Pixellation

I've had one quote so far for £340. I'll be getting other quotes, of course. The house is tall (four storeys). The quote says

Take down and remove all the old redundant equipment and tidy up the existing cables currently in use. Supply and installation of one new high definition digital tv aerial system with all necessary brackets and mast. Install one new tv aerial point to the first floor lounge. All the cables that are run will be discretely secured or clip to the property. All holes drilled will be sealed with silicone sealant.

It looks to me as if he is intending to use the current cabling. If so, is that likely to be a false economy?
 
In my opinion, yes unless it is relatively new cable and especially as you suspect it may have been damaged by the scaffolding. If the cable were to fail in a couple of years, how much will it cost to have someone replace it compared to him doing it at the same time now?

Also there is no such thing as a "high definition digital TV aerial system" All TV aerials are capable of receiving high definition and digital TV. Whether or not they can receive all the frequencies from the transmitter is a different story. Some TV aerials are more robust than others and some may be a different design (log periodic), but there is nothing special about any aerial that makes them HD/digital It's all advertising hype.
 
How long has the cable been there, exposed to all that weather? How long do you want it to be there? How do you know there isn't already water penetration causing some of the signal loss?
 
Yes, that was my feeling. The guy is on the Which Trusted Trader list and on an Islington good trader list (forget the actual name).

Obviously reusing the cable saves money, but he might, at least, have quoted two prices, one with new cable and one without.

Not actually specifying the aeriaor even its type I can understand. After all, how often do customers know about technicalities. I wouldn't even have leard of log periodic if you folks hadn't mentioned it. But nowadays one can google for info, so it is always worth having detail.

We'll see what the other quote is like.
 
The guy is on the Which Trusted Trader list and on an Islington good trader list (forget the actual name).
We had a lot of works done when we moved here a couple of years ago. Being new to the area I used Checkatrade to find services. Out of 4 (different trades/jobs) 2 turned out to be cowboys. So probably no better than pot-luck for picking a trader.

A good, large aerial and brackets will retail about £100 and a typical contract set £20-£30, so if he's not replacing the cable anything over that is for 'labour' and extras like your additional (or is it just replacing existing?) outlet.
 
We are lucky up in our neck of the woods, a small town of 15,000 or so, the locals all know who to use for various trades and it's not a problem to get a job done properly at a fair price. The grape vine soon sorts out the upstarts who try to undercut.

@danco, such is the state of Health & Safety these days, it is rare to get someone to be up four storeys without scaffolding, which generally costs more than the job, unless access is straightforward and the tradesman has his own tower. His liability insurance has also to be factored in-not cheap for an aerial installer.
 
it is rare to get someone to be up four storeys without scaffolding
No kidding. The council a few miles up the road has erected scaffolding all around a street of two-storey flats just to clean the gutters out!
 
No kidding. The council a few miles up the road has erected scaffolding all around a street of two-storey flats just to clean the gutters out!

No excuse for that. Our window cleaner does our two/three storey gutters with a special suction machine, long extension and a curved end. Immensely powerful.
 
Akshullly, just been up there again and they have replaced all the gutters and soffits (or whatever those bits of roof are called)... so fair enough.
 
The bits facing outwards that the gutters fix to are fascias and the horizontal bits underneath are the soffits.
 
Now had a new aerial fitted. Log periodic, WF100 cable. As two of us (there are three flats in the house) needed a new TV aerial, and we have a strong signal (north London) we saved a fair bit by going for one aerial and a splitter. All seems fine, thugh of course it's only be running a few hours.

Installer was a Which Trusted Trader and also a member of CAI, the relevant professional body.

Thanks for all the advice, folks.
 
Now had a new aerial fitted. Log periodic, WF100 cable. As two of us (there are three flats in the house) needed a new TV aerial, and we have a strong signal (north London) we saved a fair bit by going for one aerial and a splitter.
That sounds like the correct solution to me (it's not the one you usually see, which is multiple aerials all too close together, one per flat).
Did they come up with this or did you guide them?
I hope it's been properly earth-bonded though at the splitter - that is the disadvantage of a system like that, although it's not difficult to do.
Presumably you've now got a full set of muxes? Was it reasonable compared to the other quote? (I wouldn't have had them!)
 
Actually I'm wrong, it was CT100 cable, not WF100.

Yes, it was their solution. I wouldn't know about earth bonding, it wasn't specified, and for that matter I don't know where the splitter is.

They seem to have made a connection (I haven't seen exactly where) between the new cable and the end of the old one outside my window. That saved them having to come inside through a new hole, but I don't really like it.

Yes, all the muxes show up.

Price seemed reasonable (I checked some sites giving approximate prices), given that it is a tall building and in London. They only give a one year guarantee, but I think that's usual, and anyway if it's going to fail it would probably do so early.

They are VAT registered and still came in a few pounds cheaper for the whole setup compared with the other guy's quote for just my aerial. The other guy, sole trader and not VAT registered, did give a five-year guarantee (though he didn't tell me that until after I had made the decision), and when I asked about the cable - his quote seemed to say he was reusing the old one - he said that he would use new cable and it would be WF100.
 
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