Dish in apartment buildings

[porter6]

Does anyone here have experience installing Dish Network in multi-unit apartment buildings? My problem is that the buildings were pre-wired with RG-59 and several tenants are curious about HD. We currently only will install 311's for customer's. I know that there are restrictions on what RG-59 can do, and if anyone has experience with these types of installs input would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[Roadwarrior]

It might work for awhile. I don't know why RG-59 is being used anymore. Even new homes in my area are being wired with one 59 line into the attic and into splitters. Either the electricians are extremely cheap or there is some kind of conspiracy with the cable company. But even then, shouldn't RG-6 be required for digital cable?

Those tenants can take a chance if they want, sometimes it works and sometimes theres nothing but problems. I personally wouldnt touch it.

 

[Roadwarrior]

Oh, you could use the flat cable jumpers to get your RG-6 through windows, but it looks crappy and you'd probably be better off just using the existing 59. Those apartments get kick backs from the cable company, so you won't get any help from them.

 

[porter6]

The current building's are 5 or 6 years old, we recently got exclusive rights to install dish to customer's who wanted it. The property just built 4 new buildings and we got to prewire those. We put media boxes in the laundry rooms with 3 RG6 homeruns to the outside and ran two RG6, one phone and one category 5 to each wall plate fed from the media box. AS for the old buildings, we've never had any problems with the single tuners, but sometimes when we run 44 switches I cross my fingers.

 

[Van]

RG-59 is still used because its cheap and the average new home customer cant tell that its RG-59 when they have been charged for RG-6. Most apartment buildings up until 10 years ago were wired with 59, but with cable companies like comcast getting on the scene even before ground is broken they have landed contracts to be the sole provider of cable tv service and generaly do the wiring of the complex.

Aparment installs are a majour pain in the ass because grounding is the first issue and second issue is the rules that most complex management has for the install. Most only allow for a non secured mount such as a cement filled bucket, a patio paver, or a tripod. Second they generaly dont allow for any wall or window frame penetrations so your left with using flat cable or some funky contraption involving furing strips and luck.

Using rg-59 regardless of what receiver type is a gamble, it may work for 10 years or 10 seconds and its best to just not use it at all.

If you use the flat cable correctly and put some effort into it it doesnt look bad at all, I did a couble were I used double sided tape to use the flat cable to cap the end of the non moving doorwall section and then secure the coax to both sides.

 

[boba]

If you use Legacy LNBs you will improve the odds of RG59 working. Legacy uses 950-1450 mhz so it is lower frequency and lower loss per foot. Legacy also uses 12 & 18 volts for switching which means old style switches SW64 instead of DP34 & DPP44. If you used 3 24" dishes for 110/119/129 each with a dual Legacy LNB run into 3 D* 3X8 multiswitches. Two outputs from each multiswitch run into 4 SW64 switches would allow 16 receivers to access HDTV & SD channels using the RG59 cable. Not a first choice solution but possibly better than rewiring with RG6 swept tested to 2500mhz.

 

[dishcomm]

It might work for awhile. I don't know why RG-59 is being used anymore. Even new homes in my area are being wired with one 59 line into the attic and into splitters. Either the electricians are extremely cheap or there is some kind of conspiracy with the cable company. But even then, shouldn't RG-6 be required for digital cable?

Those tenants can take a chance if they want, sometimes it works and sometimes theres nothing but problems. I personally wouldnt touch it.

With the price of copper what it is, it comes as no surprise that an electrician or two may skimp on coax....Of course in this case we have no idea the age of this particular apartment building.
Fortunately this cheapskate way of operating is rare in these parts...I could only guess the furor I owuld create if I told a customer who just bought a prewired house for $300k that the wiring was unusable for satellite..Holy sh*t!.....
Actually one of our techs ran into a bees nest at one job.. The customer lived in a very exclusive neghborhood thta had a TPC golf course in it..The house was just two years old..The customer got the 4 tnuers plus three more recivers for a total of 8 tv's..There were going to be charges for custom work..Trust me this cust had the scratch....Anyway, the tech gets there and discovers that the entire house is wired in RG59..The real cheap stuff with 40% copper braiding....No way he could use that..The job cancelled . The customer was furious....Imagine that. A home worth over a million dollars wired with that stuff...
Anyway..I wouldn't touch that building either..My recomendation..retrofit new rg- 6 cabling

 

[chadzx11]

I had one on a high dollar house where the electrician daisy chained the cable around like it was a regular electrical circuit. We had no map to show what went where (he had way more outlets than cable ends in the attic. Some boxes had 2-3 RG6s in them). He settled for his main location and the second TV had to go on the opposite side of the room because there was no continuity to be found at the wall he wanted to use. NO DRILLING. Very adament about that. I could have had his TV where he wanted it way quicker than all the time I wasted chasing multiple wires that were installed by some low bidder electrician.

 

[rcdallas]

With the price of copper what it is, it comes as no surprise that an electrician or two may skimp on coax....Of course in this case we have no idea the age of this particular apartment building.

Copper is outrageous, (thanks Bush!) we've been using copper clad steel for the past 3-4 months now. Not sure of the price difference, but I know its cheaper. Works fine, just can't use it on Wildblue installs.

 

[Van]

Cant blame bush for everything, china and india are both gobbling up metals and fuels at an astounding rate wich is why a 4,000lb 60's car can fetch you some decent scratch.

Electricians have been substituting 59 for 6 for alot longer than the price for copper has been going up but still charging the customer for the price of 6, hell look at what people pay for a house built with trusses made out of glue and sawdust and you tell me who is the bigger sucker?

 

[Roadwarrior]

I had one on a high dollar house where the electrician daisy chained the cable around like it was a regular electrical circuit. We had no map to show what went where (he had way more outlets than cable ends in the attic. Some boxes had 2-3 RG6s in them). He settled for his main location and the second TV had to go on the opposite side of the room because there was no continuity to be found at the wall he wanted to use. NO DRILLING. Very adament about that. I could have had his TV where he wanted it way quicker than all the time I wasted chasing multiple wires that were installed by some low bidder electrician.

i just did a brand new house with the exact same problem. The twist was, he had two lined of RG-6 and two RG-59 running into the attic. But for some reason I could only find one RG-59 line ending in the house. The rest were daisy chained. If not for my cable mapper I might have been there all day. I still had to do some pull throughs and some splicing.

It actually turned out the the Heat/Air guys had cut the lines when they went in, and thought that they could rerun everything and nobody would know the difference. So I don't know how much of that crap was the actually the electricians fault. He obviously didn't wire it all with 6.

It seems that the last thing on any building contractors mind is what kind of TV service the homeowner will have. I think if the standard were to just wire the damned house for satellite instead of cable it would work out for everybody.

I have to say tho, when the local cable company prewires around here, they do it right.