Also for others and Jeff: Before making the installment of the cables permanent ... TEST THAT THING! (I mean function testing on the roof, not that test on your beautiful lawn.) That is some slightly altered version of "from temporary to permanent" than yours, zambonidriver42:)
As a former DirecTV installer, here's a tip for those who are planning on drilling and pulling the wire through your wall. Drill from the inside of your house to the outside. That way your hole will be right where you want it to be and no guessing when drilling from outside to the in. Just be aware of what is on the outside of your wall so you're not hitting any pipes, electrical, gas lines, etc.
I agree on wood and vinyl sided house, but not brick like Jeff's. You will punch the facing off the brick if you're not careful. They even teach you to drill outside-in on brick.
@@MaxDad7 You just have to go a little slower with the masonry bit as you get closer to the outside of the brick. I've only had one minor blow out on brick when drilling from inside to outside. The flange of the coax wall bushing covered up a large portion of the blowout. But with Dishy, obviously there's no bushing to cover any blowouts.
@@alc5440 If only I could afford an editor... :D But I *do* want to say an extra thanks to my brilliant sister/camera-person for her great work! The OSHA violations TikTok was her idea (I was just going to add a counter, but the Wonka song is so much better).
Love the video. Couple of notes: 1) prevailing edge, homey. 2) sawdust will always be in if you hit the plywood backing of the shingles (which you did) 3) rotate the mount 90º and you'll have a better chance at getting double studs 4) carry roofing caulk to seal around the mount and the holes to fight future leaks.
For the sawdust note, I cut it in the edit, but I was definitely in solid wood for the full length of the bit on the center holes and the right side holes. The left side I felt air beyond the roofing plywood sheathing. It's not something easy to convey visually... but if you drill into a thousand studs you know when you're in wood versus air :) The studs in my attic look to be 24" apart (definitely 16" or more, though I haven't gone up and measured them since I normally am working on projects on my ceiling from above, and not up on the roof), so turning the mount sideways wouldn't have helped reach more than one stud. I'm guessing the stud on that edge of the roof is a double-stud being on the edge of the attic space. Honestly I have not been in the part of the attic that juts out over that part of the house, so I can't say for certain :)
The best video I have seen on this subject. You include start to finish, the whole nine yards. Really appreciate your technique and humor as well. Very well done. Thank you.
Most professional installers like myself, would use 25mm (1 inch) conduit and flexi conduit to mechanically protect the cable and also helps in sealing the penetration to the house, and the usual silicone sealer
I was planning on doing that, but was too nervous about the ID of 1" conduit, if the just-more-than-3/4" ferrule would fit (though it sounds like flexible conduit is better for exterior penetrations?). Honestly that was the one part of this job I couldn't find a good guide on online-e.g. what exact conduit to use, how to manage the connections, etc. (I could've just been searching the wrong terms.) Also the grommet I installed over on that corner of the house looks a thousand times better than the holes for both AT&T and Spectrum's drop into the house 😞 - I wish more of the contractors who route cables into people's homes would care to do a more professional job.
I used to work for Dish so I wanted to check your install, and see what they provided in the kit. It's good to see them provide bishop tape (pitch patch as we call it) for sealing the roof from your lag holes. Those big rectangle patches alone are plenty to seal the roof, but the others are provided for peace of mind I guess. I recommend most people to work off of a ladder if they plan to do their installs and not be on the roof like Jeff is. The easiest way to find a rafter is to be at the gabled end of your roof and measure your overhang, then take that measurement and apply it to the top of your roof, then add an extra inch to inch and a half to account for your siding, foam board, plywood, etc. You don't have to be at the peak of your roof like Jeff either. You can put it anywhere down the roof line if you have the line of sight. You won't gain any advantage being higher up. Always pre-drill your holes! Don't just ram the lags or you will split the wood and won't have as good of a hold. Don't overtighten your outer lags as they will most likely be in plywood and will spin out. Once you start seeing the pitch patch squeeze out from under the mount, you are tight and good to go. EDIT: I finished watching the video and you did a great job! A fine job getting the hole into your house drilled out properly, and a good idea using a rubber stopper as a grommet (I would have just filled the hole with gasket sealer since that's what we used. LOL) I felt better once you realized fastening the cable to the front of the fascia was easier and better, and utilizing the downspout to zip tie the cable is what is easiest. Also good service loops (drip loops) and explaining to the viewers the importance of them.
Thanks. You complemented this video well with your tips. Good to remember that, with proper clearance, one don’t have to climb to the apex of the roof (not much closer to the satellites 😉).
@@JeffGeerling so you have around a month to get an idea how to protect the instalation when he comes out. Better don't turn your back on him on that day.
