Dish Plus mounting question

[horseshoe]

Can a Dish 500/1000 Plus be installed either without the 2 support braces or with the braces angling down to a level near where the dish base mounts to the wall?
My current dish 500 is mounted on the side of my house on the foundation blocks with the dish itself extending above the vinyl siding.
I would like to have a dish 500 Plus installed to get my local HD channels off of 118.75. One of the dish installers told me that 2 support arms must be installed and that they must angle up where they would be screwed into the vinyl siding. I would like to avoid putting any unnecessary holes in the siding if possible.

Thanks for any info.

 

[Scott6760]

If the mast is mounted directly to the foundation chances are you will be fine without the struts. If you have the clearance I would use the smaller '500' mast as opposed to to the 'plus' mast because it is more stable.

 

[garys]

The struts were mostly used on SuperDishes, not Dish1000's. You should not have any trouble.

 

[webbydude]

Sorry. Not to be the lone, dissenting vote here...but I have to agree with your installer. You probably should use the struts, regardless of the mounting situation. The 500+/1000+ are almost as heavy and large as the SD's. If for no other reason, windload issues come to mind as to a reason for using the struts. Can you "get away" with not using the struts? Probably. But do you really want to run that risk?????

 

[horseshoe]

So I probably should go with the struts.
Anybody know if they can be mounted at a downward angle so I can avoid going thru my siding?

I haven't had a chance to see how the struts mount on a Plus dish up close.

 

[rcdallas]

Technically they are suppose to mount up, however of all the plus dishes on I've installed they were mounted down.

 

[horseshoe]

Thanks for the info. That's what I wanted to hear.
Do you know anywhere photos may be available of such an installation?

 

[rcdallas]

Maybe someone can post some, the last photo I have of a 1000 plus dish is mounted upside down on a roof of a trailer across the street of a former coworker (he has to look at it everyday!)

 

[Claude Greiner]

I got a 1000 Plus Dish on my house without a support strut since July 2006 and I have not had a problem.

Now I do have it securely mounted to a brick wall, but so far so good!

I wanted to use the struts, but it was almost impossible to install them since I was upgrading from a regular DISH1000 to a DISH1000 Plus. The Dish was is on the corner of the house meaning it was impossible to install the left support bracket, and to top it off it was a royal pain in the butt to drill into the fire brick on my house!

Technically they should be installed, but being an installer it was not a big issue since I can fix my own installation if the mount moved on me.

 

[horseshoe]

Does that mean that to mount the struts downward that the dish needs to be mounted upside down?

 

[rcdallas]

No that's something else. Just put the dish up and put the struts on, you don't have anything to worry about with the actual bracket facing down. I installed them for over a year that way until they finally had something posted on the wall of how it's "supposed" to be installed.

Now last October or so I did a upgrade out near Domino's Farm with no struts attached into a brick wall, it was the only one I ever did, and up to recently before I left I did an install for the daughter of the strutless customer, parents where there helping move in, they haven't had any issues whatsoever, the dish was secure... I wanted to put the struts on, but similar to what Claude said it existing was at the corner -- 1/2" lag shields.

 

[horseshoe]

:up Thanks, I appreciate the info.

 

[ws6500hp]

Hey Horseshoe - where can I get a good deal on a plus dish or equivalent?

TIA

 

[horseshoe]

I don't know. I was going to let dish install mine as an upgrade, there should be no charge for an upgrade if you need it to get service you are subscribing to.