I have a large home and the hubitat is downstairs in my office. all z-wave work well and respond quickly downstairs.
When I get upstairs i have two plug-in modules that work, but slowly. I just installed a z-wave light switch in the master closet and it won't connect to the hub during inclusion.
I've read a lot... but should i purchase range extenders or add a second hubitat upstairs?
If extenders, let me know which you utilize that work well!
Thanks!
If you move the hub to a more central location in the house that should help a great deal. Repeaters certainly can't hurt but as they say, location location location. I have a 5600sqft house and my hub is directly in the center of the house and I don't have any issues with z-wave, zigbee, or clear connect.
Despite popular belief, I have found that Z-Wave Plus devices need to be close to the hub for inclusion to work well and eliminate ghosts. I even made a wiring harness so I can power up new wall switches/dimmers at any outlet.
As far as repeaters are concerned, there are lot of different opinions. I've added the Aetoec 7 and, except for the 1st 24 hours, it never acted as a repeater. You should install the "Hubitat Z-Wave Mesh Details" app so you can see the location(s) where repeating/hops are most used.
I'd think I'd prefer a two-hub approach in your case, in a large house. Hub mesh is really nice, you have a reduced load on both hubs by splitting the devices up, and you are less at risk of bigger mesh problems if a repeating device is having issues.
You could even split your devices floor 1/floor 2, or longitudinally, e.g., 1st/2nd floors east side on one hub, 1st/2nd floor west side on the other hub, if that works better for the hub placements.
Is zwave different in this aspect than zigbee. My house isn't large but I've managed to sling my mesh out to my detached garage. Took a little thinking but an outdoor rated plug at my back door made the jump to a plug just inside the window in my garage. How can 1 hub not be enough, seems like point of a mesh network is only needing 1.
Depends. Some use it for distance, some use it for segregating mesh types (wifi and zigbee on one, z-wave on the other) plus using test hubs. Using hub mesh in these instances makes things a bit better under certain circumstances.
We have three buildings on our property. with z-wave, one could "sorta/kinda" be reached from another, and I tried installing z-wave devices in the second building initially. So-so performance, even with repeaters (which I also use in each of the larger buildings, and now suggest Ring over Aeotec). But having a hub for each building made the system rock solid. So... I'd suggest a second hub, even though extenders/repeaters have their place as well. BTW, I also use Lutron Caseta, and one hub covers two buildings easily with that technology/RF.
Like @danabw I prefer multiple hubs by location. Have used that set up for years. It balances out the load a bit and if you keep the majority of the rules local to each hub then a failure on one hub will not impact the other.
I have a client with around a 5000 sqft house built in the 1800s, currently using a single C-7 for the main house and a C-5 for the detached garage.
Like @rlithgow1 mentioned - the C-7 hub is in a central place and is working all the way up to the 3rd floor. So that will definitely help.
I've been having minor issues and have not pinned things down completely so I am considering adding a third hub to distribute things a bit better, maybe on the second floor.
The garage hub was the original hub that was relocated to the garage after the C-7 came out and the client was experiencing intermittent issues with light and device control in the garage. After the move things have been working reliably.
I am all over that for my personal stuff but prefer to stick with stock solutions for clients as much as possible. It's a warranty and support thing..
I'm in the other camp... my house is about 4000 sq ft and I have an outbuilding that's maybe 30ft from the house. The house itself is lath and plaster construction, which is notoriously difficult on radio propagation since each room is like a little Faraday cage. I have a pretty solid network of zwave repeaters and I run the whole network from one hub (though I do have three hubs, but not for that reason). It's about 70 devices in all.
Ring extenders are my favorite. They have battery backup and can also be used as power outage detectors.
I don’t doubt your personal experience at all, but I would point out it’s not just a belief.
Earlier generation z-wave devices were literally incapable of being paired unless they could communicate directly with the hub during that pairing process.
I’m sure it’s possible that with current generation devices, pairing through a repeater can be subject to issues in the real world, but it is something the z-wave protocol supports now, when it previously didn’t.
Z-wave and zigbee do have some notable differences in the way they can route messages within their respective meshes, but both are definitely mesh networks, meaning it’s entirely possible the OP can achieve what he or she wants with strategic use of repeaters.
A second (or more) hub could bridge substantially longer distances or wireless signal interference thanks to its Ethernet connection. And some people use more than one hub for other reasons too.
I have only one active hub, and haven’t found a need to use another one simultaneously.
Honestly though there is grest information here don't forget every install is a little different and as such can affect each persons choices. Any use of radio frequency is likely to have its quirks at different locations with how it travels.
I think all options that have been provided give you good options to move forward and try. The least impactful is to add another hub and use hub mesh. Moving the hub to a more centralized spot though a good idea in the very beginning can cause havoc on a mesh that is working well until everything settles in again with possible new routes. Adding additional repeaters is a very possible option assuming they can reliably work and you have enough of them i wouldn't stop at one or two but plan to blanket it.
I guess one question is how many mains power zwave devices do you have. Many mains powered devices act as repeaters as well. It would be a good idea to load up the Hibitat Z-wave mesh details app so you can verify what you got and how well it is really working.
The last thing I would consider is making sure whenever you can get zwave 700 series gear instead of older stuff. Personally at this point for me if i ever do have a issue now it is with something of older generation hardware.
At the very least having an additional hub can serve as a backup for the main hub. For personal planning it might be good idea especially if you intend to keep your core automation system around for many years.
This is one of the great things about HE - being local and not tied to the cloud or a corporation allows for much longer usefulness - the limit is the hardware.
Thanks all very much for the advice. Lots to consider!!!
@erktrek this is the reason i am moving to HE with zigbee and z-wave. I was an early adopter with Insteon and with the recent door closing and shutting off of the cloud service, everything went dark so to speak.
To answer some other questions, all of my z-wave are hard wired or plug-in devices and i believe all of them have repeater capabilities which is why i was surpised with some of the connection issues.
Anyway thanks again all. I am sure i will be back with more questions! GREAT community to be a part of...
Just remember as you are adding z-wave devices to HE that if at any time you have a failed pairing, STOP. Open your z-wave details page and check for a ghost (it will have nothing in the routing column) Power down the device, remove the ghost, reset the device then attempt to pair again. This will keep your mesh healthy.
Identified by two things:
Hey i thought i would share my choice and experience in improving the coverage. I really didn't want to relocate the first hub as that would have potentially caused mesh issues with the items on the far end of the house. I also didn't really want to buy range extenders as reviews all over the web have mixed results.
so i thought i would try an additional hub upstairs and if it didn't work well then i would return and go back to other suggestions.
I am pleasantly surprised how well adding a second hub worked. It was super easy to create the Hub Mesh and then share devices back to the "original hub" where all the apps and schedules are located. It works seamlessly and the coverage upstairs is now stellar.
Thanks again for all the advice! Becoming more of a Hubitat lover every day. 
That's excellent news!!
You might want to consider migrating some of your upstairs only rules over to the new hub. The reason for this is you get the benefit of a distributed system. If the main hub goes offline / experience network or hub mesh issues etc the new one should still work (and vice versa). Also rules on the hub are a tad (marginally) faster and you can reduce some overhead on the main hub.
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