Inspired by Will Tygart, Starlink on a water job — open field playbook (Tygart Media). Rewritten here for commercial independents. Restoration Intel is not a Starlink, SpaceX, Tesla, or xAI partner. Buy and read from the source. Prices move. No referral codes.
Restoration work happens where fiber is dead, the building is a Faraday cage of wet drywall, and the phone that “has bars” cannot upload a moisture map. The facility manager does not care that you have a logo. They care whether the adjuster pack leaves the truck tonight.
Starlink is a sky-view pipe. Cell first if it works. The dish is the sink when cell is the bottleneck.
When the kit matches the job
Use it when two of these are true:
- The structure or the street has no working cable or fiber — storm, rural, construction, pole in the river.
- You need to upload, not just talk: photos, video walkthrough, estimate sketch, moisture log, signed work auth.
- You will be on site more than an hour and cell is congested or roaming into a dead pocket.
- The office needs a second path so after-hours voice and dispatch do not die with the cable modem.
Do not use it as a replacement for a good office fiber drop. Do not use it as a phone. Do not put “we have Starlink” on the website as if the homeowner hired a constellation. They hired the truck that showed up.
Two kits
Kit A — truck / first-on-site. Starlink Mini on a Roam plan, or if this is actually a business WAN start at Business and read the current hardware list. Mini is the backpack dish. In-motion rules live in the official support article. The home V5 kit is not the roam toy.
Power: Mini wants a USB-PD source rated 65–100 W even though it only drinks ~25–40 W. A 45 W phone brick will lie to you. Truck: 12 V to 30 V / Anderson, or a 500 Wh class station. Power before the meter.
Plan numbers live on starlink.com and they move. Roam is written for travel. If the kit is production, read Business vs Enterprise accounts. Mini often does not sit on a Priority SLA. Do not tell a carrier you have enterprise uptime because you paid a business invoice for a Mini. One cheap travel router if Mini Wi-Fi dies inside a metal trailer.
Kit B — shop / yard / long dry-down. Performance / Priority on Business fixed-site if you need an SLA and a fixed roof. Permanent mount, open sky, snow-melt if you live where it snows. This is backup for the office phone and the photo server. Not the hero kit on day one of a flood.
First 30 minutes on a wet house
- Park where the sky is a rectangle, not a slot between two alders. Confirm in the Starlink app.
- Dish on the hood, a pole, or the unshaded side of the trailer — not the basement, not under the soffit.
- Power before you walk in with the meter. Boot is a couple of minutes.
- One speed check. If download is fine and upload is garbage, you will feel it on the estimate. Rain cuts throughput; talk first, fat files later.
- Name the network something boring (SHOP-JOB). If the app says obstructed, move the dish. Do not “optimize” for twenty minutes.
What actually eats the pipe
| Thing | Appetite | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| Moisture photos, 50–150 shots | Small | Fine on a small Roam month |
| Adjuster video walk, 10 min | Medium | Once, compressed |
| Cloud estimate / Xactimate | Small–medium | The site needs the upload |
| Voice / after-hours line | Small per minute | Cheap; retries are not |
| Netflix in the trailer | The villain | After the job or not at all |
| Group video, four people | Burns a small cap | One camera |
Voice is why the pipe matters at 11 p.m. Keep it short. Book or kill.
Who pays
Pick one. Write it in the SOP.
- Job cost — storm / rural / no street internet. Line it like a generator.
- Shop overhead — office backup plus after-hours voice.
- Never the tech’s personal weekend.
Standby the truck kit when it is not a weather week. Idle is cheaper than a second hardware buy because someone borrowed it. How to pause lives in Starlink’s own help: Help Center.
Why this belongs on Restoration Intel
The record that has to leave with the crew does not leave if the photos never upload. The night engineer will remember the miss. The sentence you can say to a facility manager:
If the street internet is out we still upload your photos and get the adjuster pack off the truck tonight.
Only say it if the kit is in the truck. Failure modes: trees and eaves. Rain. 45 W bricks. Consumer Roam sold as production WAN. Twelve intake fields before anyone asks “can we come now?”
Official doors
- starlink.com — buy, plans, current prices
- Order
- Roam / Mini
- Business
- Help Center
- What is Starlink Business?
- SpaceX
The Vault is the commercial kit this field pipe feeds. One email. No sales call.
The Vault · The record · Without a franchise · Tygart field playbook