Starlink Installation in Chicagoland

If the dish is going on the roof, yes — because a roof mount is a roof penetration, and a penetration is roofing work. Every lag bolt through the deck is a potential leak, and the failure usually doesn't show up the week it's installed; it shows up the following spring as a stain on a bedroom ceiling. We flash and seal penetrations every working day, we carry liability insurance for roof work, and we hold Illinois Roofing Unlimited License #104.010248. A generalist tech installer is often excellent at the networking side and much weaker at the waterproofing side. If the dish can go somewhere other than the roof, we'll tell you that too.

It can, and this is the part most homeowners don't find out until they file a claim. Manufacturer material warranties are conditioned on the roof system being installed and maintained to spec, and a third party drilling unflashed holes through the deck is exactly the kind of subsequent work that gets a claim denied. Workmanship warranties are usually stricter still — most are voided by any later work on the roof by another contractor without prior authorization. If your roof is under warranty, tell us who installed it and we'll look at the terms before anything gets drilled. Sometimes the right answer is a non-penetrating mount.

Honestly, usually not. If you have fiber available at your address, fiber beats Starlink on speed, latency, and monthly cost, and we're not going to pretend otherwise to sell you an installation. Starlink earns its place in two situations around here: properties where wired service is genuinely poor or unavailable — which in our area means the large-lot and semi-rural pockets like Barrington Hills, Mettawa, Long Grove, Hawthorn Woods, North Barrington, and parts of Inverness and Riverwoods — and households that want a genuine second path to the internet as backup, typically where someone works from home and an outage costs real money. If neither describes you, save your money.

Wherever it gets a clear view of the sky with the fewest holes in your building. Our order of preference is: a non-penetrating ballasted mount on a flat roof section, then a wall or fascia mount into structure that isn't the roof field, then a ground or pole mount if the yard has sky, and only then a penetrating roof mount. The dish needs an unobstructed view — trees are the usual problem in this area, and a mature oak that's fine in March will block signal in July once it leafs out. We check obstruction before we choose a location, not after.

We quote it per property rather than off a rate card, because the range is wide and depends on real variables: mount type (non-penetrating is different work from a flashed roof penetration), roof pitch and height, roofing material — slate and cedar are far more involved to penetrate correctly than architectural shingle — how far the cable has to run and whether it can be routed through an existing path, and whether any obstruction mitigation is needed. Most installs are a single-visit job. The assessment and written quote are free.

Yes, and that's by far the best time to do it. When the roof is open we can integrate the mount and its flashing into the new roof system as it goes down, rather than cutting into a finished roof later. It's cleaner, it's properly detailed, it doesn't create a warranty question, and it costs less than coming back as a separate visit. If you're planning a re-roof and thinking about Starlink at all, mention it when we quote the roof.

That entry point matters as much as the dish mount, and it's where a lot of installs go wrong. The cable needs a proper sealed penetration with a drip loop so water runs away from the hole rather than tracking along the cable into the wall. Where possible we route through an existing penetration or a soffit rather than creating a new hole in the building envelope. We terminate at your router location and leave the run tidy and secured, not draped across the siding.

Yes, and we get called for this more than you'd expect — usually a leak traced back to a dish someone else mounted. We'll remove the dish, repair and properly flash the penetration, and reinstall it correctly, or relocate it somewhere that doesn't put a hole in your roof field. If you're re-roofing and there's an existing dish, we handle the removal and reinstall as part of the job.

The same footprint as our roofing work: north and northwest Cook County, all of Lake County, and DuPage from Naperville north. The large-lot communities are where this service makes the most sense — Barrington Hills, North Barrington, Mettawa, Long Grove, Hawthorn Woods, Bannockburn, Riverwoods, Inverness, and South Barrington — and they're areas we already work regularly on estate roofing. Call (708) 847-5418.

No. We are an independent Illinois-licensed roofing contractor. We are not an authorized Starlink dealer or reseller, we don't sell the hardware or the service plan, and we're not affiliated with or endorsed by SpaceX. You buy the kit and the subscription from Starlink directly; we mount and flash it properly and route the cable into your home. Starlink and SpaceX are trademarks of Space Exploration Technologies Corp.