Sky installation advice.

[eddo]

Hi there,
I'm thinking of getting sky installed very soon but have a couple of questions regarding the installation, tried getting the advice direct from sky but haven't got very far with them.

1/ I've got my current freeview ariel pole mounted level with the roof apex, about 25ft from ground level, will a standard sky engineer be ok installing a satalite dish to the pole, bearing in mind I installed my freeview ariel with relative ease off some extending ladders?

2/ I want a multi room in the kids bedroom, however there is no phone line upstairs to plug into the box. Will sky sort this out and install a phone cable up stairs or is this something I need to arrange prior to installaiton. If sky do install the line but do a rough job i'd rather do it myself prior, so if anyone has experiance of this let me know.

Any help with the above will be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks

[TheBadger]

I've always done any cable runs myself which ensures they go where I want them. The job you get from the engineer depends on the engineer and how many instals he/she has to do on that particular day. I'm on very good terms with my local guy because he knows that if he comes to my house he has very little to do, In fact I've got his personal phone number in order to circumvent uncle Rupert's machine!

[eddo]

Right ok, I will proberbly put my own telephone cable upstairs then

Any info on the dish fitment?

Cheers

[ABA]

providing your sky dish has a clear line of sight of the satellite it works just as well at ground level as it will say 10 storeys up
is there any reason why you want it on the aerial mast 25 feet in the air
your freeview aerial yes i can understand it being up in the air as your signal is traveling along the contors of the land
but a satellite signal comes down from space not along the ground

[Robbo]

I don't think they would put it up there, there's no need. Only Sky can answer the question really, as an independent installer would most probably do it no problem. I know I would, as long as the aerial pole and brackets were of sufficient quality and fitted properly. Eg, if it was crappy aerial pole from the likes of B&Q, I wouldn't touch it.

[eddo]

hello again, thank you for your responses.

The reason the dish needs to go on the pole is that the pole protrudes slightly above the roof-line, if the dish was mounted straight on the wall it wouldn't be able to point in the correct direction for the satellite.

I tried to discuss this over the phone with sky and they say to send a standard engineer and if he cant then a "special installation team" will be arranged, but it seems a waste of time sending a standard guy first if he just wont do it.

I was hoping someone could give a rough guide as to a standard install parameters regarding height/pole mounting etc.

I'm just trying to save some time with the install really, there is another wall the dish could potentially go on but I'd prefer it on the pole as its the correct side of the house for both the rooms I want sky in. Do the sky installers just go for the easiest route or will they conform to the customers request?

Cheers guys.

[TheBadger]

Depends on the installer but most go for speed and convenience to them, not the customer's requests.

[eddo]

Right ok, thought as much, any further info regarding fitting the dish to a 25ft existing pole mount?

cheers

[TheBadger]

Safe acces is the main consideration. Possibly take the pole down to fit the dish: alignment will be your main difficulty with this approach. Personally I would shy away from fitting the dish to your existing pole because of the increased wind loading. The shorter and thicker the pole the better. Can you not mount it on your house's pine end?

[johnnybravo]

the badger is right it depends on the quality of the pole, i worked for sly for 7 years and everybody does things their own way som would use your exixting pole others won't how it works is if they get so many callbacks in a month they would lose their monthly bonus so they tend not to use equipment installed by somebody else just incase it creates a problem and they get a callback on it. hope this was of some use to you