Quote for Saorsat installation

rayjdav

People,
Mods, if wrong forum please move.

Had a lad up this morning and quoted €400 for installation of saorview setup. Based in Waterford. Currently only have FTA and rabbitt ears for (crap reception) RTE.

Includes:
New FTA dish "multiview"
Saorsat arial and fixings.
Connection to 2No. tv's
Saorsat set-top receiver (Current tv not saorsat compatable)
Required co-axial cable
And labour.

Not a clue if good or bad. If it is the price so be it, I will pay gladly for it but just dont like paying over odds. Not possible to do it DIY as wife wants it done yesterday:o

Any thoughts welcome.

Dub12Dave

You are getting ripped off there rayjdav have a look here http://www.tvtrade.ie/ just to give you an example, there are also many more sites and many are mentioned in this section already.

recyclebin

I think your mixing up Saorsat with Saorview.

Saorview is what you get through an aerial.

Saorsat doesn't exist yet and will be available via a different type of satellite dish.

I'd say you could buy all the equipment for €200 so labour is another €200

rayjdav

Sorry, typo. meant saor view.
Thought it was a bit much, and I know nothing about it, but have installed the FTA myself and know not rocket science tbh..

Maybe time for another phone call to compare..
Cheers people

Sponge Bob

You may have perfect digital reception on rabbits ears where you once had crap analogue, where in Waterford??

jaggiebunnet

Definitely sounds like a rip off - going on my own experience if you can pick up the channels with rabbit ears all you need is the right aerial (around 15 euro) in the attic or roof and a set top box (currently around 90-100 euro I think) or something like Sam Russell is selling on adverts.ie (got one of these, 56 euro delivered absolutely perfect). On top of that you also need your aerial wire obviously, which is only a few quid with fittings.

St Senan

rayjdav wrote: »

Sorry, typo. meant saor view.
Thought it was a bit much, and I know nothing about it, but have installed the FTA myself and know not rocket science tbh..

Maybe time for another phone call to compare..
Cheers people

€80-€100 for certified Saorview receiver. €120-€150 for Aerial installed.
Mary Curtis of Saorview has outlined the prices to us Installers last Tuesday.
You should not have to pay more than €250 for a complete Supply and Install of Certified Saorview equipment.
http://www.saorview.ie/products-retailers/find-a-retailer/?county=29&btsumbit=Go#

ted1

wow that's still over priced. An aerial should be much cheaper. Especially as it can be done by non qualified sparks. Thus opening the market to a much wider employment market.

Sponge Bob

Job done properly, outdoors aerial , €120-150 is a fair price. Not in an attic of course. You let them cowboys at your chimney there Ted

Zardoz

rayjdav wrote: »

Includes:
New FTA dish "multiview"

Why do you need a new dish ?

rayjdav

Zardoz wrote: »

Why do you need a new dish ?

He had said that because of the "multiview", it would be needed for the increased useage

Have decided to throw my own hand at it as from tvtrade.ie I can see how much the individual items required are and my old friend google, I should be up and running in about 6months or so:D:D:D

Zardoz

rayjdav wrote: »

He had said that because of the "multiview", it would be needed for the increased useage

:rolleyes:
Multiview ,wtf ,that installer sounds like a right cowboy.
If you want to watch satellite in a few different rooms then you only need replace the lnb with a quad lnb,no need for a new dish at all.
Perhaps he was talking about a multifeed dish pointed at 28e and 9e (Saorsat) but I highly doubt.

AstralTV

ted1 wrote: »

wow that's still over priced. An aerial should be much cheaper. Especially as it can be done by non qualified sparks. Thus opening the market to a much wider employment market.

once you factor in insurance, diesel, equipment & Vat, €120-150 is a very fair price, plus RTE recommend aerials to be mounted outside,

as for non qualified sparks, do you mean that everybody who is not an electrician is capable of safely & correctly lashing an aerial to a chimney?

