DirecTV is installing a new dish at our house, and they said there’s no where to bolt the antenna to, so they are coming back with a non-penetrating roof mount.
Basically the satellite gets attached to a piece of sheet metal which is placed on top of the roof and held down with cinder blocks.
We’re in an area with occasional high winds (hills in Los Angeles) and I just wanted to see if anyone knew if this will actually keep the satellite from being pushed across/off our roof? Can cinder blocks really hold down a 40 pound satellite dish? They assure me it’s safe, and the installer’s supervisor that I spoke to said it’s fine as well. I just want to check to see if anyone has heard otherwise…
I had a couple of small dishes held on some of my training centers with non-penetrating mounts. It is a square sheet of fairly heavy steel (1/8"-1/4" thick IIRC) which is pretty heavy all by itself. then they pile concrete blocks on top of the steel. Again IIRC the total weight was over 200 lbs.
Two of those dishes were in Irvine Ca. and we had no trouble with the Santa Ana winds.
I’m a Ham (radio operator) and we use non-penetrating mounts on several roofs where I work. Rather than a steel, or aluminum plate as mentioned, the ones we use are an angle iron frame work that contains the concrete blocks.
The issues isn’t so much the weight of the antenna, but the surface area exposed to the wind. If it’s a standard sized dish I’m pretty sure you won’t have any problems. We normally put eight concrete blocks on our mounts and support antennas that are 10-12 feet high.
Heh. I’ve had DirecTV for many, many years. I also get my sat internet from them. Alignment is very, very important for that. It’s bolted to the side of the house. I can’t imagine not bolting it down to a solid structure. But I imagine they know what they are doing.
I’ve had very good luck with mounting a dish on a roughly 100-pound lump of concrete to avoid any problems regarding apartment buildings not allowing things to be bolted to the walls or balcony railings. The concrete was in a plastic flower pot, so the thing had a footprint of less than a square foot, but it never moved.
We’ve got a flat roof, and nowhere to bolt to. I know alignment is important, but I’m more concerned about safety here. As we’re on a hillside, a satellite blown off our roof has a long way to fall and can land on a house below us. Unlikely (they’re fairly far away) but plausible. Glad to hear you guys have had good experienced with it, though.
Enipla – how is their internet service compared to a fast cable modem? Just curious.
The one I have currently (an HD dish) weighs 15 pounds. They are replacing it with the new dish you need to get their NEW HD service. (Old dish can’t get the new channels, as they changed compression formats.)