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New Houses Killing Wi-Fi
Barence writes "Poor Wi-Fi or mobile reception is one of the banes of modern living — and modern building techniques could be making things worse. PC Pro has photos of a new-build being covered from floorboards to rafters in a tin-foil like material. The "highly reflective" material could have unpredictable results for radio signals, potentially bouncing mobile signals away from the house or preventing Wi-Fi signals from reaching the garden. And the new householder is likely to be none the wiser."
Since moving into my new home, I've noticed a significant reduction in secret CIA messages being injected into my brainwaves. Goodbye ugly tinfoil hat!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Insulation isn't usually put on interrior walls and I have no need to broadcast my wifi outside of my house. Those that do can position their WAP near a window.
I'm also certain this is not an a recent issue. Almost all the insulation I've seen, apart from spray insulation, has some kind of foil-like backing.
Maybe complainers should spend 2 minutes trying a different wifi channel instead of blaming their home.
it reflects huge amounts of radiant energy transfer from your envelope materials away from the interior of your home, making it that much more efficient to cool, and during winter it helps keep the heat inside the house. The wifi 'issue' just doesn't seem to be that much of an issue when you're talking about one of the core efficiencies in your house, and one of the biggest loads on the nation's energy usage.
Uh, Wifi? I'd think the cell phones (I assume that's what OP means by 'mobiles') are the important one...
Plenty of people including myself only have a cell phone these days.
My apartment's fine, but I have school in a very concrete-and-steel building that has very poor phone reception, which ends up draining my battery in no time. They do have good wifi because of a lot of APs, though. Remember, you can add more APs for wifi, but not for phones.
Wow, talk about content free.
That article had even less content than the guy who was pushing his blog posts awhile back.
Your insulation 'might' be blocking wifi &/or 3g. But we don't know, we didn't bother to do any actual research.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
than spend $500 more in heating costs every year
i for one welcome our new tin foil energy saving house overlords
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The material is being used for its additive insulation value, PERIOD. It is not a moisture barrier, nor is it there to block "sheetrock mites". WTF? THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SHEETROCK MITES.
Good grief. The original unsubstantiated hysteria in TFA was bad enough; don't heap more FUD on the pile.
Only because you chose to not fix that problem.
$1500 to have the house insulation upgraded.
$6800 to have the AC and furnace changed over to a SEER 18 and a 98% efficient setup.
$6500 to have new double pane windows installed
$1100 to have the house checked for air leaks and those fixed with caulking.
My winter heating bill IN January when it was 6-10 degrees F outside most of the time in michigan up where we get real snow was $80.00, December was less and Febuary was less.
and you can do all of that in stages. the furnace and AC I got $1500.00 off my taxes because I bought them, that paid for the insulation. The windows we did over the course of a year one window at a time. I had a carpenter show me the first two times, I did the rest except for the big 8'X12' picture windows in the front room.
Stopping restaurants for 2 years paid for the windows, insulation and air leak check and repair. The furnace and AC were paid for by not buying a new car this year, suffering with a 42" 720p plasma, and torturing my family by not going to Florida for a 1 week vacation but staying home. I know I should be turned in for torturing my family.
Most people live in old houses with crap insulation and crap windows that have a 600 year old furnace in the basement that are never maintained properly. Your home is in disrepair, fix it and your heat and AC bills drop like a rock.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Its just insulation. It goes on exterior walls to help form a heat boundary. Its not even a little bit new, the observer is just a really shitty observer and never noticed it being put into every building thats been built in the last 40 or so years at least. Example, my cheap little home built in 1977 has it.
It doesn't go on interior walls, you don't generally insulate interior walls, as the air flow through open doors in your home and the fact that your duct system intentionally moves air into those rooms would defeat the point entirely.
Some people do choose to insulate their interior walls for sound dampening, but not with foil backed insulation, they use cheaper insulation without it or specific insulation for sound, which is what we did when remodeling our living room to prevent sound from the TV/stereo from bothering people sleeping in other rooms.
It won't effect your Wifi signal as its on the external walls only and no one would use it on interior walls (even if they wanted to insulate) because its more expensive and just a waste of money in those locations.
If you can't get a signal between the first floor and second floor of your home it has almost nothing to do with insulation and the fact that the antennas used on wifi routers are designed to radiate horizontally from the antenna (perpendicular to its orientation). It would be, in almost every case, a complete waste of RF energy to broadcast a signal upwards from a WAP when for most cases there will be no one above it or below it that its supposed to get too.
Finally ... it has VERY LITTLE EFFECT on the signal. My home is completely wrapped in it, walls and attic, and we sit on a slab, yet I still have no problem picking up and connecting to any wifi access point within 2 houses of me (and we aren't talking about town homes 10 feet from each other, at least 100-150 feet between homes), though its not like I'm getting full speed out of 802.11g with it, though my workshop, which is about 75 feet from my home will consistently get 10mb out of it, and it is insulated with brand new (built 3 years ago) foil backed insulation as well.
Does it effect the signal, sure, everything does. Does it effect it enough to care about it over the massive energy savings for heating and cooling? No, not even a little.
The home owner is likely to be none the wiser about the size of the wiring in his home either, and wether its really designed to be used like many of us where we have several machines in one room functioning as servers/routers/firewalls for our home networks drawing way more power than the home was designed to deliver to a single outlet. As a general rule, if you don't know what that shiny material is, there are far more important things in your home that you should learn about first if your worried about how your technology is going to be effected. Wiring of the home would be top on my list. Clean power is far more of a concern than insulation. Nothing worse than wiring thats too small for the job causing your power supplies or UPSes to continually be fighting surges and spikes due to turning off and on other equipment. Older homes with shared runs using 14 gauge wire to power multiple outlets are far more damaging and problematic than the insulation, they are also considerably more dangerous in a modern world where 10 amps simply isn't enough power for some home appliances at startup (vacuum cleaner, microwave, big plasma TVs). You really want 12 gauge as a minimum, with individual runs from the breaker box to EACH outlet, 10 gauge if you can afford it is a much better choice and far safer. Considering how little it effects the cost of a new build, you'd be an idiot if you were given the option and didn't take it.
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