Most of the Starlink work we get called out to isn't a new install. It's a re-do.

Someone buys the kit — direct from Starlink, or off the shelf at a big-box store — puts it up over a weekend, and it works. Mostly. Then the video calls start dropping at the same time every afternoon, or the speed is fine on the deck and useless in the back bedroom, and nobody can work out why. Four things account for almost all of it, and three of them are decided before the dish ever comes out of the box.

The short answer

• Obstructions. The dish needs a clear view of a large patch of northern sky — not just "the sky".
• Mount choice. Starlink sells several and they are not interchangeable. The roof decides which one.
• The cable run. The connector isn't standard Ethernet, so you can't extend it with a spare patch lead.
• Router placement. Where the router lands decides your Wi-Fi, and the utility room is usually the wrong place.

1. The dish can see the sky — just not enough of it

In the continental US a Starlink dish needs a clear view toward the north. The constellation isn't permitted to transmit toward the equator, where the geostationary satellites sit, so the dish looks north-northwest to north-northeast. Which means the tree that matters is the one on your north side — and in the foothills that is almost always a ponderosa nobody thought about.

It also needs a wide cone of sky rather than a gap: roughly a hundred degrees. That is why a spot that looks open from the ground still fails. You're checking for a hole in the canopy when the dish needs most of the ceiling.

The frustrating part is what a partial obstruction does. A tree doesn't block the signal outright, it weakens it. The dish sees a satellite, begins handing over to it, and the handover fails. You get a dropout of a few seconds — long enough to end a Teams call, short enough that a speed test five minutes later looks perfect. Which is exactly why people conclude that Starlink is fine and their laptop is broken.

Use the obstruction checker in the Starlink app before you commit to a position, and give it time. It only records a blockage when a satellite actually passes behind the obstruction, so a reading taken twenty minutes after setup tells you very little. Leave it running for a day and then look.

If the reading is poor, the order of fixes is: get the dish higher, move it a few metres, then trim. Height solves more than people expect — a pole that clears the roofline and the first stand of trees often takes a marginal site to a clean one. Trimming works too, but you're on a two-or-three-year cycle before you're back up there again.

2. The mount is wrong for the roof

Starlink sells several mounts and they are not interchangeable. Which one you need depends on the roof, and getting it wrong means either a compromised aim or a hole in the wrong place.

• Pivot mount — for slanted, shingled roofs. The usual choice on a Front Range pitched roof.
• Ridgeline mount — sits on the ridge of a gable roof under ballast weights, no drilling. Rated for slopes under about 45 degrees, and the right answer when you'd rather not put a fastener through the roof at all.
• Wall mount — an exterior wall near the top of a gable or fascia, accommodating up to about a four-inch overhang.
• Pipe adapter — for an existing pole, roughly 31 to 63.5 mm. Metal pipe only, not PVC.
• X-frame base — ground-level or a temporary setup.

Two things go wrong most often. The first is drilling into a shingle roof without flashing the penetration properly — fine until the first spring melt, and then not fine at all. The second is choosing a mount for cable convenience rather than for the aim: a wall mount on the south side of the house because the route was easier, on a dish that needs to look north.

3. The cable run is the part people underestimate

The connector on a current Starlink dish is not RJ45. You cannot make up a longer run with a spare patch cable and a coupler out of a drawer, and this is the single most common thing we get called about. We've had a kit sitting in a box for weeks because the original cable had been cut to length by someone who reasonably assumed it terminated like Cat6.

Officially you're choosing between the cable in the box and a 45-metre replacement from Starlink. That covers most houses. What it doesn't cover neatly is the case where the dish has to sit well away from the building to clear the trees — which is exactly the situation in the canyons.

There's a second problem specific to older homes up here. Getting from the roof to wherever the router needs to live means finding a route through the structure, and in a 1970s foothills house that route is rarely obvious. This is ordinary low-voltage work — the same thing we do running structured cabling — but it's the part a general contractor mid-remodel usually hasn't scoped, which is why we get called by builders about as often as by homeowners.

4. The router ends up in the wrong room

The kit's cable runs from the dish to the router, so the router tends to land wherever the cable was easiest to bring in: a garage, a mechanical room, a cupboard behind two block walls. Then the Wi-Fi is poor in the house and everyone blames the satellite.

Starlink's router is a competent piece of kit, but it is one access point — and one access point in a garage will not cover a 4,000-square-foot house with plaster walls and a walk-out basement. Nor will a mesh kit bought to paper over it. Mesh nodes that carry their backhaul over the same congested Wi-Fi inherit the problem they were bought to solve.

The right answer is usually to treat the two jobs separately: Starlink is the connection, and the house network is its own piece of work. Bring the dish's cable to a sensible point, then run wired access points out to where people actually work. That's what we'd do on a fibre or cable connection too. Starlink doesn't change it.

What about condos and HOAs?

A good share of the Starlink calls we take come from condos — third floor of a four-storey building, a balcony facing the wrong way, a roof nobody is certain you're allowed on.

Two things worth knowing before you buy anything. A balcony install often fails an obstruction check even when the view looks open, because the building above you removes the top of the sky. And roof access is usually a permissions question rather than a technical one, so it's worth asking the HOA or the building manager first. We're happy to look at a building and tell you whether the roof is the only realistic option before you commit.

Do you actually need an installer?

Not always, and we'd rather say so.

A single-storey house with an open northern aspect, a safely accessible roof and a router going into a central room is a genuine weekend job. Starlink designed the kit for exactly that, and it works.

It's worth a call when any of these are true:

• You're in trees, in a canyon, or against a north-facing slope
• The dish needs a pole, needs to sit well away from the house, or the roof isn't one you should be walking on
• The cable has to get through a finished structure
• Wi-Fi needs to reach more than one floor, an outbuilding or a detached shop
• You're mid-build or mid-remodel and want it run inside the walls rather than tacked on afterwards
• It's already up and dropping, and you want it diagnosed rather than guessed at

We install across Northern Colorado, and Starlink tends to make the most sense in the places where wired service doesn't reach — the Boulder County mountain communities like Ward, Allenspark, Jamestown and Lyons, and further north around Red Feather Lakes, Livermore and Estes Park.

Frequently asked questions

Can you install a Starlink kit I already bought?

Yes. A lot of the Starlink work we do is on hardware the customer already owns, whether it came direct from Starlink or off a shelf.

Which direction does a Starlink dish need to face in Colorado?

North, broadly — anywhere from north-northwest to north-northeast. Obstructions to the south of the dish matter far less than the ones to the north.

Will trees stop Starlink from working?

Usually they interrupt it rather than stop it. Partial obstruction causes short, repeated dropouts instead of a clean outage, which is why the problem often isn't spotted until weeks after installation.

How long is the Starlink cable, and can I extend it?

The kit ships with a cable and Starlink sells a 45-metre replacement. The connector is not standard Ethernet, so you cannot simply add a patch lead and a coupler to make up the distance.

Can Starlink be installed on a condo or apartment?

Often, yes — but balconies frequently fail obstruction checks because the building above blocks the upper sky, so it's worth resolving roof access with the HOA or building manager before buying hardware.

Do you service the mountain communities?

Yes. Ward, Allenspark, Jamestown, Lyons, Red Feather Lakes, Livermore and Estes Park are among the areas where Starlink is most often the right answer.

Getting it looked at

If your Starlink is up and dropping, or still boxed because the cable run stopped you, tell us where the house is and what's above it — that's usually enough for us to say what's involved. Request an estimate, or see what a Starlink installation covers.