What, precisely, is included in a normal HD install and what will most installers do?

[kucharsk]

OK, backing up a bit:

If I call for a normal HD upgrade install, but the current dish location cannot be used, what will a normal installer be willing to do?

Will they do a pole install or will they just say "forget it" and force you to make a different appointment?

The same question goes for a roof install.

Thanks in advance.

From another thread (sorry to start another), photos of the current install:

http://i597.photobucket.com/albums/tt56/kucharsk/momhouse1.jpg
http://i597.photobucket.com/albums/tt56/kucharsk/momhouse2.jpg

My Mother-in-Law has just told me she doesn't care what they need to do to mount the dish, but it appears a normal eave mount won't fly (unless you can mount through aluminum eave wrap.)

[harsh]

Given the tree off the corner of the garage, I'd be looking for something on or near the living room (southeast corner of the house). It would appear that the soffit (or perhaps a window frame) are the only way in.

I'm not convinced that a roof-mount can't be done right. Grounding probably isn't going to happen. I'm of a mind that the outdoor part could be part of an HD upgrade.

The indoor part is another can of worms entirely and if she doesn't want cables hanging from the ceiling, she'll likely have to pay to have some fishing from the attic done.

[spartanstew]

What's wrong with the roof? All 3 of my installs have been on the roof and they've worked great.

[harsh]

What's wrong with the roof?More than a few seem to be summarily opposed. I acknowledge that I have some concerns about settling down in brand new asphalt shingle roofs, but for older roofs, I'm not as concerned.

[spartanstew]

My latest dish was installed about 1 week after the house was finished being built. Been there for 5 years now without a problem. 90% of the dishes I see around town are on roofs.

[RobertE]

Any pictures available from the vewpoint of the dish?

[davel]

Chiminy would be a good spot. Why you let them put that ugly dish in the center of the house I'll never know.

IF it were me, I would have taken one look and told them no way.

[Mertzen]

Most likely they'll go for a roof install, If there is LOS from the roof a pole mount will be custom work and hence not free.

[satguy22]

what would you do to make that work for 30.00?

[Nick]

To address your question, a good, ethical installer should be willing to do whatever is necessary, within reason, to give you a satisfactory install at a location that meets with your approval, consistent with finding LOS.

Remember, you're the customer, it's your house and it's your account, not the installer's. If the installer you draw is not cooperative, either take charge of the situation or send him away and call to request another installer.

OTOH, if the installer does a good job for you, give him a decent tip, consistent with the amount of work he has to do to make you happy.

[wallfishman]

that dish is almost pointing straight out. What I would do if line of sight was good was install on the backside of roof over top the soffit. that way you cant see anything from the front. bishop tape and caulk + if it ever did leak its over the soffit not the house. If those cables you have go up into the garage attic then you should be able to get the new cables into the same attic from the back of the house. A 3/4 inch hole in the underside of that soffit in the back of the house and you should be in the same attic or close to it. Honestly what you have there is the stupidest spot there is and Id much rather have a few lag bolts professionally installed through the shingles than that.

[kucharsk]

Thanks everyone.

I've decided to just bite the bullet and have scheduled an install for later this month; hopefully all will go well.

[roadrunner1782]

Keep us posted of how it goes.

[JB292]

There's no right answer to your question, as it varies greatly between some HSP's contractors, and the newly formed company (DirecTV Home Services), which are employees, and get paid by the hour.

With that said, there are differences between what individual installers will do, and will not do.

It looks like you took the first step. Schedule, and see what happens. I hope you get a good one. :)

[DaaQ]

I prefer crawlspaces over attics, I would install it on the roof closest to the meter box IF there is LOS in that location. It would be mounted ON the roof over the overhang with the lines run down and attached to the wall to the ground block, from there I would run the line towards the nearset crawlspace entry point. (Either existing or created) then up through the floor behind the TV where the box would be installed.

Now if there were LOS issues the dish would be installed in the best place possible with an attempt to pass the ground point getting to entry point.
One other note, I am not supposed to mount any dish to the eave or birdbox, whatever you want to call it. IT is to go on roof (not over living space) Wall, or pole. Per my employers rules. Eaves will fail QCs.

