Getting Starlink out to where the sky is
On a wooded lot the dish cannot go on the house, so it goes on a pole out in the open and the cable has to get back. That is a trench and a footing, not a satellite job. Here is how deep, how far, and what is buried in the way.
We bury telecom conduit at about 18 inches, and shallower in rocky ground. Depth is about shovels, not frost, because a data cable does not freeze the way a water line does. The Starlink cable is not rated for direct burial, so it goes inside conduit. The box holds 49 feet of cable and the longest official run SpaceX sells is 147 feet, which is the real limit on how far the dish can sit from the house. The dish faces north, not south like your old DirecTV dish, so the trees that matter are the ones you never worried about. And in New Jersey a homeowner counts as an excavator, so the free 811 markout applies to your own yard, 3 to 10 business days before you dig.
The five numbers
| Constraint | Number | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Burial depth | About 18 inches | Our normal depth for telecom conduit, and shallower in rocky ground where 18 inches would mean hammering ledge for a low-voltage cable. This is our practice, not a code minimum. Unlike a water service, which New Jersey requires at 42 inches of cover so it cannot freeze, nothing about a data cable cares about the frost line. Depth here is about protecting it from shovels, tillers, aeration and fence posts. |
| Cable in the box | 49 feet (15 m) | What ships with a Standard dish. That reaches the roof or the wall. It does not reach the clearing at the back of the property, which is the whole problem on a wooded lot. |
| Longest official cable | 147 feet (45 m) | The longest replacement run SpaceX sells for the Standard dish. This is the real constraint on the whole job: wherever the clear sky is, it has to be within about 147 feet of where the router lives, and that distance is measured along the actual path, including the drop down the pole and the climb into the house. |
| Direct burial | Not rated for it | The cable is weatherproof and UV resistant for running along a wall. It is not a direct burial cable. Underground it belongs in conduit, which also means it can be replaced later without digging the yard a second time. |
| Which way it faces | North, not south | In the northern hemisphere the dish leans north. Your old DirecTV dish pointed south at the equator, so the spot on the roof where satellite TV worked for twenty years tells you nothing about where Starlink will work. The trees that matter are the ones on the north side. |
Depth is our own practice as of 2026-09-01, not a code minimum. Cable lengths and the direct burial rating are SpaceX specifications and can change with hardware generations, so confirm them against your own kit before you dig a hole based on them.
The trees on the north side are the ones that matter
Almost every homeowner we talk to has this backwards, and it is not their fault. Satellite TV in this country points south, at a belt of satellites parked over the equator, and that is the direction people have spent thirty years thinking about. Starlink does not work that way. Its satellites orbit in a shell inclined around 53 degrees, so from our latitude the busy part of the sky is north, usually north northwest or north northeast.
Two practical consequences. The old dish mount on the south face of the roof is probably useless to you. And the stand of trees on the north side, the one that was never in anybody's way, is now the thing deciding whether this service works at all. Run the obstruction check in the app from the spot you are actually considering, and if you can, do it in summer, because bare branches in February block far less sky than the same branches in June. A dish that tests clean in winter and starts dropping out at the end of May is one of the most common disappointments with this service, and it is entirely predictable.
147 feet is not 147 feet
The longest cable SpaceX sells for the Standard dish is 45 meters, about 147 feet, and people plan as though that is the radius of a circle drawn on the lawn. It is not. The cable has to climb from the router to wherever it leaves the house, drop into the trench, run the length of the trench, come back up, and then climb the pole to the dish. On a typical setup that overhead eats twenty to thirty feet before the cable has crossed any ground at all.
So measure the path, not the distance. If the clear spot is 130 feet away across the yard, you are probably fine. If it is 145, you are not, and the fix is usually to move the router nearer the exit point rather than to hunt for a longer cable. If the only open sky on the property is genuinely out of reach, that is worth knowing before anybody digs anything, and it is a five minute conversation rather than a site visit.
Conduit, for the second reason more than the first
The obvious argument for conduit is protection: the cable is not rated for direct burial, and bare in the ground it sits in moisture, rubs on stone and interests rodents. True, and reason enough on its own.
The better argument is the one people appreciate three years later. A cable in conduit can be pulled out and replaced without opening the yard a second time. Hardware generations change, connectors change, something eventually gets damaged, and when that day comes the difference between a conduit and a direct burial is the difference between an afternoon and another trench across your lawn. While the machine is already there, an extra empty conduit in the same trench costs very little and is the cheapest thing you will ever be glad you did. This is the same logic that governs how we run fiber and telecom conduit for the carriers.
