Mounting dish to soffit

[gbodybilly]

Hello all ,

First time poster here. I recently purchased this setup here: http://shop.psbsatellite.com/displayProductDocument.hg?productId=25&categoryId=1 (Thanks, Pete, Pam!) and also purchased this: http://www.smarthome.com/77531.html to mount to my house. My house is all around brick and didn't want to penetrate the masonry, which led me to where I am now. The rear of my house faces South and I have rather tall trees in my backyard (~80 to 100 feet) along the right and left sides of my property but is clear straight back, if you can imagine that. In any case, I have a vinyl covering over the plywood of my soffits. I was going through the instructions and such and it clearly states in the soffit mount instructions, "Do not attempt to mount the Dish Mount SM-100 Soffit Mount Kit on a soffit that has any type of vinyl overlay material. The Dish Mount SM-100 Soffit Mount Kit has been designed to be mounted directly to a wooden soffit only." Does anybody have any experience with this? I'm not understanding the reasoning behind this as the vinyl is rather thin and the 5 screws that affix the mount to the soffit (there are 5) are 3" long. Am I screwed out of the $55 I paid for the mount?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


Billy

edit: Wish I found this sooner (the actual instructions): http://www.dishmountproducts.com/images/SM-100.pdf The warning I originally posted is towards the bottom of the left column in bold on the first page.

 

[sunelec]

I checked this out with the manufacturer a few months ago. I talked to the guy who designed the mount. He said that ( and it would seem obvious to me) it means that there has to be some kind of wood under the vinyl ( not just plywood) like a rafter or joist so that you have some structure to bolt into. Then it's okay. Apparantly a lot of people who purchased this mount tried to bolt it to just vinyl or plywood and of course it came loose. So he is covering his ass even though the directions are written poorly.

 

[gbodybilly]

So as long as it goes through a rafter I'm okay. Like you, I really saw no other obvious way than going through a rafter but wasn't sure if the vinyl would be a problem or not. Thanks!

 

[Hermitman]

I can think of a couple of reasons they might put that warning in the instructions. Most of the vinyl soffit material is not flat up against the wooden soffit material. It has ridges or high spots molded into the material. That would not allow for a flush-to-the-structure mounting and may end up being loose and unsteady, not good for a dish mount. Also, the vinyl may crack when you tighten the screws down since some screws are going in at an angle. Here's a couple of ideas for your consideration (I'm not going to recommend anything since this is your house and not mine). Maybe you can find an area of flat vinyl soffit material that's flush up against the roof truss, so it can be a solid mount. Or you could find where you want to mount the dish and remove just enough vinyl material at that location to allow for the mount to be flush against the wooden structure. Good luck and have fun.

 

[sunelec]

What the designer told me is that there are a lot of mobile and prefab homes in the local area near their factory. This is where they first started selling these mounts before they went national. The soffits were not very strong and the vinyl obstructed the view under the soffit so people couldn't see where the stronger wood was located. Through carelessness some of these mounts got mounted onto weak structure. So they added the language about the vinyl to the instruction sheet as a precaution'