Satellite dishes in a town full of foreign owners
Roda de Berà has a quiet centre around the old village and a coastal strip packed with private estates: Costa Daurada and Roc de Sant Gaietà, Berà Mar, El Francaset and La Barquera. A good share of those homes are second homes, and many belong to families from other countries. That is why the satellite dish is one of the jobs we do most here.
The usual situations:
- A dish that stopped working over the winter. Wind and a rusting bracket shift the dish just enough to lose the satellite. We realign it with a meter, not by trial and error.
- A tired LNB. Salt air punishes the electronics on the arm of the dish. If the signal is weak although the aim is right, the LNB is usually the culprit.
- Several televisions in the house. With the right LNB, or a small multiswitch, the satellite signal reaches more than one room.
- Buildings with a dish on every balcony. In residents’ associations we put forward a communal satellite installation distributed by multiswitch.
The full service is set out under TV aerials and satellite dishes.
Terrestrial television on the Baix Gaià coast
For terrestrial television the faults look much like the rest of the coast: old aerials that were never fully adapted after the second digital dividend, overloaded amplifiers and cable spoiled by damp. On the terraced estates, where houses sit at different heights on the slope, the position on the hillside also changes how the signal arrives.
Our way of dealing with it is to measure first. We check level and quality (MER) at the aerial and at the socket, so we know whether to work on the roof or on the network inside the house. In plenty of homes, changing a couple of connectors and setting the gain properly brings every channel back without touching the aerial.
The village centre: small residents’ associations
Away from the beach, in the centre of Roda de Berà, you mostly find village houses and low blocks whose residents live here all year. There we are called out for small communal aerial systems that fail in one or two flats, new sockets after a refurbishment, and entry systems that have stopped releasing the door. In those cases we check the whole installation, because a fault in one flat often starts in the shared distribution box. If it is the entry system, that is covered under door entry systems.
Keeping an eye on a second home from afar
People who spend months away tend to ask us about CCTV. We fit IP cameras at entrances, on terraces and in gardens, with an NVR recorder inside the property and access from your phone. We help you frame each camera so it does not record the street or your neighbours’ land, and put up the notice telling people the area is monitored. If the connection in the flat is weak we look at that on the same visit, because a camera is not much use without a decent network; you can see how to improve it under wifi solutions.
How we deal with a fault in Roda de Berà
We listen, measure with a field meter and pin down the fault. From there we put together a free quote with no obligation: what to change, what to keep and why. We do the work with materials meant for the coast and the open air, and before we leave we check the signal and make sure everything is tuned in.
If you are not in Roda de Berà when the fault appears, we can arrange access with a neighbour, the property manager or whoever holds your keys, and send you a summary of the work afterwards.
Getting to Roda de Berà from Salou
From Salou it takes us about 40 minutes, following the coast northwards. We cover the centre, Roc de Sant Gaietà, Costa Daurada, Berà Mar, El Francaset, La Barquera and the rest of the municipality. On the same run we look after Creixell and, a little closer in, Torredembarra.