NewHillel

ted1 wrote: »

wow that's still over priced. An aerial should be much cheaper. Especially as it can be done by non qualified sparks. Thus opening the market to a much wider employment market.

That's a bit harsh. Installers have to make a living, too.

ted1

what i'm saying is electricians are professionals who have to be qualified in their trade. A aerial installer can be trained to carry out 90% installs in half a day. Rte may recomend an outdoor arial but for most urban areas a much smaller indoor arial would do. But the customer will still be sold a roof mounted one.
I realise people may be up pet over this but i speak the truth. What hourly rate do installers charge and how long does the average install take.

St Senan

There has been many a thread closed because of the Tit for Tat brought into them from posters who claim Electricans/Sparks are qualified to do this and that and are professionaly trained at this and that. Thats what's wrong Electricians should stay at Electrical work and leave the other jobs such as Satellite dishes/Aerials,BB/Phone and Alarms/CCTV to the guys who work in these Businesses.

AstralTV

ted1 wrote: »

what i'm saying is electricians are professionals who have to be qualified in their trade. A aerial installer can be trained to carry out 90% installs in half a day. Rte may recomend an outdoor arial but for most urban areas a much smaller indoor arial would do. But the customer will still be sold a roof mounted one.
I realise people may be up pet over this but i speak the truth. What hourly rate do installers charge and how long does the average install take.

many reasons not to put an aerial in the loft read,

http://www.wrightsaerials.tv/articles/whatsat-201007.pdf

its takes a bit longer than half a day to teach any one how to set up ladders / roof ladders, safely, use a harness etc, use a spectrum analyser, choose the correct type of aerial, amps, etc,
splice a lashing wire, correct way to get a cable into a building etc,etc,

Sponge Bob

Very good article/installation guide on attics that.

If all that does not work....and the aerial shown is a very good one...then there is no choice but to hire in the pros and do a chimney or gable install. That will cost €150 of course.

ted1

its takes a bit longer than half a day to teach any one how to set up ladders / roof ladders, safely, use a harness etc, use a spectrum analyser, choose the correct type of aerial, amps, etc,
splice a lashing wire, correct way to get a cable into a building etc,etc,

come on we're not talking about house wivies. there is a lot of people out there who can use a ladder. harness etc,etc.


As I said 90% of jobs are easy, and there are many websites available which tell people what type arial too use for there house location.

no one in Dublin should really need such an expensive set up. most of Dublin can recieve a good signal with an indoor arial. yet they'll be charged €150 cause "thats what RTE recomend"

AstralTV

ted1 wrote: »

come on we're not talking about house wivies. there is a lot of people out there who can use a ladder. harness etc,etc.


As I said 90% of jobs are easy, and there are many websites available which tell people what type arial too use for there house location.

no one in Dublin should really need such an expensive set up. most of Dublin can recieve a good signal with an indoor arial. yet they'll be charged €150 cause "thats what RTE recomend"

out of interest what price would you recomend to install a roof mounted aerial if you were running a legit business with overheads etc ?

lucernarian

If a bit of common sense is used and one has a good idea of where the aerial should be pointing and if it's easy to access, I see no problems with an attic-mounted aerial for Saorview. Lofts cause umpteen different problems with analogue, many that are almost completely mitigated with DTT.

Mr. Wright would write a guide about discouraging the use of loft aerials, wouldn't he?:) With scant commentary on the various downsides of having an aerial on a chimney or even just outside. An aerial cannot last as long outdoors as it can under the shelter of a roof even with the best of gear and intentions. The number of Jaybeam aerials around Drogheda with missing elements is testament to that. A chimney mounted aerial in particular poses a small lightning strike risk. My poor neighbour suffered some TV damage after his Chorus MMDS aerial was partially struck (I forget the term for the type of impact but static charges can strongly affect the vicinity of a lightning strike such as the boy who was "struck" by lightning in Terenure, Dublin during the November snows). And that was with a 3ft pole! It's not a common occurrence I suspect.