What is already buried between the house and the clearing
This is the part homeowners underestimate, and it is the reason a Starlink trench is not a rental trencher weekend. The route from the house out to open ground is the same corridor everything else already uses, because everything else also runs out from the house. Gas service, electric service, the water line, the septic tank and its field, the well line, invisible fence, sprinkler zones, low-voltage landscape lighting. Some of those are locatable by 811 and some of them are not, which is exactly why somebody has to think about it rather than start the machine.
A homeowner counts as an excavator under New Jersey One Call rules, so the free 811 call applies to your own property. Place it 3 to 10 business days ahead. Where a mark lands near your path, the rule under N.J.A.C. 14:2-3.3(a)1 is that no mechanized equipment works within two feet of it until the line has been exposed by hand, which means part of your trench gets dug with a shovel no matter who does the work. The colors and letters on the paint are explained on the markout colors page, and the private lines nobody marks, sprinklers, dog fence, landscape lighting, are the ones that actually get hit.
What we do, and what we do not
We are an excavation contractor. We are not a Starlink dealer and we do not want to sound like one. We do not sell the equipment, set up or touch your account, configure the router, or work on your roof. If the dish works from the house, use Starlink professional installation and keep your money; they sell it for the standard case and include it on some plans, and we would be a silly way to spend more for the same result.
What we do is the part that is a dig: setting the pole in a proper concrete footing so it is still plumb in ten years, trenching from there back to the house, running conduit with a pull string in it, sleeving under a driveway or a walk if the path crosses one, backfilling and compacting properly, and putting the grass back. And doing it after a real markout, with the hand digging the law requires, rather than hoping. The same crew and the same machines run telecom drops every week, which is why this is an ordinary job for us rather than a novelty. If you are still deciding between satellite and waiting for a wire, that tradeoff is laid out in fiber, cable, or Starlink.
On old dishes: if it is pole mounted in concrete, we will take it and the footing out while we are there. If it is lagged to the roof or the fascia, call a roofer instead. The hard part of that job is not the dish, it is sealing the holes the mounting bolts leave, and that is somebody else's trade.
Why so many properties around here need this
Because a lot of northwest New Jersey still has no wired option worth having. 5,477 locations in Sussex County are unserved and another 3,177 are underserved, according to the New Jersey Office of Broadband Connectivity working from the FCC National Broadband Map. That is why federal money is now aimed at the problem, and it is why satellite is a real answer for households that are years down the list rather than an exotic one.
It is also why the trench is so often necessary here specifically. The same properties that cable and fiber never reached are the wooded, spread out, long driveway properties where the house sits under mature trees. No clear sky at the house and no wire to the road tend to be the same address.
What customers say about this work
JWSR LLC was contracted to bury fiber optic lines for internet behind our townhome. They did an incredible job of burying the lines and cleaning up the landscaping!
James came to our home in Chester NJ to install fiber from the curb to the house for Brightspeed. The work was done flawlessly and the results of the digging were not visible. They explained every step. Very professional and personable.
Common questions
How deep should Starlink cable be buried?
We put telecom conduit in at about 18 inches, and go shallower in rocky ground where chasing 18 inches would mean breaking ledge for a data cable. That is our practice rather than a code requirement. There is no frost depth question here the way there is with water: a water service in New Jersey needs 42 inches of cover so it cannot freeze, but a data cable does not freeze, so depth is purely about keeping it away from shovels, rototillers, lawn aeration and future fence posts. What matters more than the exact number is that it is in conduit and that somebody wrote down where it runs.
Can you direct bury Starlink cable?
You should not. The Starlink cable is weatherproof and UV resistant, which is what it needs to run down a wall, but it is not rated as a direct burial cable. Buried bare it sits in wet soil, gets abraded by rock, and is attractive to rodents. Put it in conduit, schedule 40 PVC at an inch or larger. The second reason is better than the first: in conduit you can pull a damaged cable out and pull a new one through without digging up the yard again, and if you ever upgrade the dish the path is already there.
How far can a Starlink dish be from the house?
