The satellite dish is on the roof. I would ideally like to bring the two cables right thru the roof into the attic, as I have full roomy easy access to the attic and can readily route the cables from there. Intructions with the dish only describe bringing the cables down the roof and thru a sidewall. Does anyone know a good trick for passing cables thru the roof (shingles and all) without creating a leak?

I've obviously put the satellite mounting bolts thru the roof, with liberal sylicon sealer around and under them. Two cables won't exactly fill a hole, especially if the cable ends have to fit thru the hole first.

Secondly, what's the best trick for grounding it all, if I go right into the house? In the old days when I had a roof antenna I used a radio shack cable grounder. The antenna cable passed thru it. It was plugged into a grounded wall outlet. Is there a similar device for satellite cable? Am I at serious risk if the dish remains ungrounded?

Thanks in advance,

Dave

David, Do not go thru the roof with the cables. Use the eyelets for stringing flat or coaxial antenna wire and try to get them dead center in a rafter. Seal it with roof caulking (tar in a tube)
Run them down under your eave and loop them for a
water drip before going through the eave or wall to access the attic. Then use silicone caulking to seal that opening. You will only be asking for trouble putting unnecessary holes in your roof.

Thanks, Dennis. That's exactly how I installed my dish the first time, on the roof of the old house. There it was simple, as the roof sloped to the south with a clear view, the receiver was in the room right beneath, and the cable only had to drop 1 story. I mounted the dish near the bottom edge of the roof and was in the house with less than 20ft. of cable.

On my new house, the roof still has a south sloping section, but because of trees the only clear-view place to mount the dish is near the peak ridge of the roof. From there the closest roof edge is 20ft. away, and the cable will need to drop 2 stories. If I could get directly into the attic, I'd have short cable runs and could feed to any room I wanted by pulling DSS cable up thru existing jacks and into the attic with existing cable. (I've already done this in two rooms).

I'm going to test the dish INSIDE the attic tomorrow. In one place, the only thing blocking the signal will be some venting slats with a little screen in front of them. In Kansas, I'm almost due north of the satellite, and am suspecting a strong enough signal. If it works in the attic, I'll be a very happy camper. If it doesn't, then a roof mount will mean 100+ feet of cable and some tacky thru-the-exterior wall cable runs. Very undesirable.

Dave

David, I read somewhere that trees do not noticeably effect the DBS signal, if that helps you any. Good luck with the attic attempt. BTW, my dish is mounted on the side of my house, approx. 8' of cable down and 20' inside the basement. From there it is routed to two rooms, each equipped w/ a receiver. In addition, a coaxial antenna cable is fed to these rooms. Finally, another coaxial cable (per rcvr) is fed back down to the basement then to a bedroom and kitchen. This allows me to send satellite or local antenna to each room, four in all. I used an A-B switch in the living room so I can send the VCR signal to the bedroom as well. I mention this because you posted earlier this week regarding "whole house distribution". Good luck!

Do to the view I had to put the dish in my front yard and run cable through a little forest--over 200 feet and then through the house (four receivers and six tv's. We buried the cable and installed amplifiers but had to turn them off as the signal was so strong they were clipping the signal. Point is if done right don't worry about the length of cable. I live in cleveland by the way. and use Direct. good luck.

A little experimenting and I determined this...

My Dish DID work in the attic. It got me a satellite signal strength of 75ish (max 100) which was the best I'd ever gotten in Eastern Iowa. But I'm in Kansas now, and expecting more.

I studied my roof layout more carefully, and determined after all that a good place for the dish could be found, near an edge, no trees blocking, and a short path into the attic. That's where the dish is now, and my signal strength is steady at 90. I ran a ground wire from the cable block under the roof eave to a grounding stake straight below. A quick continuity check proved to me that the dish itself was grounded with the cable. I ran new RG6 cable, phone, and speaker wires from the attic into the bedroom and living room to new radio shack phone/cable/speaker jacks. The bedroom jack replaced the existing RG59 cable but the living room cables went to a newly installed box.

I have a terk-50 antenna in the attic, but trying to use the included diplexers to combine and then split it's OTA signal with the sat on one cable didn't work. The satellite receiver claims "short in satellite connection, turn off to reset". Has anyone successfully combined a terk-50 with sony SAT-A3 or A4 signals? If so, what's the trick. As of now, I'm forced to use rabbit ears in the bedroom for OTA channels.

BTW, the terk-50 works wonderfully from the attic, sending it's signal to every existing RG59 jack in the house.

Dave

DAvid, Could'nt you just run a seperate cable from the Terk? What kind of signal do you get with it? I've looked at them a couple times but my OTA antenna is approx. 15' higher and more appropriately aimed than if I placed it on my dish. Anybody else have experiences with them?

I live on a site almost almost as high as the highest point in the county. Even with just rabbit ear antennas on the TVs I was getting pretty good reception of ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, FOX, and TBN. With the Terk in the attic, running through all the previously existing cableTV cables in the house, the signal from these stations went from "pretty good" to "wonderful"!

- "Could'nt you just run a seperate cable from the Terk?"

In my living room, that's exactly what I did, except I ran a new cable to a new jack for the satellite and left the old cable from the old jack in place for the terk. In the bedroom I had intended to use the terk's included diplexers to combine the OTA signal with the SAT signal. I pulled new RG6 and phone cables thru the wall attached to the old RG59 cable as I pulled it out into the attic. It is not convenient to put a second jack in the bedroom. I was assuming the diplexers with the terk would work, anyway. They didn't.

- "my OTA antenna is approx. 15' higher and more appropriately aimed than if I placed it on my dish. Anybody else have experiences with them?"

I'd stay with your OTA antenna. I'd used a rooftop pole-mounted beast from radio Shack several years ago from this same city with similar results as the terk. I only chose the terk because I wanted to hide it in my attic screwed to roof trusses. It amplifies and supposedly "cleans" (cancels ghosts) the signals a bit.

Other than not (yet) having OTA channels in the bedroom, I'm very happy with my install. I'm probably going to pull stereo speaker wires into the bedroom jack. I've already done that in the living room. I'll be running them to ceiling mounted rear surround speakers. Radio Shack has a nice phone/cable/LR speakers cable faceplate that makes it look clean, and keeps all the cables in one place.

Another day in the attic... at least there's lots of headroom in mine. ;-)

Dave