Please recommend some ways for getting Internet to my barn!

[westcoastkevin]

I want to get internet from the house to the barn.
In a perfect world, I would run cable but since the barn already has a 125 amp panel and 240V service, I am not going to dig that up or bother with another trench right now.

I have not done much research yet. I thought a bunch of members here would have crossed this bridge already.

Some facts:
The shortest distance between the two buildings is 120 feet.
There are some trees on the line of sight with 3 ft trunks but the canopy is at least 30 feet up.
I have room on both buildings to easily avoid the trees with line of sight solutions.
The barn has metal siding on the wall and metal cladding on the roof. It might not be friendly to signals being sent into it. I know my cell service is degraded inside. (Is there a fix for that)

I imagine the solutions to be directional antennas, and another wifi router for the barn.
OR
Powerline adapters, and another wifi router for the barn.

I am open to ideas.
Thanks,
Kevin

 

[joseywales]

While not ideal. Comcast had to replace my line, but scheduled it 10 days out. Since my service was down, they ran over 100’ of cable up the lawn, across the driveway, etc. This is heavier cable for outdoor use and it worked fine.

when the crew installed the new underground cable, they left without the outdoor cable and no doubt had a nice lunch

maybe you can run outdoor cable, where you won’t be mowing over it?

 

[duneslider]

Maybe something like Ubiquity LiteBeam?

 

[greenskeeper]

Run direct bury Ethernet cable slightly below the lawn, no need for digging or conduit. That’s what I did to get internet out to my detached garage. I was able to follow the edge of the walkway so I know where the cable is.

 

[KenB]

I had no luck with powerline stuff, but since I had line of sight, I just ended up using an ordinary wi-fi repeater. In your case, Ubiquiti offers a variety of point-to-point products that are well-liked on this forum. So, I second that recommendation.

Ken

 

[NakeDiesel]

My place is a little wierd, we don't have broadband options out where I live, and I'm a software engineer/data architect that works from home. So I use 2 ATT home phone and internet boxes on my unlimited phone account, those go into a tplink broadband combiner and then hard wired to my AX6000 tplink router. Now getting internet out to my shop, I used 2 of these: https://www.cdw.com/product/TP-Link...570!!!g!315412301933!!2050456051!120632968042

They use power over ethernet (poe) to power them with the ethernet cable, so it's one cable ran outside. I have one on my house and one on my shop pointing to each other with another wifi router inside my shop.

We stream on all of our TV's and pcs, it's not lightning fast and we can get some buffering at times but it is what it is and only costs me 40 bucks a month with this route. I'm on the waiting list for starlink for 10 months + now and looking like it's going to be sometime next year for it to get to me due to the chip shortage.

 

[joseywales]

Run direct bury Ethernet cable slightly below the lawn, no need for digging or conduit. That’s what I did to get internet out to my detached garage. I was able to follow the edge of the walkway so I know where the cable is.

Good point. Heck. The Comcast cable is only 3 inches below grade. They said it cheaper to replace the cables the squirrels dig up, then to bury all cable right the first time.

 

[VaEngineer]

I have a mesh wifi system at my house (Velop). I can receive wifi at the edges of my yard (200' away) with no problem. Most mesh system can have another repeater installed in the remote location to boost signal. Might be worth a try especially if you can put one of the nodes near the closest wall. I am currently using an Eero system at another house and having great luck with it.

 

[finn]

I have the power line converter providing Internet to my garage, which is maybe 200+’ from the house. Works ok for my uses, although I do have to reboot it every few months, usually after a thunderstorm.

I had one of those line of sight jobs between the house and another house we owned two houses down. Worked fine even though I had to deal with the neighbor’s deck and a few large trees.. used it for a couple of years until we sold the property.

Of the two, I think the powerline adapter provided a stronger signal. I only had the transmitter with the line of sight equipment. I think a receiver can be set up to improve the functionality.

Lots of gurus on that stuff here, but most will point you in the direction of a Mercedes solution when a Chevy solution may be all you need.

 

[ScaldedDog]

Ubiquiti Nanobeam bridge. Run the remote (barn) wire through the wall to an AP on the inside. Cheap ($99/side), flawless, and your power will go out more often than you need to reboot them.

Mark

 

[stevied916]

The easiest way would be to run a bridge system like the TPLink N300. You will need two of these units; one at the house and another at the barn.

 

[My Old Tools]

Google mesh worked for me. Mine sits in the window of my metal building.

 

[smackey05]

Another recommendation here for a shallow buried direct ethernet cable. If you ever need to replace it, it won't be a bad project.

 

[finn]

The easiest way would be to run a bridge system like the TPLink N300. You will need two of these units; one at the house and another at the barn.

That’s the one I used to our other house. It worked with only one, but we mostly used it to download.. seemed to send ok, too, though.

 

[mikedodge]

There is another fairly recent post about this that has a lot of ideas that would be worthwhile finding.

I had the opposite problem and wanted to get a signal out of my metal covered barn. I stuck a cheap repeater in a box on an outside wall of the building. That should work the other way too if a decent signal gets that far.

 

[Bretny]

I have used a power over ethernet adapter before and it did work well. Might be worth a try for $40 and if it dosnt do what you want..return it.

