Extending WiFi to a Garage

[Iamanaubergine]

How can I get the WiFi signal from the house to my garage? Do I just need a WiFi booster or something else? I have a treadmill in there and would like to stream music/tv whilst I’m working out.

How far is the garage from the house and from the router?
You could try a simple extender like this tinyurl.com/u58vvuef for about £25 but may not be good enough for TV. This works for our Zoom meetings (ground floor router- 2nd floor office)
A mesh wifi system tinyurl.com/yctecn7h like this for about £140 may be better bet, but I've not tried this particular brand

Loads of options.

The absolute best would be a hardwired CAT6 cable with a WiFi access point on the end, this would be the quickest, most reliable and least impact on your current WiFi, but does require infrastructure installation.

If they work (can be a big if) you can get powerline adapters with a built in WiFi access point - plug one into your garage and one near your router (and connect with a cable).

If you're having any kind of WiFi issues anywhere else on the property, I'd thoroughly recommend a 'mesh' network system which vary from fairly cheap (Tenda Nova), Mid price - BT Whole home wifi (if you have a modern BT router and BT Halo, they will supply discs for free under their coverage promise), and High end - things like Ubiquiti.

I'd use a simple plug in WiFi extender as a last resort, they're cheap, but can have unpredictable reliability and potentially nick bandwidth from the rest of the network - slowing down WiFi for everything else.

Thanks both. I’ll look into the things you’ve suggested. The garage is only about 5metres in a straight line from the router but signal is non existent.

Can you download WiFi analyser on a phone or tablet and check the signal either side of the garage wall, you should get some signal at 5m, its possible something in the construction is acting like a Faraday cage in the wall, in which case a mesh may not work.

We have a shepherd hut office about 15 metres from the house router. We just use a booster and get good signal.

Powerline extenders work well provided the garage is on the same electrical circuit as the rest of the house (which sounds like it is)

However ours does sometimes drop of for a minute or two before reconnecting.