Is my roof any good for solar panels?

Nearly everyone opens with the same question, and it is the wrong one. “It faces south, that’s good isn’t it?”

South helps. It is not what decides it.

We look at roofs all over Hereford and the county, and the jobs that do not stack up almost never fail on direction. They fail on shade, or on the state of the roof, or on a fuseboard that was never going to take it.

Here is what we actually check.

Shade is what kills a solar job

One mature tree. A neighbour’s gable. A chimney sitting in the wrong place. Shade on part of an array costs you more than the panel it lands on, because panels get wired into strings and a string works at the pace of its worst panel.

That is fixable up to a point. Optimisers stop a shaded panel holding the rest back, and if any part of your roof catches shade we fit them across the whole array rather than picking and choosing.

What optimisers cannot fix is a roof in shadow for most of the day. If that is your house, we will tell you.

Direction and pitch

South facing is best. East and west as a pair works better than people expect, because you catch the morning on one side and the evening on the other, which often suits how a house really uses power.

North facing on its own is not worth doing. Pitch matters less than most people think. Around 30 to 40 degrees is ideal, and plenty of roofs either side of that are perfectly fine.

The state of the covering

This is the one that catches people out. If your roof needs recovering in the next few years, get that done first. Taking an array off and putting it back is not cheap, and nobody wants to pay for the same scaffolding twice.

So we look at the tiles or slates, and whether the structure underneath is sound, before anyone talks about panel counts.

What actually holds the panels on

The fixings go into the roof structure, not into the tiles. Which type we use depends on what you have got: plain tile, interlocking, slate, or something less common. There is a lot of older housing stock round here and it is rarely a problem, it just changes the fixing.

Your fuseboard

Nobody mentions this until install day, which is exactly how you end up with a surprise on the invoice. A solar system feeds back into your consumer unit through its own protected way. If your board is old, full, or not up to it, that is part of the job, and we price it at survey stage instead of springing it on you later.

What is different about Herefordshire roofs

Most of this county is off mains gas. Houses here run on oil, LPG or electricity, so the bills are bigger than the national average, and that usually moves the sums in your favour before we have looked at anything.

Rural properties also tend to have the two things solar likes. Roof space with nothing next door throwing shade across it, and outbuildings. If the house roof faces the wrong way, a garage or a barn often does not.

And if you work from home, run a workshop, or keep a smallholding, you are using power in the middle of the day. That is exactly when panels are making it.

The honest bit

Some roofs are not worth it. Heavy shade, a covering with only a few years left in it, or a house that sits empty through every daylight hour and barely uses anything. We would rather say that at the survey than take your money and leave you disappointed.

How to find out about yours

WhatsApp a photo of the roof taken from the garden, plus a recent electricity bill. That answers most of it in a minute. If it looks promising, the survey is free and the quote is fixed and in writing.