Flannel Jeff: What looks most professional? Internet: You could let it follow the drain pipe.....ooooor you could just let it go across something white where it's highly visible, that's great too.
This video was awesome thank you! I like that you leave in the messy details unlike others that go for production value. What worked for me for entering the house was to remove a section of soffet temporarily and drill through the wall above the brick. This of course brings the cable in upstairs but I like having the router up high. Since I live on a hill, It gives me better reception out in the garden.
The "ferrule" thing on the cable is an EMI filter made of ferrous ceramic, a cased in plastic. It prevents EMI (ElectroMagnetic Interference) from being conducted on the outer shield of the cable and acting like a radiating antenna.
as well, it will restricts the passage of current surges produced during a lightning storm... I would peal out the cable and connect the shield to a good ground... before going into the house
@@soulrobotics That would be a very bad idea. Using a DC coupled ground is never a good idea in this scenario, as it would cause the cable and "dish" to attract lightning much more. There are LAN cable lightning protectors specifically for this purpose. They use a gas-discharge spark gap device that does not have a direct connection to ground, but rather a small gap arcs over in the presence of a fast increasing voltage difference... shunting the surge to ground. The ferrite EMI filter has no effect on current surges, only RF frequencies.
I recommend what the DirecTV installers use, a Bishops/Mastic tape, a full sheet under the footpath, makes an great seal as it grabs the lags and is pulled into the hole and the foot plate is basically welded to to the roof shingles...
Reminds me of Jerry Pournelle's BYTE column... "I do these things so you don't have to!" Thanks, Jeff! I'm watching your satellite internet adventures with great interest.
yeah that cable should definitely be detachable so that you dont need to drill such a huge hole and also so that you can have exactly the length of cable you need :D
It's just a cat6 cable nothing spectacular. Add a grey pvc electrical box on outside of house with a slot in the lowest side for wire. Then run a cat 6 patch cord from there inside home to wherever is needed eezy peezy
@@timmattingly2250 Just use a Coupler or RJ45 jack installed on the wire inside the box. There's RJ45 coupler Keystone jacks and a coverplate for the inside if you wanna try and DIY with a store bought Cat6 patch cable. Or find a low voltage installer to run the line for you. Label the jack on the inside so it's obvious where it goes or what it's for. Ideally it's a home run line, so it goes to 1 location by breaker panel or a utility area where all future lines run to.
Nice job. The one thing you didn't do (or at least didn't show doing) that I would have really recommended was to set up Dishy on your roof for testing it in that specific location before making it a permanent install. A week or so should be plenty. Even though the app shows where you need clear views, the system seems sensitive to even minor obstructions and doesn't always match what the augmented reality check from the app shows. It's worth it to try moving it to a few locations to see if one might be better than the others before going with the permanent install.
Always drill from inside out - always. If concerned about blowing out a divot in brick for example, use a 3/8" bit first then go outside and drill larger hole from out there there. Also a masonry bit will drill just fine thru wood, a lot slower but less time than screwing around switching bits. I have installed thousands of dishes
As a former dish installer, you don't need to mount it high on the roof. That extra 10 feet wont give you meaningful signal. Mounting it lower means that any leak is has MUCH less potential for damage.
I disagree. I have installed multi thousand HN, VS, WISP & tv dishes. If I can not install above an unoccupied area then I go high so I have a smaller watershed. Lower is easier but higher is better in my book...once SL opens in this area I will be installing them too....
Nice to see a start to finish video for an install. It's all the little things not mentioned in the manual that give you pause, and ask "How is it supposed to be done?" And making a mid-install change on the cabel ties is a nice example of this. (Did you go back and caulk those holes? ;) ) Having an older circa 1910 home myself, that's 2 stories tall, with 45 degree pitched roof would make a rooftop install a "Bad Idea" and I would decide to just add a mounting pole in the yard and run the cable underground instead. Also, good to see you outside doing all the things, showing that even with your 'condition' you can still wield a hammer drill like a pro! :D Job well done!
Those little things are exactly the reason I decided to post a full video and not a quick summary video of it-I had a lot of little questions going into the install that I couldn't find solid answers to on Reddit or elsewhere, and the official cable routing kit from Starlink only has the parts for a vinyl-sided house installation. And yeah, Crohn's can be a bit of a burden sometimes, but I've been lucky to have a good year so far (knock on wood!) with very few symptoms!
I just love how at 23:17 you plug in the cable and the light goes out. Good timing on the automatic light switch-off :D Got a little nam-flashback to the time i accidentally bridged the power pins of my raspberry pi in an unprotected circuit and fried one of my main power fuses. Started with the sentence to my brother "So we just plug in this and everything should work just fi..... *bzzzt*" Effed up my gaming pc that way.
