I don’t care how much solar panel manufacturers try to persuade homeowners that blanketing your roof with an extra layer of hole-mounted structures to a roof makes good sense, the real factor is long-lasting, water-tight installation, proper maintenance AND the cost of replacing whatever roof covering underneath is, not to mention any damage from hail, etc.
If you don’t have the real estate to install that stuff away from your home proper, then bypass it, IMO.
How about just building a frame around the walls and above the roof to install the panels on? Though I suppose that would be much more expensive and make your home look very unattractive.
A nearby town years ago installed a bunch of solar panels on the roof of one of the schools. In the infinite wisdom, they installed on a roof that was more than 3/4 of the way through its life expectancy. Within a couple years they had persistent water leaks and were forced to replace the roof probably 5 to 10 years early. Strangely, they never put solar panels on the new roof.
Totally agree... there are plenty of reasons to not install solar panels on one’s house roof. However, I think that at least some of those issues can be mitigated if installed on an out-building if that building was large enough to make it all worthwhile...
As always though, the property needs to make sense for solar with regards to trees and other shading, general south facing direction etc.
Precisely