EMI is quite capable of interfering with an outdoors aerial and that's based on personal experience with a freezer's thermostat switching and it in the path of the aerial, albeit coming from a 60 degree angle from below. The roof and ceiling will help block EMI from the most common causes in a house but relocating an aerial to say the opposite end of the house can make a bigger difference even if it's in the attic. This point does apply more to bungalows more than other buildings however.

People also have a strange habit of putting up 10ft poles with large hirschmanns on top, all strapped to a wee chimney, in my part of the world. I'd love to see a guide for those who want to put up an aerial outside, starting with how you never ever ever drill into a chimney to fix anything to it!

Those points are being made out of balance for some of the commentary that happens on boards. I think every house has its own particular engineering challenges and we all should remember those times when something is "overengineered" as much as we think of the cowboys selling "freeview FTA" (only 399.99) for a contract aerial and a box to plug into the existing sky dish:p Both instances can be a waste of money while still ostensibly working as expected.

Still, many houses won't even need to enter the loft with saorview. My experience from a wide number of locations across Dublin suggests that a southerly facing window and whatever poor indoor aerial argos sell actually works reliably for Saorview from Three Rock. There's plenty of reports here to support this observation too. If €2 gets me a reliable DTT signal, I won't pay more. If it doesn't work for whatever reason, it was worth the try sure.

As for the OP, €400 is a fair price if the UK channels from FTA satellite are indeed being installed too.

rayjdav

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

As for the OP, €400 is a fair price if the UK channels from FTA satellite are indeed being installed too.

Regardless of the interesting points noted on here by some, €400 inc. FTA is/was a mad quote imho.
I did manage to get it done, by an experienced local installer, and I did not pay anywhere near that..

Ferguson Combi receiver, outdoor arial, quad LNB, and all the associated bits and bobs to get all up and running, perfectly I may add, with a few TV's linked up so no more bloody Tinypops for me and the wife:D, all done in about 2 hours and not one complaint.

I had checked all prices of equipment on tvtrade.ie so I know I got a good job at a very fair price. He could have fecked arial to Local mast and left it but said Mt. Leinster had stronger signal so, on top of it all, honesty and pride in what he actually did.

As I said in the OP, I will gladly pay for a good job to be done, at a fair and reasonable rate, but I have found that where the confusion seems to lie is in certain "professionals" understanding of the word reasonable.

Basically, after the initial comments re the quote and their opinions, I made a few other phone calls and basically saved myself over €150. Beauty of boards.ie, fast becoming an Irish Institution:D:D

Sponge Bob

So you paid a pro €120ish for just the external aerial bit. Now just imagine the damage a cowboy would have done for only €20 less and in much longer than 2 hours....plus all the excuses and BS????

You evidently did learn one thing off boards, sort out Freesat and Saorview and Receivers in ONE go and it works out cheaper in the long run!!

rayjdav

Sponge Bob wrote: »

So you paid a pro €120ish for just the external aerial bit. Now just imagine the damage a cowboy would have done for only €20 less and in much longer than 2 hours....plus all the excuses and BS????

You evidently did learn one thing off boards, sort out Freesat and Saorview and Receivers in ONE go and it works out cheaper in the long run!!

Sponge Bob,
€120 for external arial bit? I work it out that, less all the equipment, he prob made €50-€60 for his few hours work. As I said, have already cross checked prices on tvtrade.ie so I know what's installed and price of it all. Initial quotes were not for the same spec therefore labour would have been much higher......
Dont get me wrong, I am not saying that the other people who quoted were "cowboys" by any means but, their prices for the same work were a bit Celtic Tiger rates so say the least..;)

Sponge Bob

The main thing to remember is that Saorview is now available with a strong signal in EVERY large town in Ireland excepting perhaps Letterkenny Drogheda and Navan. This would not apply if there is a big tower block between you and the transmitter.

Any installer who seems to want to install a massive outdoor rig in any of those towns is _evidently_ a cowboy.

In rural areas, of course, it is different. Well done for shopping around and remember there is no harm naming the good guys in threads like these