Posted on 09/01/2022 8:13:36 AM PDT by Jacquerie
If you don’t live in an area prone to flooding, tornadoes, or hurricanes, then you probably aren’t required to carry wind or flood insurance.
When I was researching it last year, two of the companies I worked with said that solar panels could be removed and re-installed for about $5K. They are removed from the mounts and then put back into them. A roofing company said working around the mounts would add about $1000 (tile and gravel; I did the roof before this one, having been a roofer at one time, this one has lasted nearly 20 years).
Me allow three guys named Doofus, Moose and Gomer drill 100 hundred holes in my new $30,000 roof? No problemo. They’re trained, right?
I bought a house that already had solar last year here in Phoenix. I had no issues finding insurance. Then again, we don’t get hurricanes, hail is infrequent and hasn’t been severe, and I have an asphalt roof. The solar is still not much better than break-even (payments-savings).
People are watching to the advertising on tv and swallowing the free aspect. They really don’t need to be the first on their block to do it. Naive virtue signaling? Same with electric cars. If it’s free it isn’t.
In my town we’ve got a home here where the panels face west. It’s the only part of the roof that will accommodate them. Is that or is that not dumb?
Well, well.
Numbers didn’t work for me either but I have trust issues with the energy prices going forward so I grabbed 25 Kw while we were building.
The hail, you say. Solar panels will NEVER replace asphalt shingles for either longevity or rain resistance, and they may even require a STRONGER substrate than rafters and OSB sheeting adequate for asphalt shingles alone.
And how are solar panels mounted on a clay tile roof without busting the tiles all to bits in the process?
It sounds like that is where your heat escapes. You're just adding to glo-bull warming.
“It sounds like that is where your heat escapes.”
Thanks—that makes sense since of course heat rises.
Depending on the latitude of where I was at, I’d ideally want my home to be oriented so that where the panels were mounted would ‘catch sun’ all day long (or most of it).
Every home I’ve owned had the longwise part oriented East West so the sun would hit at least one part of the roof all day long while the sun shined.
The problem with that is that depending on the latitude whether the sunlight could hit the north side of the house. Mildew and other non-sunlight problems could ensue. I suppose you could orient the house intercardinally, however.
Sure, I’m just thinking that they could be mounted in a way that they aren’t actually attached to the roof at all, to solve at least a few of the problems.
Should have read the insurance policy sometime in those past 21 years.
Yes. That would help, but there’s still the problem of being in the way. It’s why insurers don’t want to deal with them or the problem of having to pay for damage to them caused the the elements. They just don’t make good sense, IMO. At least not for a homeowner. Not to mention hassles with HOAs.
The ONLY way I’d consider installing roof mounted solar panels would be IF the roof was a solid, poured-concrete one with rebar where mounting them would be possible. Even then, hail and the elements on their protective covers is still a problem
Ping....
“If you don’t live in an area prone to flooding, tornadoes, or hurricanes, then you probably aren’t required to carry wind or flood insurance.”
But not multiple policies.
From the late 1800’s to about 1929 houses in the central US were framed with boards made from old-growth trees floated down the Mississippi from Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Friends who work on these old houses say cutting that wood is difficult and puts a load on their circular saws.
They told me new homes the saw zips right through.
The old-style wood simply does not exist anymore. Maybe the time for steel framing has come...you see steel homes all through the Arkansas delta because insects there are terrible. They eat up wood (and people too).
Tile roofs are vulnerable to wind driven rain.
Heavy rain and 50mph winds happen every summer in my part of Florida.
In my part of Florida, if you have a mortgage, you’ll contractually need basic homeowners, wind and flood policies.
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