My fist post and hopefully not last. Just received and setup my new Hubitat Elevations. My first switch is the Honeywell (jasco) Z wave plus. Very difficult time to get the hub to see the switch. Had to be very close (30 ft line of sight). Swapped out the metal wall plate cover with a plastic one and voila it works beautifully!! Probably 40 foot and through 3 walls. I did hang the hubitat box using non marring double sided tape on my office wall about 5 feet off the floor. So, to anyone who seems to have trouble with the radio....please raise the hub when feasible and change to plastic wall covers. It took me a day to realize that metal is a pretty good RF shield.
Just to add to this... Those of us with old houses and old metal gang boxes, if you can replace those as well, you'll save yourself a lot of headaches.
Old house here too. I have rewired three quarters of the house and added half a dozen new circuits. The best part was new plastic boxes which in most cases are or can be deeper. Cramming huge dimmer switches and extra wires into a tiny metal box just wasn't practical let alone good for signal quality.
Curious on how your replaced the metal boxes and maintained the safety ground?
Here in New England, older houses were wired with "BX" armored cable. This cable used the metal (steel) armor as a safety ground. Not the best but If I swapped out the box with a plastic box I'm not sure how I would carry the ground through.
BTW All of the original wiring in my house is metal cable with metal boxes, new is Romex and plastic boxes. Fortunately I've not had a radio issue yet. Maybe many repeating devices helps me out.
Agree but will say that every cover plate is metal in my home as my wife standardized on one years ago. It is very important to build your mesh starting from closest switches from hub and go outward.
Yeah most of mine are plastic, but I have some metal ones that match the decor of a specific rooms. I have so many dimmers/switches at this point I doubt there is any dead zone in the house.
I had ground wires run back to the breaker box. There's still a few lingering metal boxes, but every one I could get to I've replaced with plastic gang boxes and Romex. There's still some BX cable running in the crawlspace that I'm replacing this fall.
I have metal back boxes and metal front plates and my mesh is fine, but I have mostly powered devices and at least one in every room. So I all depends on your set-up, if your short on repeaters and you have metal everywhere it's just not going to do well.
Ah yes, beware the Faraday Cage effect.
There is also foil type, heat reflective barrier, builders cladding to be aware of as it also has the potential to dampen radio signals significantly. Mainly used on timber or steel framed houses but also over brick before an exterior cladding is used.
My wife’s mother was just last week complaining how her am/fm radio didn’t work very well in her new care room.
I live in an older mobile home (read tin can) and radios and cell phones don't work well. Fortunately my newer Iphone switches over to wifi when I'm home.
I did have problems with some Bose wifi speakers as they are behind a full decorative wall mirror. The metallization on the backside seems to be an effective signal blocker.
I have more than a few 4- or 5-gang metal boxes in my 30 yr old house. They are typically filled with 3 & 4 way switches with travelers so there ain't no way they're coming out. I was able to set up a strong zigbee mesh in the areas with these boxes and the Jasco/GE 45856 switches work reliably.
@JohnRob >Curious on how your replaced the metal boxes and maintained the safety ground?
I'd leave/put a BX cable connector on the sheath and wrap a 12ga jumper around the exposed threads, then clamp the jumper with a locknut. Use some anti-ox on the threads, too.
That's definitely no longer to code. All modern BX includes a ground wire. The reason for this is that the armor can corrode (steel) or oxidize (aluminum), and/or the clamping connectors can loosen over time, reducing grounding effectiveness. BX with ground can be fitted to a plastic box so long as the ground conductors maintain continuity throughout the circuit. With BX without ground, you are out of luck.
While that will probably work, it's seriously against code. NEC explicitly forbids the use of armored cable (AC) without an explicit grounding conductor as a ground.
In fact there are reports of older BX armor actually heating up during a ground-fault condition due to the issues with corrosion causing resistance to increase. If I were to do this, I would want to measure resistance from the box to the grounding bar connection at the panel. Anything more than few ohms is not safe to use as a ground.
The insulation on my BX cable was brittle and often cracked when I replaced a switch or outlet. It just didn't feel safe. I just pulled new wire to the panel. It was a bunch of work but worth the effort I think.
There are so many factors that can affect the quality and strength of a radio signal as well as interference of that signal as it travels between device and hub, that if something simple can help, it may be worth doing.