About 147 feet of cable, which is the longest replacement run SpaceX sells for the Standard dish, and that is 45 meters of cable, not 147 feet of straight line across the lawn. Subtract the climb from the router to where the cable leaves the house, the depth of the trench, and the height of the pole at the far end, and a 147 foot cable often reaches something closer to 120 feet of actual ground distance. Measure the real path before you decide where the pole goes. If the only clear sky on the property is farther than that, the answer is not a longer cable, it is moving the router closer or rethinking the location.
Do trees really block Starlink?
Yes, and this is the reason most people end up needing a trench in the first place. The dish needs a genuinely clear view of a cone of sky, and a branch that clips the edge of it causes brief dropouts that are maddening precisely because the service mostly works. Bare winter branches block less than full summer leaf, so a dish that tested clean in February can start dropping in June. Run the obstruction check in the Starlink app from the actual spot you are considering, and if you can, run it in the season with the most leaves on.
Which direction does a Starlink dish face?
North, in our latitude, which catches almost everybody out. The satellites sit in a shell inclined around 53 degrees, so from northern New Jersey the busy part of the sky is to the north, generally north northwest or north northeast. Every other dish anyone has owned pointed south toward the geostationary belt over the equator. So the mount your DirecTV dish used is very likely in the wrong place, and the tree line you never worried about, the one on the north side of the house, is now the one that decides whether this works.
Do I need to call 811 to bury a cable in my own yard?
Yes. A homeowner counts as an excavator under New Jersey's One Call rules, so the free 811 call applies to work on your own property. Place it 3 to 10 business days before you dig. This is not a formality on a Starlink trench: the path from the house out to a clear spot very often crosses the gas service, the electric service, the water line or a septic field, because those all run out from the same house. Where a mark lands near your path, the law says no machine within two feet of it until the line has been exposed by hand.
Do you install Starlink?
No, and we would tell you to be careful with anyone who says the whole job is theirs. We do not sell the equipment, set up your account, configure the router or climb on your roof. What we do is the part that is genuinely excavation: setting a pole in a proper concrete footing out where the sky is clear, trenching from there back to the house, running the conduit, and doing it after a real markout instead of hoping. Starlink sells professional installation of its own for the standard case, and on some plans includes it. That install does not include a trench.
Can you take down my old satellite dish?
If it is a ground or pole mounted dish set in concrete, yes, that is our kind of work and we take the footing with it. A dish bolted to the roof or the fascia is honestly not a job for an excavation company. That is a roofer or a handyman, because the part that matters is not removing it, it is properly sealing and flashing the holes the mounting lags leave behind, and doing that badly buys you a leak. We would rather point you at the right trade than take the money.
Why would I pay for a trench when Starlink installs it for less?
For most houses you should not, and if the dish works on your roof then use their install and keep your money. The trench only enters the picture when the house itself has no clear view of the northern sky, which in wooded parts of Sussex and Warren Counties is common. At that point the choice is not between our price and theirs, it is between a buried conduit run to a pole in the open and not having the service at all. Get the obstruction check done first, from the roof and from the open spot, and only call us if the answer sends you out into the yard.
Sources
- Burial depth of about 18 inches, shallower in rock, is our own practice on telecom conduit, stated 2026-09-01. It is not a New Jersey code minimum, and we do not claim one exists for a homeowner low-voltage cable in conduit on private property.
- Cable lengths, the 15 meter kit cable and the 45 meter replacement, and the fact that the cable is not rated for direct burial, are SpaceX specifications for the Standard dish. Confirm against your own hardware generation.
- Northern orientation follows from the roughly 53 degree inclination of the main Starlink orbital shell, which places the usable sky to the north at our latitude.
- A homeowner is an excavator under New Jersey One Call, N.J.A.C. 14:2, with markout requested 3 to 10 business days before excavation under 14:2-3.1(b), and no mechanized digging within two feet of a mark until the facility is exposed by hand under 14:2-3.3(a)1.
- Unserved and underserved location counts for Sussex County from the New Jersey Office of Broadband Connectivity county fact sheet, drawn from the FCC National Broadband Map.
- The 42 inch water cover figure used for contrast is the New Jersey amendment at N.J.A.C. 5:23-3.15, and applies to water service, not to data cable.
Sky is clear out back but the cable will not reach?
Call 862-268-2510. Tell us how far the open spot is from the house and roughly what is between them, and we can usually tell you on the phone whether it is a job or a bad idea.
Call 862-268-2510