Smart Home and Networking
Your router sits wherever the cable enters the house, which is usually a basement corner or a utility closet. That is close to the worst spot in a building to put a radio. So this is really two jobs: moving the signal to the rooms you actually use, and getting a pile of devices that each live in their own app to answer to one thing. The second half runs almost entirely on whether you can still log into the accounts those devices are already bound to.
$40 an hour, 1 hour minimum. Every visit is billed at least one full hour even if the work takes thirty minutes. Why, and how to get the most out of it.
What the job involves
- Walking the house and checking what the signal actually does in the rooms that matter, then finding where wire already goes. Coax behind a bedroom TV, a dead phone jack, an Ethernet jack in a closet the builder terminated and nobody ever patched. Existing wire decides the plan more than the equipment does.
- Sorting out the gateway. If the provider box is still routing and your own router is routing behind it, you have two devices handing out addresses, which is why a camera can reach the internet while your phone cannot reach the camera. Some provider gear bridges from a settings page, some needs a phone call, and some will not bridge at all.
- Getting stubborn devices onto the right band. Plugs, bulbs, doorbells, older cameras and a lot of robot vacuums join 2.4 GHz only, and a single combined network name can steer the phone to 5 GHz so the device never sees the network during setup. Splitting the bands for ten minutes is often the entire fix.
- Putting a wired path under the far end of the house where one exists. A satellite node talking back over wifi gives up roughly half its throughput on that hop, so a second node stuck behind a plaster wall can make the far room worse. Adapters over existing coax usually beat adding another wireless node.
- Untangling ownership. Gear left by a previous owner or a previous installer stays bound to their account until it is released or factory reset, and a few ecosystems need the original account holder to do the releasing. I leave you a written list of what is on which network, what app it lives in, and who owns it.
- What I do not touch: anything behind a switch plate, an outlet, or the breaker panel. In wall smart switches and dimmers, new circuits, and swapping an undersized doorbell transformer are an electrician's work. I will tell you exactly what you need so you can hand a short list to one instead of paying for a diagnosis twice.
What changes the price
Two things move the clock more than device count. Whether wire already exists, and whether you can get into the accounts. A room with coax in the wall or a cat run in the closet is quick. A far corner that has to be reached through lath and plaster, brick, or stucco with wire lath behind it takes longer and still ends up slower. Password resets, two factor codes going to an email nobody can open, and hold time with your internet provider all run on the clock, so having logins ready in advance is the cheapest thing you can do.
What people usually get wrong
Paying for a faster internet plan to fix a coverage problem. The speed you buy is measured where the wire lands, and a bedroom two floors away never sees it. The close second is putting the new node in the dead spot. A node has to hear the main router before it can repeat anything, so it belongs roughly halfway, up off the floor and out in the open, not in the room that already has no signal.
Send me this and I can quote it without coming out
There is no trip charge either way, but a remote quote is faster for both of us and it costs you nothing to try.
- A photo of the router and modem with everything plugged in, plus the model numbers off the labels on the back or bottom.
- Where in the house that gear sits, and which rooms are the bad ones. A basement corner behind the furnace is worth saying out loud.
- The structured wiring or utility closet with the door open, if the house has one, so I can see what is terminated and what is just hanging.
- A list of the devices you want working, which app each one uses, and an honest note on which accounts you can still sign into.
- A photo of the wall plate in the problem room. Coax, an Ethernet jack, a phone jack, or nothing at all.
When I am the wrong call
If Control4, Crestron or Savant is running your lighting scenes, keypads and shades, call the dealer who installed it. Those platforms need dealer software to program. I can power cycle a rack or replace a dead piece of gear, but I cannot get into the programming. Same answer if you are mid remodel with walls open. That is the one window where running real cable is cheap, and a cabling contractor belongs in the house before the drywall does.