![]() ![]() Once the job is finished you work back across the roof swapping them out. The best approach for the work crew is to notice, examine and mark the tiles as they’re broken through the day. Many people don’t realise clay tiles aren’t necessarily as well protected on the underside, and so they fret and disintegrate from the inside out. Under the panels the fragments just sit on the high points. The rest of the roof looked cleaner because the rain strike of individual droplets washes away the evidence of disintegration. Many of these crumbly old bits of rubbish have been protected from the elements under a solar panel array for 9 years. Walking off the ladder at the back of the property was ok but the real killer was that as soon as you crossed the ridge to the side that cops the prevailing wind, the tiles were little better than chalk. Close to the limit at 9 metres reach and using a spotter to operate the crane just made it more fun. Bear in mind it had a steep driveway and required we sling panels and lift them two at a time with a crane truck. My most unbelievable job was terracotta on a two-storey house with a coastal outlook. So, please make sure you have spare tiles available on install day. They handle foot traffic quite well during the framing and wiring stage of installation but as soon as we start marching the solar panels out, an extra 20kg per footfall breaks them at an alarming rate. I have had first-hand experience with tiles that seem quite good. They may be glazed terracotta (known in the solar industry as TERRORcotta) or concrete tiles, but either way there are some that are quite robust and many that are horribly brittle. If you don’t have spares left over from the original build, the installer should be able to point you in the direction of a local salvage yard or tile supplier, because they’ve been to them before. The gun tradesman will install hangar bolts and get on with it. Sooky installers will go ashen-faced and shuffle away backwards if you have thin tiles or a slate roof. Why do they care? Mainly because you need to have spare tiles on hand before starting installation, but also because some profiles, like Spanish deep or super flat terracotta shingle may need extra extension brackets or even a completely different fixing such as a “hangar bolt”, which is drilled through instead of laying between tiles. The prospect of a tiled roof is a great reason for a solar installer to do a site visit and positively identify what kind of tile you have. If You Want To Be Sure – Get A Site Visit This should be on this list for any significant renovation. Shiny new roof, light in colour with fluffy insulation evident. Without the extra weight, the gutters could be fixed, and the eaves wouldn’t sag.Ī work in progress. 16 tons of broken masonry was thrown unceremoniously off the roof into the bin, and replaced with 1.2 tons of iron roof, plus extra insulation. I was on-site to move a solar hot water service while the roofers went about their work. Read on for a guide to the finer details of installing solar panels on a tiled roof. But we have to deal with them, and rest assured there are good ways to do it. They’re heavy, they’re porous and get heavier as they soak up water, they leak heat and dirt, they’re hard to install on, and sadly, as many people find out, water leaks lead to recriminations. As a qualified builder and roofer, I should disclose that I really don’t like tile roofs.
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