We don't do much with satellite installations other than controlling the receivers but this installation the home owner has an existing dish and has asked us to get things working.

The installation is an out building (shop with living loft) with the satellite dish mounted onto this building and two receivers connected directly to the dish. In their house they are wanting to add 4 receivers to the system. There are currently two coax cables running between the house and shop and was hoping there was a way I could get these 4 receivers working on these two cables (additional cables can be ran but trying to avoid this if possible).

The system is Bell Satellite (which I believe is similar to DISH in the USA). As far as I know all receivers in the house will just be HD boxes and no PVRs. I have noticed on other installations that with the dual tuner receivers Bell has added a splitter at the receiver so only one coax cable was required. Can I do the same with the 4 receivers? What splitter would be required to achieve this correctly.

In the past I remember installing SW44 and 44a powered switches but I haven't seen these installed lately so not sure if they are still being used.

The system you propose probably won't last too long because of lightning-induced electrical surges. My advice, in this order, would be to:

1. Install a separate dish on the house.

or

2. Run fiber between the two buildings. Keep/add the receivers in the shop and run HDMI and control over the fiber. (you can run the dish signal over the fiber but this is expensive and probably requires single-mode fiber).

or

3. Use the existing coax but install a high-quality surge protector at both ends of each coax. Be prepared to find fried equipment at some point anyway. The electrical ground potential will be different at the house than it is at the shop. Unless of course you want to run an 8AWG copper wire between the grounding electrode system at the shop and the grounding electrode system at the house. Perhaps this step has been taken already depending on how the service and feeder(s) are designed.

Not an option. Discussed this with home owner prior to completing the prewire and he wanted to utilize the existing dish at its current location. House is boarded and painted so no way of adding a dish to the house

That cost would be absurd. we would be looking at $4K+ just in parts let alone the fiber between the two buildings.

The electrical service between the two buildings is all connected (service enters shop, then sent to house. There is a bond wire between the two buildings so electrical potential will be the same as they are all connected to one grounding point and connected all to one electrical service.

I wish I could be of more help on the receiver connections over two spare coax cables but I'm not familiar with your satellite system. Assuming that you can make this work with the existing infrastructure I would still recommend surge protection at each end where the cables exit the buildings.

[Link: l-com.com]

You mentioned that the satellite provider is basically the same as Dish Network in the US. With that said, I know the Hopper system allows the Hopper receiver(contains the tuners) and Joey to work over IP.

I currently have the Hopper 3 and a Joey 2. The Hopper 3 is connected to the dish outside via one coax. And then connected to my WiFi. Since the Joey is connected to the same WiFi, it communicates with the Hopper as if it had a coax going to it.

Of course you can use a wired network for both or just one. The Joey 2 requires the Dish Network WiFi dongle, which I had from the previous Hopper/Joey set up.

So that’s an idea to look into.

KOT

If the outbuilding is properly grounded and the dish is on the building, the lightning may no be as big of a risk as david suggests. But, still any copper running in the ground, especially between two buildings does increase the odds of surge damage.

But if they only want single tuner receivers in the house, you should be able to use two 2way splitters.

Right, because Induction is not a thing.

[Link: lightningmaster.com]

Science - you should look into it sometime.

Gentility. You should look into it some time.

There was no need for that attitude. Of course, it was just me taking it as an attitude. Maybe it wasn't one.

Edit:if it's possible to put the dishes lower to the ground, that'll reduce lightning and static discharge, especially if the buildings have lightning rods. Dishes never have to be up high. They only have to have a clear shot at the satellite they're looking at.

Reread what I said. I agreed with you that it’s real concern. But it would be more of a concern if the dish was mounted free standing on a pole.

Speaking of science, I read a good article from John Hopkins about genetics the other day.

Ernie, Ernie, Ernie. You didn't take your own advice and ignore me.

By the way, it was just snark. Fin responded to me with what I imagine was his attempt at snark albeit a tad more ad hominem

You’re too defensive. Sometimes the face value of a comment is all there is.

What lnbf is on the dish? You should be ok if it's a older DP quad, then just use a DP quad 3x4 switch and it should work. If it's a DPP quad you will most probably have to run new cables and get some switches.