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DirecTV in an Apartment?
Sc00ter asks: "I live in an apartment and I'm seeking advice on how to mount a DirecTV dish without causing damage to the building. I don't have a balcony to put it on, only windows. There are some people that have worked around this by using other types of antennas, but the cost of such a device is too high. I have also seen some window mount type antennas but I don't think I should trust these in the wind. I was hoping somebody out there had been in a similar situation and had a tip or two."
at the Tivo community online. Your situation is hardly novel.
Some of the solutions have been mentioned here, flower pots, getting the landlord to agree to a roof mount, etc.
There are others who simply take the window, open it up, make sure that the window screen is fibreglass instead of wire, mount the dish on what becomes a piece of furniture, pointing out the window. When it gets cold they fill the void where the window would otherwise be, with a couple of pieces of plexiglass. It doesn't even have to be transparent.
Then there are the phased array antenas, which I agree cost too much for most appartment dwellers.
On the other hand, pretty much nothing I can do will help me. Physics is working against my getting sattelite reception from my appartment. Unless someone comes up with a way to position a satelite near the north pole, I have too much building in my way.
-Rusty
You never know...
I had an apartment with no balcony and a Southern facing window.
I had line of sight to the primary sat, but the signal would not go through the glass. I just went to good ol' Home Depot and bought a sheet of plexiglass and some 2x4's. After building a simple frame and inserting it into the window I was good to go.
My first attempt involved 2 spaced sheets of plexiglass, but I couldn't get a signal. 1 sheet worked great.
I lost about 10 points of signal, rain fade was hardly a problem.
Not personally, no (thankfully management at my complex is very reasonable), but apartment "policies" like you describe are exactly the sort of restrictions this legislation is written to prevent (or pre-empt, rather). Depending on your location and how large your apartment/complex is, there's a good chance management does know of this regulation. I'd suggest pulling up as much as you can on the FCC site and enlisting the help of your proposed satellite provider. Put up your dish and call their bluff!
Oh, and do let us know the outcome...
What i would do is do the same thig that we did in our building, asking everyone if they want to have a dish ( they ll probably say yes ), then go see the guy in charge of the community stuff, tell him than everyone would like to have a dish, and suggest a proffessional installation for everyone. Our community have 400 flats , they paied eatch one 100, this make a total of 40 000 , now we have 4 proffesionnals dishs installed on the top of the highest building by proffessionals with switches and so, and now everyone have a satellite plug in his house. Notice than it was quite fast to obtain this, well everything is relative , but it took like 4 months. (escuse me for typos, grammary and stuff, french guy there)
You are correct. An apartment compex owner, a HOA, etc can't say you can't have a dish positioned somewhere due to how it might look. They also can not limit the number of dishes that you have installed as long as all are under the 1-meter limit.
:)
If the community offers the same satellite service and the pricing is not unreasonable, they can deny you the right to install the dish. Say you want DirecTV and they have Dish, they can not deny you the right to have a DirecTV dish. If they say thought that you have to pay $20 just for the access to the line then you can install your own.
They can deny you the right to do a penetrating mount. This means no driliing/bolting into a balcony, wall, roof, etc without their WRITTEN permission. This would also include running the line indoors.
Tripod, bucket-o-quikcrete, etc are fine. So is u-bolting to a balcony railing as long as no holes are drilled into their property. As to getting the line indoors, this is the exact reason why inductive couplers for windows/patio doors and flat cable were invented.
I used a screw-in mailbox post from Walmart and bolted the base of the reciever to the side of the post. Worked great. A lot lighter than the concrete in a bucket and looks better too. I think I paid ~$20 for it at Wally*World. It did break the 3rd time I screwed it in afeter moving again (I was moving every ~5 months for a while). I think I hit a rock or a tree root and it broke the weld on the screw part trying to force it.
The apartment I live in now would have allowed DirecTV proffessional installation, but i could never get anyone to come out!! My stupid area is ruled by Pegasus Satellite (A DirecTV reseller) instead of DirecTV i think there's some asinine governmental anti-trust type regulatory reason for this.... but regardless, it meant i was inelligible for the DirecTV professional installation when you move. Getting a Pegasus installer to come out was impossible, nobody would return my calls.
So now (after living on the free basic cable provided with my apartment for 3 years), I have ordered a window suction cup mount (no grass for the mailbox post) and will be put on someone else's DirecTV plan for $5 a month as a reciever for an RV.
I would have gladly paid DirecTV full price but it is not offered in my area, I have to buy through the crappy Pegasus Satellite that costs more and gives me less. So screw the both of 'em.
I don't have a balcony on my apartment and can not mount a dish on the roof or bolt it to the external wall.
I do have casement windows.
Solution:
One of my casement windows in my bedroom is always open. In its place is a plexiglass sheet that I purchased at home depot. I always keep the blinds closed in the bedroom anyways (sunlight! ick!) so this isn't an eye sore.
The DirecTV signal will go through plexiglass with barely any signal degradation. Apparently plexiglass has a different dielctric (sp?) constant than glass (which absolutely destroys the signal).
I get excellent reception. The only thing that stinks is the "once or twice a year" event where someone bumps the satellite dish. However, since I marked on the dresser the orientation marks, it usually only takes me a few minutes to get it recalibrated.
Ghetto geek yes, but it sure beats AT&T cable!
Evolution: love it or leave it
In our last apartment we had the dish pointing out the window. Worked fine. Here is how the setup worked:
We had a loft on the north wall of the apartment. The apartment had a south-facing window directly across from the loft.
We mounted the satellite dish to the floor level of the loft (I am not sure how to explain it - it was mounted to the vertical side of the loft floor, so that it was visible from the loft but not taking any floor space).
We pointed the dish out the window, and made the minor adjustments necessary to get optimum signal. There was no screen on the window, and we never got any interference from the window - matter of fact, the only time we ever got interference was when our cats would jump from the loft into the windowsill. I think the lowest our signal ever went was about 85.
Now we live in a house, and I can tell you the bonus to having had it mounted inside the apartment - we never had to scrape snow from the dish during a blizzard, and never had the wind knock it out of alignment! It sure was ugly, but, what the hell, we're geeks, it would be unnatural to NOT have funky hardware as part of the decor. If we ever have to go that route again I might paint it, though...
Patching the holes when we moved out was a five-minute job, btw.
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
I was driving one day, and I passed by one of those satellite dealer shops; they had a few of the 18" dishes mounted to one of those wooden forklift pallets. I had seen the bucket/concrete/pole solution before, but I had none of the above, and didn't want to mess with concrete. I also had no desire to purchase any either. So I "acquired" a wooden pallet from the back of a grocery store, and mounted the dish on that. My apt complex also has a no mounting clause whereby I cannot affix it to the structure of the building, so this gets around that. The pallet is movable, provides a wide, sturdy base for the dish, and is lightweight and cheap (in my case) for future portability. I like it. I setup my friend's dish the same way.