[Miller]

To address your question, a good, ethical installer should be willing to do whatever is necessary, within reason, to give you a satisfactory install at a location that meets with your approval, consistent with finding LOS.

Remember, you're the customer, it's your house and it's your account, not the installer's. If the installer you draw is not cooperative, either take charge of the situation or send him away and call to request another installer.

OTOH, if the installer does a good job for you, give him a decent tip, consistent with the amount of work he has to do to make you happy.

I must of got a good installer. The installer showed up and I showed him the place on the side of the house were a previous dish was installed. I moved here a year ago and thought this would be ok. The installer said the installer said the new dish would be bigger and in his opinion a dish should never be installed on the side of the house because it messes up the siding. He dug a hole and pole mounded the dish next to the location of the original. I did not have to ask for this and infact he refused to install the new one in the current location. I was not upsold or anything, he did this as a part of standard installation. I had a bad time trying to get my service started and equipment connected. My appointment was missed twice so maybe this had something to do with it? Either way he was not a part of the first two problems so I gave him a tip.

[bird dog]

There's no right answer to your question, as it varies greatly between some HSP's contractors, and the newly formed company (DirecTV Home Services), which are employees, and get paid by the hour.

With that said, there are differences between what individual installers will do, and will not do.

It looks like you took the first step. Schedule, and see what happens. I hope you get a good one. :)

FYI-
AFAIK most techs for DTVHS are NOT hourly, there are some who specifically do service work but I couldn't take that position. It was offered to me, but I love being able to work hard and make a living.

If a customer wants a complex install, and there is a standard mount option available, I am usually going to charge for custom work, especially if its going to take me longer, and move my next stop out of their time slot potentially costing the next customer money if they have to take off work or myself money if I miss out on the job and need another tech to pick it up.

just like the ads have listed somewhere in the legal copy, "free standard professional installation, complex and custom installation extra."

Meaning if it requires some odd bracket I have never seen before, and I am wall fishing from your attic, its not free. It will take longer. however if someone is going to cancel the workorder unless i do it free, then it puts me in a hard spot, at which point I may cave in, or offer to return later in the day with everyone understanding its gonna take a while.

Don't get me wrong, I leave every job only after my customer is satisfied, but we all gotta eat!

[kucharsk]

So how do installers do a pole install without calling for a utility locate first?

I would think either that means they have to come back a week later after "Digger's Hotline" has come out, or they risk paying really big fines if they hit a gas line or electric, phone or CATV cable.

Should I call for a utility locate if I even think a pole install might be in the cards?

Further, how does a pole get installed given the concrete (presumably) needs to dry before the dish is mounted?

[Nick]

Cure, not dry.

I'm not an professional installer, but it's not rocket surgery -- dig a hole, pour
bag of QuikCrete, add water and stir. Insert, align and brace pole, mount dish.

Let cool on counter or window sill for ten minutes before serving. :lol:

[netraa]

So how do installers do a pole install without calling for a utility locate first?

I would think either that means they have to come back a week later after "Digger's Hotline" has come out, or they risk paying really big fines if they hit a gas line or electric, phone or CATV cable.

Should I call for a utility locate if I even think a pole install might be in the cards?

Further, how does a pole get installed given the concrete (presumably) needs to dry before the dish is mounted?

Because I also have a electricians license, I will not do a pole mount unless the utility locate is done. I risk losing my license if I do dig without checking and I hit something. So if you think a pole mount is going to be the option, call them, it is a free service after all and the spray paint doesn't go away overnight, it will be visible for up to a week if you don't mow.

Our warehouse stocks the 15 min ultra fast set quick crete, it's a counterbalance, not a 100 story skyscraper.

[kucharsk]

I've called for a utility locate to be performed before the install date just in case a pole mount must be done; that should cover my bases even though I suspect an eave or roof mount of some type will likely work.

BTW, the install is scheduled for June 28, so it will be a while before I report back on what happened.

[kucharsk]

So based on what I read in another post, are installers normally willing to crawl through attics to run cable?

I'm still trying to determine what the best way to prepare for the HD install.

My current idea is to try to run a dual run of RG6 from each receiver location to a structured media box in the garage.

