Hot summer weather precautions for good WiFi in your home

Global Warming is changing our weather and recently in the summer of 2022, we experienced extreme heat that can affect your WiFi.

Home WiFi routers, WiFi extenders and computers including phones and tablets (iPhones and iPads) are not designed and built to work in high temperatures. Generally, most home devices will have a design specification to go no higher than 50C. This means that the chips used will usually stop working reliably above 50C and the life of any devices that get this high will be shortened.

While you may think that the recent UK temperatures are a long way off 50C, don't forget that all electronic devices generate their own heat. and in particular, routers will generate a lot of heat. Many routers will be hot to the touch and already be at 25C in a cold room. So when the weather is really hot, your devices will easily go above 50C and you will very likely experience a drop in performance or they will stop working. I.e. the internet performance drops or dissapears.

What can I do to minimise the affect of exceptional warm weather on my home WiFi ?

Don't place any devices in direct sunlight. This is really important and applies to routers that are often located near the front of a home near a window. Either move the router if you can, away from direct sunlight or introduce some shade, such as a drawn curtain.

The same applies to any other electronic device such as a computer or WiFi extender.

For situations where you can't shield the router or computer from tegh sun on a really hot day, then you may need to invest in a fan to blow air over the devices.