signal something fierce. Ended up adding two extra repeaters and a lot of downtime troubleshooting to get every sensor to register clean. Anyone else run into crazy signal loss in older homes, and did you stick with wireless or rip the bandaid off with a hardwire run?
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hannah_williams16d ago
Two repeaters for a 1940s craftsman sounds about right, honestly. Lath and plaster is basically chicken wire wrapped in mud, so of course it blocks signal. But is signal loss really that big a deal here? Most sensors only need to check in every few minutes, and if one drops off for an hour, who cares. I've seen plenty of these setups where the client never notices a lag, they just notice you charged them for two extra service calls. The hardwire run in that house means fishing through plaster you can't patch invisibly anyway, so you'd be trading a signal problem for a wall problem. Pick your poison.
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