Introduction
If you have a barn or a casita or a guest house on your property, what if you want to make internet available in it? How should you do that?
There are a wide range of options for accomplishing this—some expensive and some not. And note that you can either share your existing LCWA account or get a new account in the other building, which we will discuss below.
Let’s start at the less-expensive options and work our way up.
Sharing your Existing LCWA Account
To save money, most people who need an outbuilding solution want to share internet delivered through their existing LCWA account. For example, many members have an art studio or workshop that they use only intermittently. Or they have a separate building/apartment that a relative is living in and using internet only lightly. I would not recommend this approach if you are renting to a heavy internet user, though, as it will impact your own internet.
There are a wide range of physical solutions for sharing internet delivered through your existing LCWA account.
Using Your Existing Wi-Fi
If the building is very close, and the walls are not too thick and don’t contain metal (most newer adobe or stucco walls have metal mesh in them that block Wi-Fi), then you might be able to send your home router Wi-Fi signal to that other building. It rarely works well, but it is simple to test that: walk into the other building with your smartphone or computer and try surfing the web. If this works with adequate speed of opening pages, great! This is your cheapest/easiest solution.
If, however, that test shows Wi-Fi is marginal, one way to make that work better is to put your home Wi-Fi router in a window of your main house—a window that faces the other building. That can sometimes improve reception at the other building with little extra effort.
Sometimes adding a Wi-Fi extender in that building can make the signal stronger, but that’s never an idea solution. See top of this linked article for discussion of extenders.
Mesh Solution
Another similar solution is using our approved add-on mesh Wi-Fi system. We have an article about doing that here. You simply plug one mesh unit into your existing router and locate the remote unit(s) near windows in your house. The result is that, for not too much money, not only is your entire main house fully Wi-Fi covered, but so is your yard and perhaps even close-by buildings. LCWA volunteers will not come on site to help you with this, but most homeowners can install this themselves easily, so read that article.
Reaching your Outbuildings with Network Links
If your outbuilding is out of reach of your home Wi-Fi, you’ll need a network link that reaches into the outbuilding. This usually costs more money and takes more effort because it involves installing either physical wired links or short-hop radio links to the other buildings. Again, LCWA volunteers will not help you with this, so plan on either doing it yourself or hiring someone to do it.
Let’s go over each of these starting with wired links.
Wired Links
The easiest and cheapest solution, if your outbuilding is within 300 feet, is to stretch an outdoor Ethernet wire (perhaps buried) from your home router to the outbuilding, and then connect a dedicated home Wi-Fi access point to it at the outbuilding. This is pretty simple and not too expensive. You can buy various lengths of direct burial wire at this link.
Normally, though, it’s best to put the wire in a conduit to protect against critter damage. If you are going to use the wire I just showed at the previous link inside that conduit, you’ll need 3/4 inch conduit to get the fat terminated ends through. And you’ll need a conduit wire puller.
Or, if you don’t want to hassle with conduit, you can use armored outdoor Ethernet that you simply lay on the ground and that is critter proof. But it’s expensive.
In the outbuilding, you can use an airCube programmed in bridge mode to attach to the Ethernet remote end. LCWA can supply one for you, just send an email to tech.support@lcwireless.net. About $40. But you’ll need help programming it from a paid person. Another choice is this wired access point which is preconfigured and fully plug-and-play.
Of course, for this solution, you have to pass the wire through your walls. Some people use a crack in a window frame to fish it through, but better is to drill holes in each wall, run wire through, and then reseal them. Or hopefully you can find existing conduit already running through the walls that you can share with this wire.
Short-Hop Radio Links
If your outbuilding is greater than 300 feet away (length limit of Ethernet), or if you don’t want to hassle with burying or stringing a wired link across your yard, then you’ll need a short-hop radio link. These take more thought to set up and can get complicated. Plus, configuring those radios can be difficult. We usually recommend you have one of our recommended paid contractors do this for you.
One moderately-easy self-help solution in this category is to buy a preconfigured pair of radios from Amazon and install it yourself. If there is a mostly clear line of site (not too many trees) between the two locations, this can work. However, the price of those radios on Amazon have almost doubled recently for some reason, and it might be cheaper to hire one of our recommended contractors and have them use much less expensive radios that need more difficult configurations.
Here is an article on how that works and even how you can do it yourself, including a parts list.
Get Another LCWA Account
If you are concerned about the occupants of the outbuilding using too much of your internet (and slowing down your own access), then you may want to get another LCWA account with its own rooftop radio.
Getting another LCWA account is easy, but it comes with the highest upfront costs and monthly costs since you pay full price of another account: the membership fee, a rooftop radio and mount, and the full monthly fee on both accounts.
The advantage of this option is the occupants of the second building do not impact your own internet speed and availability—it’s a totally separate flow of internet. We’ve got lots of members who do this, and it works fine. Also, we can combine the two accounts into one invoice to you, if you like, just let us know.
If you want a second account, simply fill out our standard new membership application and in notes section mention this is a second account for a another building at an existing LCWA member location: https://lcwireless.net/new-membership-info-request/ Mention in the notes section that you have an existing account and what your account number is.
Conclusion
So those are your options for providing an outbuilding on your property with internet access. Hopefully one of these solutions will work for you.