(Currently one TV has a dual run of coax with one coming from the antenna and one from one LNB output on the 18" dish, and one has a single cable with the OTA signal diplexed onto the cable from the second output of the LNB. The diplexer has worked just fine, but I've read that having two cables is always best, if possible.)

A cable run from an antenna would come into the box and be split to each of one set of cables to provide a signal for OTA broadcasts.

Will the installer be willing to do whatever it takes to run from wherever they need to put the dish through the garage attic into the garage and to the structured media box? Would the installer run four cables from the LNBs even though only three receivers are to be installed?

Or should I try to home run a cable from each receiver location to a point in the attic where I think it's most likely the installer will run cable into the house from wherever they need to locate the dish and spool up an extra 10' or so per cable so that (in theory) my cables could be connected directly to the ground blocks of the cables coming from the dish? That would save one barrel connector per run but is less obvious for anyone doing future upgrades.

The problem is obviously the cables need to be run before the installer even shows up, so I need to know what to do here in preparation for the install.

[harsh]

Installers may chase after existing cable in the attic but as said cable should be fished down inside the wall, that's not part of a standard installation. I'm betting you don't want the cable hanging from the ceiling.

If you want your cabling to be done "just so", you should plan on having it in place before the installer arrives. I wouldn't bother terminating it.

Where the junction is best located probably depends on where the entry point will be. If the garage is at the "wrong" end of the house, putting the junction there adds many feet to the cabling. Consider the most central location for the outlets and tweak that based on where the ground bonding point is.

If your attic access point is inside the house, I'd give serious consideration to locating the junction near there. If you've got a central coat/storage closet that can also be a good spot.


I would suggest that you consider getting a bid for a complete system from a local retailer/installer.

[kucharsk]

You can just barely see it in the photo above, but with the 18" dish, the cables run from the dish into the attic above the garage, then down through the ceiling drywall and down the drywall in the garage into the house. Fishing that run would have been impossible due to the construction of the house.

I'm hopeful the new dish can be mounted somewhere near where the old one was, but don't know if that's possible due to a large tree affecting LOS issues. Thus I suspect the new dish will be some type of eave mount near the front door or a pole mount in the yard.

I've called for the utlity locate as mentioned above, and will be running the coax from the rooms with the recievers (the current drops aren't actually outlets but cable run up from the basement at the junction of the wall and floor - just the way most cable companies do runs.)

That's why I'm trying to figure out whether to run those new runs to a central point and use a structured media box or to try and run them to the garage attic and leave them unterminated there long enough that they could run from there to most any reasonable entry point, save for a pole mount.

This is because I doubt the installer would either wait for me to run the cables to where he would need to put the ground block for the dish, or would run them from the dish entry point to the central structured box.

Or is that part of a standard install that most installers would be expecting to do?

As I mentioned, my experience with installers is mostly with CATV, where they want to run the cable along the shortest route possible and drill through a wall of the house to get the cable in.

If the installer would normally run the cables from the LNB to my structured box that sounds like a better move than my running them to some likely location only to have LoS issues force the dish to be mounted, as you said, on the other side of the house somewhere.

The existing cables obviously route to the outputs on the LNB of the 18" dish you see on the garage in the photo above, with the diplexer also mounted there (I ran the antenna cable there to make it easier to diplex the signal onto the single coax already running from the dish to one receiver location.)

[taz291819]

For a few bucks, buy a compass, a pole, some QuikCrete, and install the pole yourself (though put it on the side of the house where the power meter is). Once the installer gets there, tell him that's where you want it. Every good installer takes the first 10 minutes or so to assess the situation.

I've never heard of an installer that refused to go in a crawl space or attic (unless there's a viable excuse, ie., flooding).

[kucharsk]

The reason I'm trying to sort all this out is that my Mother-In-Law lives in another state and I'm going to be there for the install, so I need to do all the prep work before they arrive and the install needs to be completed in a single visit as she doesn't have the time to deal with them coming back multiple times.

Thus I need to have everything prepped as best I can for the installer and want to make sure that I do everythng I can to make things go as smoothly as possible for the installer when they arrive.

[kucharsk]

Update here:

http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=160711