I seen on another install video the guy had a "Blue Sea Systems Side Entry CableClam" to cover the hole to get it in the house. Personally that is the route I went, but they home made rubber plug/grommet looks like it will work well too. Good job!
Great video as always! I think this is the first DIY install video I watched without speeding through it 😂 You are worth supporting for all your nerd-relatable content. I’m also glad you mentioned the “drip loop.” Water damage can take awhile to become apparent and will sneak into your house anyway it can.
Came here for the wall hole issue, perfect idea! I opened the box then just stared at the standard wall plate I'm holding..... GREAT, that's what happens when I roll the dice on a Jerry rig plan.
I was an installer for Dish network and Direct TV for years and never used that black butyl sealant on any of the roofs that I installed dishes on we just filled the holes with silicone and then ran a bead of sealant around the foot and over the tops of the lag bolts that we screwed into the roof and never had a leak on any of the jobs I was on. That sealant stuff that they gave you is for use both under and on top of the foot you installed on the roof the smaller pieces are to be placed on the bolt heads and pressed down all around the bolt to prevent water from running down around the head of the bolt and following the threads into the roof and the sheets are to go under the foot before the lags are screwed into the roof. If you have ever taken the inner panel off your car to install new speakers you would have seen the same black sticky material holding the plastic water shield on the inside skin of the door. The black material is called Butyl tape it is a very sticky type of rubber and is semi self healing therefore providing a water barrier between the dish you are installing and the roof material.
Jeff, congrats! Looking forward to your results on stability and performance. The price and stability (along with the blessing of having other options) steered me away from participating in the Beta, so hope to see an initial report in a few weeks! Nice footage from the Go-Pro, and have to admit I'm a fan of Sun-glasses Jeff!
For anyone passing pre-terminated cat cables tape around the whole connector so the retention clip doesn’t catch on anything and snap or make it impossible to pull back out, it acts like an angled barb
That's a good idea, and I don't know why I didn't think of doing that. I always do when I use fish tape or a string to do a pull, I guess I just threw myself off thinking about how annoying it was to have to pull a pre-terminated wire that didn't detach from dishy :D
Like everybody else in the comments, I got a big kick out of seeing the code of federal regulations violations cut into the video. Great idea sister/camera operator!
Now I know what "caulk" means. I'm not a native English speaker and I thought you were talking about other things when you said "... white silicone caulk" hahaha
Nice video. Next time, protect the RJ45 connector with tape before pushing it through the brick hole. I like the homemade grommet idea, though! I'll remember that one. It'll give me a reason to buy a coping saw!
Haha the OSHA Regulations are too perfect 😂 Great video, looking forward to see the performance and how you use it.👍 I'm guessing you'll be using it as a secondary/backup WAN connection.
Red shirt Jeff would have hacked a connector off that cable, and crimped up a new one later, nothing special, just shielded Cat cable (probably Cat6). I would have also bought the non-penetrating mount. Since I still have many months before I have coverage, I'm planning my install. Roof of house, roof of garage, pole on fence, maybe on a shed in the yard, maybe on chimney mount. Still not sure and need to get on the roof with the app and see where it will work best around the trees.
If you already have Cable Internet, why are you bothering with actually Mounting that thing on your roof, if its (probably) just for testing? Btw, this is, till now, the most professionally done install i´ve seen. Except for safety, there isnt anything I would`ve done different. That being said, I´m probably not much more of an installer, than you are lol.
I have long wanted to have a 2nd Internet connection. And if it can be reliable, it could be a failover, or be used for bonding/aggregation. Fun to test some of these things on a Raspberry Pi router :)
@@JeffGeerling Sounds pretty good, but why go w/ starlink, which is atm pretty expensive and not at 100 percent capacity? Don't get me wrong, it's a nice system but for your purpose it doesn't seem to be the right choice, or is there, besides the tinkering, anything I don't see?
@@xxcr4ckzzxx840 Tinkering / exploration is the main reason, but even so, the only other two options are very flaky 4G wireless (and just as expensive, with data caps, so not good for failover purposes), and half-as-expensive-but-8x-slower DSL. AT&T was supposed to run fiber to our neighborhood 10 years ago... never happened.
At that point i would just run my own cable in/out of the house and use the included cable as an out-door only cable. Just make sure to terminate in a weather proof box!
@@DanielPinel cat5e is good for 1Gb up to 100 meters (328 feet). This wouldn't be anywhere close to that and you likely wouldn't hit those speeds with a wireless solution.
Ideally, you don't want to run power along with your data cable. I would try and anchor your power wiring on the opposite joist if it's running down that particular channel between joists.
