Which mount suits your roof?

Why mounts designed overseas don't fit Australian houses

Most mounting hardware packed with satellite internet kits is designed for North American houses: timber-framed walls clad in siding, shingle roofs, and eaves that rarely extend more than 100 mm past the wall. Australian houses are built differently. The common suburban house is brick veneer — a single leaf of brick standing in front of a timber or steel frame, with a cavity between the two. The brick carries its own weight and nothing else. Anchors into it will hold a mount, but it isn't the structural wall the overseas instructions assume, and lag screws made for timber studs have nothing to bite into. Eaves are typically 450 mm on project homes and 600 mm on older brick veneer, and the gutter adds another 100–140 mm beyond the fascia. An arm designed for a 100 mm overhang can't get a dish past that. Roofs are concrete or terracotta tile, or metal sheet, not shingle — so a roof mount that relies on sealant tape against a shingle course has nothing to seal to, and a tile can't simply be screwed through. The mount in the box often doesn't fit the house. The mounts that do fit are the ones the Australian antenna and satellite trade has been using for decades.

The gutter mount, explained

The gutter mount is the standard method for satellite TV dishes on tiled roofs in Australia and has been an approved method for pay-TV and fixed-wireless installations for years. It stands above the gutter line on a short galvanised mast and is fixed — not to the gutter or the fascia — to two rafters or truss tails under the first course of tiles. Working from a ladder, the installer lifts the first row of tiles, fastens the telescopic arms across the rafters (they adjust to the usual 450–625 mm spacing), and lays the tiles back over the arms. Nothing is cut and no hole goes through the roof skin. Because the fixing is at the edge of the roof, the width of the eave is irrelevant: the mast is already outboard of it. Because the mast rises above the gutter, the dish sits above the roof edge with open sky around it. And because it all happens from a ladder, nobody walks on the roof — no cracked terracotta, no footprints on a metal surface, no fall-from-height exposure. Its limits are firm: tiled roofs only, since metal sheet can't be lifted to reach the rafters; roof pitch up to 30°; roof height up to 8.5 m; timber frames, or steel frames with an adapter kit; standard versions rated to wind class N4/C2 and cyclone-rated versions to C3. Steeper, taller or more exposed than that and the job moves to a through-tile mount or an engineered solution.

Metal sheet roofs

Metal roofs come in two families, and the mounting answer changes between them. Pierced-fix profiles — corrugated and the common trapezoidal sheets — are held down with screws through the sheet, so a roof mount can be fixed the same way: through the crests, never the pans, into the battens or purlins beneath, with sealed washers. It needs roof access and leaves sealed penetrations. Concealed-fix profiles — the clip-locked and standing-seam sheets on many newer homes — must not be pierced; the clip system and the roofing warranty both depend on it. Those roofs take clamp mounts that grip the seams and are specified for the profile. On either type, a house with a fascia and gutter has a third option that avoids the roof entirely: an extended-reach fascia mount, fixed through the fascia into the rafter tails, which clears the gutter and goes in from a ladder. The tile-roof gutter mount doesn't apply here; there is no course of tiles to lift.

The eave reach problem

A wall mount has to carry the dish past the eave and the gutter so its riser can stand the dish above the roof edge. The distance to clear is simply eave width plus gutter projection. A 450 mm eave with a quad gutter is 450 + 115 = 565 mm. The arm supplied with most satellite internet kits is designed for a 100 mm overhang. Aftermarket long arms reach roughly 430–660 mm, which will get a dish past a 450 mm eave but puts a long cantilever on the wall fixings — and on brick veneer those fixings are in a single leaf of brick. A 600 mm eave (715 mm with the gutter) is beyond any arm. The selector runs this arithmetic for your house and shows it. The exception is a gable wall with no eave and no gutter, where a wall mount near the top of the wall works exactly as designed.

Check the corrosion zone for your wall fixings →

Wall types and anchors

Brick veneer: anchor into the brick itself, never a mortar joint, using sleeve or chemical anchors sized for the arm's leverage; the cavity behind means there is no timber to reach. Double brick and solid masonry: sleeve or chemical anchors — the best substrate for a wall mount. Weatherboard and fibre cement: the arm must land on studs; the cladding alone won't hold it. Rendered lightweight cladding (aerated concrete panels, foam-backed render): only the anchor type the cladding manufacturer specifies — standard masonry anchors crush or pull out. Steel sheds: fix to girts or purlins, not the sheet. Stone: chemical anchors, generally fine. On every wall the fixing grade follows the corrosion zone — see the wind and corrosion lookup.

When a ground pole is the right answer

Where the house can't offer a clear view of the required sky — trees to the south, a taller neighbouring roof, a verandah roof all the way around — or where nobody is allowed on the roof, a ground pole is the clean answer. A galvanised pole is set in a concrete footing on the clear-sky side of the yard, and the cable runs back to the house in UV-stable conduit, buried where it crosses lawn or garden. It's common on rural properties and acreage, and it keeps the dish serviceable from the ground. Keep it clear of mowers, vehicles and play equipment, and allow for cable length: the run from pole to router has to fit the cable supplied or an approved extension.

Apartments and strata

In a unit the roof is common property and usually off limits, so the options are a balcony or railing clamp, or a wall mount where you have a private external wall. Both normally need strata or body-corporate approval, and most by-laws expect non-penetrating fixings that leave no mark on common property. The balcony also has to face the right sky: a LEO internet dish needs the southern sky, a satellite TV dish needs the direction of its satellite, and no balcony can be turned to face the other way. Compact terminals suit balconies best; a standard flat panel or a 65 cm dish on a railing is at the limit of what clamps and by-laws tolerate.

Wind and corrosion ratings

Every mount carries a wind rating in the same notation as house wind classes — N1 to N6 for non-cyclonic regions, C1 to C4 for cyclonic — and the fixings have to suit the corrosion zone, which depends mostly on distance from breaking surf. The selector takes both from the wind and corrosion lookup, or assumes a typical class from your wind region if you haven't run it. The mount ratings used here are written for 65 cm and 80 cm satellite TV dishes; a standard LEO flat panel has less projected area and less weight than a 65 cm dish, so those ratings are applied to it by analogy, not under a certification scheme. The installer confirms the mount and fixings on site.

Frequently asked questions