Wi-Fi in a three-story townhouse: covering up and down
In a narrow house the rooms aren't far apart, they're stacked. Wi-Fi handles distance better than it handles floors, which is why the top floor suffers.
In this guide
Townhouses and terraced houses are tall and narrow: a small footprint, three or four levels, and a staircase running through the middle. No room is far from another in plan, yet the top floor often gets nothing. Floors are harder on Wi-Fi than distance is.
The rules change when the house is vertical
- Every floor costs more than a wall. A concrete or heavily built floor takes a large share of the signal. See Wi-Fi weak upstairs.
- Two floors is usually too many. Ground floor to second floor, through two slabs, is beyond most single routers.
- The stairwell is the spine. It's the one opening that runs the full height of the house, and signal travels through it far better than through the floors.
Where the router goes
On the middle floor, near the stairs. From there it's one floor up and one floor down, which most routers can manage, and the stairwell helps in both directions.
If the line enters on the ground floor, run an Ethernet cable up one level and put the router or main mesh unit there, with the provider's box left downstairs with its Wi-Fi off. One cable, one floor, and the whole house improves. See internet line in the wrong corner.
How many units
- Router on the middle floor: often covers all three levels in a narrow house, if the stairwell is open.
- Add one node on the floor that's still weak, usually the top, placed on the landing rather than at the far end of a room.
- Three floors with thick slabs, or a converted loft: a unit per floor, ideally wired. In a narrow house, a cable up the stairwell or through a service riser is often easier than it looks. See wired backhaul.
Count what's weak rather than counting floors; see how many mesh nodes you need.
Practical details
- Don't put the router at the front of the ground floor, next to the street door, if the bedrooms are at the top and back. That's the longest possible diagonal.
- Keep landings clear. A node on a landing covers the stairwell and both adjacent floors.
- Garden and basement, if you have them, are extra levels to plan for. See Wi-Fi in the basement and Wi-Fi in the garden.
Map each level
WiFi Heatmap lets you create a separate floor plan per level, so you can see exactly which floor loses the signal and where. Map before and after moving the router up, and the middle-floor rule usually proves itself.