Saturday, November 17, 2012

Setting up a Satellite Dish

All I was trying to do was dig a hole and put a antenna mast in it in concrete.  This is to be the support for my direct TV dish....  And at times the top could have a small Ham Radio antenna mounted on top of it...

I was driving all over the place looking for a 10 foot long mast to put into this hole, but never could find one locally...  So back to the original idea of two five footers placed inside of each other....

The problem that this presents, it that the joint between the two mast pipes is not completely solid and may allow the dish to wobble some in the wind.....  Will that cause the loss of the signal...?

So anyway I purchased the two pipes and a sack of sakrete.. over at Home Depot...  After coming home and raking back the rock to bare the hard back yard red clay, I realized just how rock like this has become...

It was under water last summer which must have turned it into concrete..  That's when I realized my level was over in the motorhome......  So I set out on the scooter to go get it..

It took over an hour to get back to the house...  By then the afternoon was becoming long...  The ground was just as hard and I didn't have the right plan....  I dug with the spade but didn't make much headway...

Finally in desperation I drove a big screw driver down into the clay with a hammer...  That started to break up the rock hard soil...   After about an hour and a half I had a hole eighteen inches deep..

So the concrete mix and new pipe became my new dish support...  And I was able to use the level to get it straight up and down as well...  And in the nick of time because the sun was well over the hill as I was washing out the buckets and tools...

No more concrete than is in a one sack hole, I will have to be really careful not to jar or break it..  At least for a couple of days anyway... Its in the ground and not on top of the ground so the water can't dry out.  And that will take a bit longer than flat work...

All of this will be under ground, so after I rake the rock ground cover back over the area, it will look like a pipe coming up out of the rocks...

Tomorrow I will need to work on the entrance into the wall of our TV room...  The cable people just drill a hole and caulk it with a dab of silicone but I have purchased some plastic grommets that will dress things up a bit.

Again these plans are not tested and I haven't done this job over and over like the pros so what could go wrong......? LOL  That is why amateur jobs are just that amateur...!!

But all of this was a much better day than yesterday as I had another mouth full of Novacane.. I wasn't able to do anything other than sit here in my chair and watch TV for the afternoon..  But luckily that should be the last of my visits to the dentist for several months...  Of course stuff can break and that is true with dental work too...

Retired Rod

3 comments:

  1. I'v noticed people dig with water here in these parts because of the hard ground. Usually a garden hose is left running or pails of water are poured on the ground to soften it up before digging. Noticed our fence builder used waster to dig some of his fence posts. Water is often left in a hole for the night & the digging continues in the morning. Guess I will be finding this all out first hand when I begin planting things around here shortly.

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  2. Not sure which is worse - digging a hole in rock hard ground or going to the dentist? I think I'd rather dig the hole.

    Just wondering why you want a 10' mast for your satellite dish and not 5'? I think our portable stand is around 5' or so.

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    Replies
    1. Rick, two feet of the pipe are in the concrete in the hole in the ground... That only leaves a three foot pipe above the ground.. Since this is in between the houses, it isn't tall enough to see over the neighbors roof line unless it is up about 6 feet....

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