Grandparents Sky woes

volkswarren

My grandparents signed up for a new 18 month deal with sky in november, over the winter they lost service for around 5 days until an engineer came out, though he said there was no fault and the tv came back on.

Now TV service has no signal again, engineer just been out yesterday and said that no fault but line of site for the dish is now obscured by trees and though he moved the dish a little they still have no signal.

Another engineer is going out but not until the 12th june this will be 14 days with no signal, is there anything they can do if sky still can't get the tv back on? Surely the engineer when they installed it 4-5 years ago should of positioned the dish out of line of site with these massive trees, not sure if they will be able to cancel if sky cant provide the service they are paying for??

Any advice or thoughts?

Thanks

[Deleted User]

volkswarren wrote: »

Surely the engineer when they installed it 4-5 years ago should of positioned the dish out of line of site with these massive trees

If they've only recently started having issues then I'm guessing the trees weren't so "massive" 4-5 years ago?

Sounds like the dish needs to be way higher but Sky don't like sending their engineers up high. Can it be mounted higher than it is?

volkswarren

Bit more info they are in council bungalow, the tree's are about 30-50 feet away from what I recall and have always been there, I need to pop round and have a look.
Trees are on council land.
Engineer did move the dish higher but still no signal, had to pay the £65 fee for the privilege too.

Neil_Jones

Majority of councils will not prune a tree on their land if the sole purpose is to improve reception of satellite reception. If its overhanging a public highway, or is dangerous, that's different. Same goes if its sick or dead.

Trees have this horrible tendency of growing and growing and growing. They may get pruned occasionally but that job seems to sit on the back burner with most councils now and only gets done when it's absolutely essential.

Rather than moving the dish upwards (which is only a temporary fix because the tree will continue to grow), is it not possible to move the dish sideways? Put it on another wall? Even put it in the garden? It doesn't matter to an extent where it goes as long as it can see the satellites at 28.2° East.

volkswarren

It's mostly towards the right of the property already, they might be able to move it 2-3 feet at most.

[Deleted User]

volkswarren wrote: »

It's mostly towards the right of the property already, they might be able to move it 2-3 feet at most.

Is it on a front/back wall? Can it be moved to a gable wall if so which would allow for a good bit of extra height? If it's a detached bungalow don't forget it can go on either end.

Is the chimney a possibility? You can see from it's present orientation which direction it should be pointed in so look for a better clear line of sight.

As said above it doesn't need to be attached to the bungalow itself, are there any other options? Garage or boundary wall etc.

onomatopoeia99

You can estimate if the obstruction is actually the problem yourself. This site:

http://www.dishpointer.com

lets you put in a post code and select a satellite (you need Astra 2E at 28.2E for Sky ) and it gives you the overhead image so you can drag a pointer to the dish location on your grandparents house. It will show you the line of site to the satellite they are trying to view. That way, you can tell from the overhead image if there are any potential obstructions and also it has a facility to work out the maximum height an obstruction can be before it starts to cause a problem.

It makes DIY dish installation really straightforward, if you can do the drilling of holes and so on. I used it when I installed a motorized dish so I could figure out the best place.