I was planning on doing that, but I had some trouble getting the soffit boards removed (without also removing all the flashing and some other nailed-in bits), so I decided to just let the two left screws go only into roofing + plywood sheathing. I was happy enough with 4/6 screws going into solid wood.
@@JeffGeerling Ah! I didn't realize that you were still over the soffits and not actually the attic of your house. Yah removing all of that sounds like a pain for certain. Great install, btw! Awesome content - I'm looking forward to hearing your impressions in using Starlink as your primary connection. I had concerns over latency but the concept is certainly very appealing. I'm in a rural area, though somehow we luckily have a gigabit cable connection. We do occasionally have issues with downed trees here and cut lines, however - so I'd like to get fully off the grid and Starlink seems like an ideal solution.
@@mrmotofy The weakest part of the system I think is the two little retaining buttons that pop out to secure the dish + arm into the mount. They're good enough for high winds (already had two severe storms with 50-60 mph winds go through), but an EF-0 or EF-1 tornado might rip the thing off. Luckily I'll have other things to worry about if I get a direct hit from a tornado or a branch large enough to damage Dishy falls on the roof!
It's just a cat 6 cable nothing spectacular. Add a grey pvc exterior electrical box on outside of house with a slot in the lowest side for wire. The top or sides can allow water intrusion. Unscrew cover slip cord in slot and plug in to wire. To make slot cut a small V in plastic edge of box with a knife to start bit, then use drill bit same diameter of wire usually around 5/16"-3/8", on it's side to make a notch at V. The box can be painted to color match the home. Caulk to house wall with a clear or color matched good caulk like OSI Quad in many colors from your local home store. Then run a cat 6 patch cord(structured cabling) from box to inside home to wherever is needed eezy peezy
Since the holes will be covered with black goo, you probably want to draw the outline of the mount onto the shingles when you mark the holes. Then you'll be able to know exactly where to put the mount after installing flashing.
You should always start the hole under an angle from a lower point at the outer wall to an higher point entering the inner wall so water can't run inside. I think you kind of did that but I would personally have done it under a slightly steeper angle
The greater the angle (at least with my brick), the more chance you chip-out the back half of the brick, causing the brick to split (worst case) or opening up a cavity behind the hole where there's a bunch of material impossible to get out of the hole. I tend to be very conservative going through brick, especially since the house is almost 40 years old and the brick is a bit brittle in parts :) But if you have larger brick, or ideally a smaller-diameter hole, a steeper angle is good too. Always want that water to go out, not in!
@@JeffGeerling I understand, my bricks do look a lot softer indeed. I learned that trick from coax mechanics here in the Netherlands. Probably here it's easier to take that measure. I really enjoyed the video though, as always!
No plaid shirts in St. Louis in the summer. You don't know hot until you have been in St. Louis in the summer. Maybe Muscle-Shirt-Jeff videos for the summer.
Nice enough for an amateur install. But when cabling, the run should flow nicely, staying relaxed but fixed regularly, especially on horizontal runs, and follow the lines of the building or fascias you're fixing it to. The drip guards are only ever a U shape drop as they enter/exit a building and not an actual loop of cable.
I feel like I have the first part fine (run straight, relaxed, fixed every 3-5'), and for the drip loop, I like having a coil because you never know (spoken as someone who's had to redo a lot of wiring for crazy reasons) when you want an extra 2-4" of cable to reroute it nicely down the line (and maintain a drip loop). Having a loop instead of a U-shape gives that extra slack.
VERY well done! I especially enjoyed the short "safety nuggets" throughout! Very clever. My only question is, will you come do it for me? 😃 Just kidding.
You do a great job with your videos Jeff. It does feel somewhat weird when you signoff your videos at the end, you do sound like someone constantly thinking about changing his name :p
Wouldn't make more sense to mark the plate position to have better chances of driving the screws into the holes "you" just drilled? Also all that cabling out there to me looks like the perfect accidental lightning rod. Just saying... 😁⚡🔥
I'm curious to see if this setup will have all the little problems and flaws as a Ubiquiti/Mikrotik outdoor CPE setup has in the long run. Problems like: FTP cable damage by rubbing to the roof edge in high winds, radio front end excessive signal attenuation and ethernet port ESD damage caused by high wind/lightning storm, cable UV resistance and last but not least: corrosion of the end connector caused by CPE box inner condensation seeping through inside of the FTP cable, down to the PoE adapter. These are all the little things I can remember from installing a lot of CPEs at an ISP back in the days. No idea if a lightning rod is recommended or not in this case, also if I remember correctly most telecom grade radios needed individual earthing (beside the one that connects the FTP cable shield to the PoE adapter 8P8C socket housing to mains earth).
Flannel Jeff: If and when you need hardware items the local store never seem to have shop McMaster-Carr. They have it for sure, if they don't you don't need it.
