Neighbours trees interfering with my Sky

[SamW98]

The last few weeks my Sky keeps breaking up. I got a mate who's an engineer to have a look in case there was a fault and he said the reason is that my neighbours have very high trees which have grown and are now directly in the line of where my signal is being received.

So I gave them a knock and, very politely asked if they could just cut the tops down a bit and explained why. The man who lives there looked me up and down and said 'how sad is it that you think watching tv more important than trees that have been there since before I was born' and shut the door

Now I'm not asking him to cut the trees down just cut the top back so I can watch my Sky without it breaking up

AIBU if I now cut the tops back myself? They do overhang into my garden anyway?

You may need to realign your Sky receiver. Tree cutting should generally be left to the experts, and I believe you're not allowed to cut during nesting season.

I don't see how the top of a tree can overhang your boundary? Side branch yes - top no.

Move your dish.
Get friendly engineer to do it cheap, surprised he didn't suggest it.

TBH, I'm with him.

Anyway, you can only cut the bits that overhang your garden so that won't make them shorter, just narrower.

Yeah, move your dish. It's not really a reasonable request they cut their trees to accommodate your Sky signal. Ask old mate to shift it.

He's right.

Yep dish needs to be moved

Move your dish or get virgin it’s a pain but you can’t chop the top of there trees off

We have Virgin as we are surrounded by protected trees. Admittedly dh nearly cried when we moved in and found this out, but there’s nothing to be done.

I think you were pretty cheeky; he was politer than I might have been.

You must know cutting the tops of 'very tall' trees would be an expensive job for a professional, and also something plenty of people wouldn't want to do.

Get cable?

Neighbour is quite right.

Move the dish. I'm surprised your friendly engineer didn't suggest this.

It's impossible to say from the information given whether you could trim the trees yourself. I'd assume not unless you get a professional opinion that says you can (checking what's overhanging and what's not, TPOs, CAs, etc.).

We had this trouble and had to get the dish re-aligned.

We need more people like your neighbours in this world

I think you're allowed to cutting the bit (and only those bits) that overhang your garden not that it would make much difference in your case. He is of course correct, the trees have been there a long time, why should the be cut because of your sky signal. I generally think sky is an overpriced waste on money compared to Freeview and a netflix/prime/subscription service of choice anyway - you could save yourself some money and not have the sky/tree issue at the same time.

The only time I'd consider cutting mature trees is if they were damaging the property of a neighbour, not just because they are interfering with your sky signal, which as other posters have pointed out could also be dealt with by adjusting your sky dish.

What? No fiber optic service?

We had this issue at our last house and to cut a long story short, a Sky engineer came and did the lopping himself of our neighbour's trees without his permission or even discussing it with us first. It caused years of issues and legal threats from our neighbour until he gave up.

Don't do it unless they truly are overhanging your garden.

I agree with your neighbour, tbh! Ridiculous thing to ask of anybody, rather than simply moving the dish 😂

We also swapped from Sky to cable due to surrounding trees,

@imscaredpleasehelp

We need more people like your neighbours in this world

We do indeed.

Unbelievable that you think it’s acceptable to just chop bits off someone else’s trees.

Is moving your dish not an option? Seems much simpler than chopping neighbouring trees. It always puzzles me when people move to areas with trees and then set about finding reasons to chop them. Move your dish OP or move to an area with no trees?

@SamW98 Is this a wind-up?

If someone knocked on my door and asked me to hack away at my lovely mature trees so their sky tv works better, I'd tell them to jog on. What a cheek!

Move your dish FGS. As a pp said, your engineer should have suggested this.