chicken wire for shielding walls

Has anyone tried shielding their house with chicken wire?  I'm considering buy a large roll of it and duck-taping it to the outside walls of my bedroom.  The room faces the back, so it wouldn't be an eyesore from the street, and I could grow climbing roses and clematis up the wire, something that can't be done with aluminum foil.  I've read that the wire has to be thick and the holes closely spaced, and wiring like that is available.  I'm just wondering whether it will have any effect.  Any thoughts are appreciated.  

Thanks!  I'll look for that.  

Is grounding into an electrical outlet essential?  That would be difficult on an outside application.  

ayre wrote

Has anyone tried shielding their house with chicken wire?

I haven't tried chicken wire, but yes, it should work.  The plaster walls in many old homes contain chicken wire, and that greatly reduces WiFi and cell phone signals.  This article (http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB126221116097210861) talks about the problems people in San Francisco have getting wireless devices to work inside their homes due to this.

However, the smaller the size of the holes in the mesh, the greater the shielding effectiveness.  Higher frequencies are harder to block, and require a mesh with smaller holes to stop the signal from passing through.

Chicken wire is not good enough.
Better is the birds wire.
It has openings of half an inch. (12mm)

The needed size of the openings in the wire mesh depends on how much of the signal needs to be blocked, as well as what the wavelength of the signal is.  Per this PDF file (http://www.eetasia.com/ARTICLES/2000DEC/2000DEC01_RFD_ID_TA.PDF?SOURCES=DOWNLOAD), the signal will start to be reduced when the size of the holes are 1/2 of the wavelength.  But, you will definitely need something with smaller openings than 1/2 of the wavelength to make much of a difference.  

There is a chart on page 2 which shows what the hole size needs to be to achieve shielding of -6dB (blocking about 75% of the signal), -20dB (blocking 99%), and -26dB (blocking about 99.75%) for several different frequencies.  

Charles' recommendation of 12mm is good.  If you want to block a higher percentage of the signal, or if you want to block high frequencies, then the smaller the openings the better.  As the chart shows, to block 99% (-20dB) of a 1 GHz signal, the hole size should be 15mm.  But, to block 99% of a 2 GHz signal, it should be 7.5mm. And with a 7.5mm hole size, the amount of a 1 GHz signal that will be blocked is 99.75 (-26dB).

This afternoon I bought two feet of chicken wire with 1/4 inch openings, which is just over 6 mm.  So it's a tight mesh.  I made a small cage and put it over my laptop to see if it reduced the amount of WiFi coming from the neighbours.  It did reduce the number of sources of WiFi - from 7 or 8 down to 3 - but it didn't reduce the strength of the signal on those sources that remained.  They were all weak to begin with except one, which was full strength.  That strength was not reduced.  The base of the computer was not enclosed in mesh, but neither would the base of the house be enclosed in mesh, nor the roof.  Yet, a house is on concrete, which may block some signals, so if the walls are completely covered with mesh I may get a good reduction.  My concern would be how much WiFi penetrates the roof.