DStv Installation in Beyers Park, Boksburg

The one genuine advantage of a taller building is line of sight. A dish that has to look past a neighbour's roof, a boundary wall or a mature tree often finds a clean path from an upper-storey wall when it could not from ground-floor height. That can turn a marginal installation into a solid one without any exotic equipment.

The cost is access. Working at height needs the ladder properly footed on level ground, a mounting position reachable without leaning out, and fixings into something structural rather than into a fascia board or a single skin of brick. Where a position is not safely reachable, we will say so and find another one, even if the other one is technically the second-best spot. There is no signal reading worth an injury.

Once the dish is up high, the cable has to come down to wherever the TVs are, and that route wants deciding before the dish goes on the wall rather than after. Dropping inside a cavity, coming down through the roof space to a ceiling above the lounge, or running in conduit down an outside corner are all reasonable answers; which is best depends on the house, and on how many points you want now versus later.

It is worth thinking one step ahead here. Pulling a second cable at the same time as the first costs very little extra while everything is open and the ladder is already up; adding it a year later means repeating the whole access exercise. If there is any chance of a TV in another room, say so at the quoting stage.

Every hole made in a roof or a wall is a potential leak, and the Highveld storm season finds them. We prefer a wall bracket to a roof penetration wherever the signal allows it, and where a roof fixing is genuinely the only option, it is sealed properly rather than smeared with silicone and hoped over.

Tile, sheet and concrete roofs each need a different approach, and a mast that is too long for its bracket will flex in wind and pull the dish off alignment no matter how well it was aimed on the day. We size the mount for the dish rather than using whatever is in the van.

Tell us how many storeys the house has and which side you think the dish should go on when you get in touch, and send a photo from the street if you can — it lets us bring the right ladder first time.