Which cordless phone is best for stone-built house

myrnahaz

What do I need to look for when I buy cordless dect phones for a house with very thick (20") stone internal walls? I pulled out all the hard wired extensions and bought cordless dect phones, but I can only ever use two of the four phones. They all ring, but only two have a good enough signal to use (the other two crackle and cut off etc).
I've had the current phones for 5 or 6 years and I'm about to buy new ones and I'd really like to get a set of four, but it'll be a waste of money if only two will work. Is any one brand better than another? Would a longer 'range' make any difference? Or is there a signal booster available etc?

Heinz

It sounds like you're saying (all of) your existing handsets work in certain parts of the house but not others and I'd be surprised if that wasn't caused by the loss of signals due to the thickness of the walls.

It's unlikely one make will be any better than another. They all operate at VERY low power and thick stone walls simply eat up the signals.

myrnahaz

Thanks, Heinz. It's what I suspected.

Scrounger

One solution would be to buy two twin dect sets and locate the two base stations in different parts of the house - perhaps one upstairs and on downstairs (each would need a wired connection). Correctly setup, each handset should locate the strongest base signal at any time wherever it happened to be in the building.

I recommend Philips dect phones for muti-handset/multi-base use such as this, as they are readily configurable.

Scrounger

ACDeag

myrnahaz wrote: »

What do I need to look for when I buy cordless dect phones for a house with very thick (20") stone internal walls? I pulled out all the hard wired extensions and bought cordless dect phones, but I can only ever use two of the four phones. They all ring, but only two have a good enough signal to use (the other two crackle and cut off etc).
I've had the current phones for 5 or 6 years and I'm about to buy new ones and I'd really like to get a set of four, but it'll be a waste of money if only two will work. Is any one brand better than another? Would a longer 'range' make any difference? Or is there a signal booster available etc?

I have found some makes better than others, my problem is less of thick walls more of distance, I have found Panasonic phones to be pretty good.

For a friend's house I set it up with two DECT base stations plugged into extension sockets. I would suggest different models of handsets for the two sets, so that you don't get confused about which handset is paired with which base station.

Scrounger

ACDeag wrote: »

... so you don't get confused about which handset is paired with which base station.

Most dect handsets can be configured to pair with more than one base station. The advantage of this in a large house is that they will then automatically select and use whichever base is providing the best signal.

Scrounger

ACDeag

Scrounger wrote: »

Most dect handsets can be configured to pair with more than one base station. The advantage of this in a large house is that they will then automatically select and use whichever base is providing the best signal.

Scrounger

In theory, my experience is that they try to hang on to the last pairing until it is too weak, then they look for another, by that time the call is unbearable.