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Wired vs wireless for a 4-story office building? Wired won by a mile
Just finished a commercial job downtown on a 4-story insurance building. Client wanted all wireless because they thought it'd be cleaner and cheaper. I pushed back but they insisted. After 3 floors of signal dropouts in the stairwells and battery death on 2 panels within the first month, they called me back to re-run wires. Cost them double what the wired job would've been up front. Anyone else deal with customers who think wireless is magic for big buildings?
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raymitchell1mo ago
Did a church once with wireless locks. Pastor locked himself in the boiler room for 20 minutes.
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cole9941mo ago
The real problem nobody talks about is how wireless systems handle emergency egress routes. In a 4-story building, those stairwells are fire-rated paths, and running conduit in them is already a pain. But wireless means you've got no backup if a fire or power surge takes out a controller on floor 3. I've seen it happen where a single failed access point on floor 2 bricks the whole floor's wireless locks because they daisy chained them. Wired gives you physical separation and zone control that wireless can't touch when the building has to perform a full evacuation in an emergency. Most people just think about cost and convenience, not how the system holds up when things go sideways.
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