After reading all the way through this thread, I felt compelled to register and add my thoughts to the pile.
First of all, I'm going to preface all this by letting everyone know that I am in charge of tech training for a DirecTV HSP. While I cringe at some of the low opinions that most of you appear to have directed towards satellite installers, I also realize that the reputation wasn't earned for lack of good reasoning. I work with over 100 inhouse technicians and 15-20 contractors. Training uniformity, especially in an industry that has something along the lines of 30-40% turnover over 12 months, is a much more difficult prospect to achieve then it appears on the surface. There is no easy answer to all this. People decry the fact that techs appear to be incompetent, moronic, or both. I guess we could force all satellite installers to become low-voltage electricians- that would solve things real quick. Or perhaps college degrees? I don't think anyone would be able to afford those kinds of installs anymore- especially in the volume that DirecTV requires of us. This is not a complaint- it is what it is and I can see the merits on all sides of the debate. I take calls from customers with installer complaints and I know that there are some very real and serious customer service issues entering our customers' homes on a day-to-day basis. Anyways- enough of the speech; let's address the problems here...
Sorry to sound like a broken record, but hire a good licensed electrician.
First off, this is excellent advice. There are so many factors that could be causing this that I would not have continued any further without getting professional advice. At the bare minimum, buying cheap (<10$ in most cases) outlet testers would have been very prudent. Something as simple as a crossed polarity can cause symptoms exactly as you are describing.
And the first glaring problem was that there was absolutely no "ground" anywhere on the installation. So they grounded out the "splitter". Also, they said that the first guys put the wrong connectors on the cable (at the splitter junction), so they put on new ones that had some sort of plastic collar on it (does anyone know what these were?). The tech wasn't 100% sure if it would totally eliminate the problem, but he said it would make system safer. I haven't been able to reproduce the shock sine then, so I am hoping it is fixed.
- The original installer did not ground the multiswitch. This is definitely not good and runs counter to every policy we install by- although we've now discovered that grounding the system actually made things worse.
- The original installer left non-compliant connectors on the pre-existing cable he used for your install. These connectors could have been anything from (really bad) hex-crimped fittings to (probably harmless) cable-industry Digicon fittings.
- The fittings he replaced them sound like Thomas & Betts Snap-N-Seal fittings. To be clear, this wasn't the cause of your problem but the presence of non-compliant fittings may have created a problem for you in the future.
On a similar note: the day the techs came, one of my 4 receiver died. It would just stay stuck on the "Loading info" screen. I wonder if there was some sort of power surge on the cable when they were making the changes.
- My guess is that when they grounded the system, it shifted the electrical potential in your system enough that now all the transient voltage that builds up in the system was now going to that one box and going to ground through the wiring. The excess voltage in the box didn't allow anything less then 15-16 volts to get from the receiver to the switch. This means no odd transponders could be sent to the box. Most of the guide is sent out over transponder 1 (and some on 2 I believe)- hence the lockup. That is my theory, although reading uboatcmdr's theory presents an logical point of view that it could be blamed on the [lack of] presence of other receivers on the same circuit.
Regardless of whatever is to blame, when you replaced the box, the replacement shorted out; which at this point was completely predictable. Not that I advocate doing this, but unplugging the ground wire from the multiswitch would have probably returned the locked-up receiver to some sort of "working condition" (although the underlying electrical issues would have still been present and just as dangerous)
By the way, in my experience, the reason why the connector fell off was because the coax dieletric core melted and there was nothing to hold the connector on anymore! Yikes. The braiding touching the conductor could have been the thing that started the short in the first place, although my guess is that it was just a side affect from the cable cooking off.
Did all of the boxes get damaged by the first or second "shock" problem by some power surge type thing? (maybe, but why would the last box only stop working when it was unplugged for 10 minutes???).
A good question. Probably yes. I've seen several first-hand cases where one box 'cooking-off' caused all the others to fail as well. It does not take much excess voltage, however brief, to blow up a receivers' satellite input.
Shut off the breakers to all the outlets your current boxes are at. Undo the ground connecting the multiswitch. Purchase a couple of 2 prong adapters as uboatcmdr suggested and use those on all the remaining boxes. Turn the juice back on and see if the boxes start to boot back up. Let's see if the boxes can get past the start-up now. Please remember this is just a band-aid fix. Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, while installers are not supposed to use RG-59 (although over VERY short distances there is no material difference between 59 vs. 6's ability to convey signal and voltage), the presence of RG59 would not have caused this at all. My guess is that you have some combination of floating grounds and a hot ground (neutral & ground bonded at the panel). I really don't think any of your outlets are reverse wired (although I certainly wouldn't rule it out either) as you orig. described the shock occurring only when you touched something else, not when touching it alone.
Lastly, I would cancel you DirecTV service call until your wiring has been checked out. If a technician called me with the symptoms you describe and wanted my advice, I would tell them to advise the customer to get an electrician out asap. The likelihood of putting in multiple replacement receivers and all of them shorting out (thus requiring us to go out again) is extremely high. To that end, after the wiring issues get investigated and resolved, I would make sure that the technician replaces the multiswitch and lnb when he does come out. The chances of them failing in the immediate future is extremely high if they have done so already. I'd also get the number to the local installation company and deal with them directly instead of using DirecTV as the go-between. You'll probably get a faster turnaround response from them (we usually send our field supervisors out to take care of "specialized" service calls like yours) for starters and are more likely to get someone out who's had experience troubleshooting issues like this.
Good luck. I'm anxious to see how everything works out.
(BTW uboatcmdr, please don't think I intentionally meant to rip off some of your advice, I started typing this before I read through most of the 2nd page of this thread.
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