On the other hand I recently placed a IP based 4k security camera near the beginning of my driveway. I bout 150' of direct burrial Cat7 cable and used a manual garden bed edger to make a 3in deep trench and pushed the wire to the bottom. Then tamped down the trench. 100ft took about 45min and you cant even see what I did 2 days later.

 

[bbbarracuda]

I use a tenda power line adapter. The distance is about 150’ or so
It works most of the time. Periodically I have to pull both ends from power and reboot them.
when they quit, I will replace with something wireless.

 

[Skooterj]

While not ideal. Comcast had to replace my line, but scheduled it 10 days out. Since my service was down, they ran over 100’ of cable up the lawn, across the driveway, etc. This is heavier cable for outdoor use and it worked fine.

when the crew installed the new underground cable, they left without the outdoor cable and no doubt had a nice lunch

maybe you can run outdoor cable, where you won’t be mowing over it?

I moved into my new house in December, Comcast came out in early January to install my new service. It was about -5 F that day he installed it. He ran heavy duty outdoor cable across my yard. They finally came out and trenched it in AUGUST. Luckily I had very little grass to mow around.

 

[bbbarracuda]

I moved into my new house in December, Comcast came out in early January to install my new service. It was about -5 F that day he installed it. He ran heavy duty outdoor cable across my yard. They finally came out and trenched it in AUGUST. Luckily I had very little grass to mow around.

Had this happen to a friend. He tried to get it buried but the cable company said they were too busy and would get to it on the slow time of year. After he cut the line the third time with his mower, the cable company came out and buried it.

 

[dcg9381]

Power line adapter may work - I haven't had luck, but worth a try. It'd be the easiest solution.
Ubiquiti makes great stuff and as long as the trees aren't too dense, shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Bretny]

I moved into my new house in December, Comcast came out in early January to install my new service. It was about -5 F that day he installed it. He ran heavy duty outdoor cable across my yard. They finally came out and trenched it in AUGUST. Luckily I had very little grass to mow around.

The house at the end of the road had had to repair the cable line about 4x a year. They come every winter to repair it after the plow ripps it up. Theres got to be at least 8 cable wires buried 3in deep there.

 

[mikedodge]

Had this happen to a friend. He tried to get it buried but the cable company said they were too busy and would get to it on the slow time of year. After he cut the line the third time with his mower, the cable company came out and buried it.

That's what Bell did at my place. When they came back to bury they only did part of the job and f*^#ed off leaving hundreds of feet running over whether was in the way. They even moved a couple of stones and dead wood at the pole to hide the fact they never buried it. Ironically there's a pole on either end so they could have saved even more work.

 

[Skooterj]

Rental place near me rents one of these.

Midwest Rentals | West Lafayette Indiana

Midwest Rentals is a rental agency in West Lafayette, IN, specializing in party, tools, and equipment rentals for upcoming events, DIY projects and construction crews. We offer event planning assistance for weddings, parties, and upcoming special events, as well as provide tools and equipment...

catalog.midwestrentalsinc.com

 

[Renegade1LI]

At one of our houses the garage is 200 ft from the house, bought the TP link deco M4 mesh network & range extender. Put the extender in the garage & it works great, seamless with a few ring cameras & can get good signal 150 ft from the garage or house.

 

[Greeny]

The easiest way would be to run a bridge system like the TPLink N300. You will need two of these units; one at the house and another at the barn.

Another vote for the TPLink. My shop is about 150’ from the house. Just the transmitter is enough for me to search the web, stream music or utube out there. Bonus is we have great WiFi in the back yard.

 

[Mr_fixit]

No one suggested it, so I will. Run an aerial wire. Cat 6 or 7 or whatever is the latest and greatest... could be temporary or permanent....

 

[Metal-Marc]

Of course it's been said before, but it's worth repeating.

Telecom copper cables between buildings is a big no no.

You run the possibility to fry every electronics connected to the network the day a thunderstorm hits your area.

 

[GRivera]

I went through this with metal pole bar 150' from my house. When no other options worked, I rented the trencher and buried both cable and CAT 6. Took less than 4 hours to trench including pick up/return and now I have great wifi and fios TV service in barn.

 

[eriksalo]

I have a similar situation and have been using the Ubiquity Nanostations for years without any problem. The nanostations work just like a cable connection. They have been extremely reliable.

I got an Asus router for the house and the shop and used AIMESH to link them together. That way, the network SSID is the same in the house and in the shop. My phone and other devices seamlessly switches between the two routers. No problem at all.

 

[blacksaleen95]

I use https://www.tp-link.com/us/business-networking/outdoor-radio/cpe710/ which looks to be similar to the ubiquiti unit but costs less.

I investigated this same issue as my shop is ~300ft from my house, and as others mentioned ethernet cable between two different power sources is not good. Burying fiber would have been the "right" way to do it, but also a pita digging, running conduit etc. A lot easier to mount these and just hook them into your network. My friend also uses these for the same use (~120ft apart) and neither of us have had issues. I have 500mb/s service and have no problem getting that out at the shop, run multiple POE cams etc so plenty of bandwidth as well. If you have a clear line of sight imo there's nothing easier than these p2p units.

 

[jarhead]

I used the TP link Deco w2400, I have 4 of them in a mesh. Works great out in my metal faraday cage