Are curved roof tiles normal?

[uscpsycho]

Upon the completion of my solar roof installation, I wasn't completely happy with the way it looked. My tiles weren't perfectly flat across my roof. I was told that the undulations were due to my house and its structure not being straight. This was even though they installed new plywood before installing the roof. They said that even though the plywood is new, it is not perfectly flat due to the structure of my home. This seemed plausible so I believed them.

But today I got up on a ladder to put Christmas lights up and I noticed that my tiles were bowed. I can't tell which are live tiles and which are dummy tiles, but many tiles are bowed with an apex in the middle. Is this normal??? What is the likelihood I'll be able to get Tesla to do something about this? Seems like they would have to replace a large number of tiles.

Even though it is very obvious to the naked eye when you get up there, it's not so obvious in photos so I used a straight edge to demonstrate it. Here is a photo with a straight edge pressed down against one side of a tile, there is a lot of space under the edge on the other side as the tile curves down and away from the straight edge.

This is a photo with the level even-ish at the center of the tile, you can see it curving down on both ends. This photo was a lot harder to take with two hands, trying to evenly balance the level in the middle with one hand while taking a photo with the other hand. But you can see there is daylight under both ends, and you can see how this tile curves up and away from my gutter in the center of the tile. On the right and left sides of the tile, the glass is basically touching the gutter but under the center there is a gap. You can also see the gap in the first photo.

So it appears to me that the undulating roof is not in fact due to the structure of my home but due to the tiles which are not flat. Is this normal or did I get defective roof tiles?

 

[jboy210]

The tiles are pretty flat. But if your sheeting was not flat, or the sheeting was flat and your beams to which the plywood was nailed were not precisely parallel, you get this effect. Yours is pretty mild. You can see ours with the naked eye if you know where to look.

 

[uscpsycho]

Are you saying my curve is mild based on the first photo or the second one? I don't think the first one is mild at all. I probably shouldn't have included the second photo since it looks more mild there because I couldn't hold the level perfectly straight in the center of the tile. But if you look at the center of the tile you can see how much higher it is from the gutter than it is on the ends.

And now that I know some tiles are bowed, I am seeing the bowing all over the place. Blech.

Are the tiles really that flexible? I've held them in my hands and they felt solid so it doesn't seem possible they can flex this much. I never imagined glass could bend like that.

 

[Vines]

Are you saying my curve is mild based on the first photo or the second one? I don't think the first one is mild at all. I probably shouldn't have included the second photo since it looks more mild there because I couldn't hold the level perfectly straight in the center of the tile. But if you look at the center of the tile you can see how much higher it is from the gutter than it is on the ends.

And now that I know some tiles are bowed, I am seeing the bowing all over the place. Blech.

Are the tiles really that flexible? I've held them in my hands and they felt solid so it doesn't seem possible they can flex this much. I never imagined glass could bend like that.

There is a significant weight of glass on top of every tile due to the staggered nature of roofing, and how it overlays. The tiles are pretty long so pressure at the end would have a lot of leverage over a high rafter.

Glass certainly bends, especially in the flat axis.

All that being said, this undulation almost certainly comes from your existing rafters sagging, so the fix isnt easy, nor would I expect Tesla to have done this when replacing the sheeting. Sheeting is nailed to the rafters and so wherever the rafters are, that's where the sheeting is.

Someone would have had to come through and either shimmed the low rafters up, jacked and braced them or something extra to get the roof perfectly flat. Even after all that, the roof rafters might still sag over time and the problem would return.

 

[BGbreeder]

Assuming that your level/straight edge is straight, my $0.02 is to learn to live with it. As @Vines pointed out, if the roof, and rafters, weren't flat to begin with, the edges of the tiles are going to be off. If the roof load of the tiles caused movement of the roof plane, you would also have an issue. Finally, I have no idea if Tesla has a manufacturing issue that makes cupped tiles. Either way, a "fix" would appear to be no small job.

Glass doesn't warp under normal temperatures. There is a Tesla roof near me that has something that looks like cupping tiles from a distance, but for obvious reasons, I haven't climbed their roof to see for sure.

All the best,

BG

 

[Eric99]

Yup, mine is kinda wavy too. The new gutters hid a lot of it though. I was way more self conscious of it initially, but I hardly notice it now.

 

[jboy210]

The Solarroof tiles use metal clips to lock into the plastic clips which are nailed to sheeting every 15 inches or so. There are 4 of the plastic clips on each 45" wide tile. You can see these in the picture below. So, the tiles are supported quite well. 

The result is the tiles are pretty sturdy. When they were installing them, I asked one of the installers if we would break them like the ceramic tiles were had before if you walked on the roof. He weighed well over 200 pounds and started jumping up and down on the roof and said "nope". That was enough of a test for me. So, I think most of the issue is the underlying sheeting in general.

In my house we also have the fact that the original builder cheaped out on the rafters below. They actually took them to court for sagging under the weight of the original tile roofs. But that was before we owned the house, and they supposedly rectified the problem before we bought the house. At least there is additional bracing under there.

 

[jboy210]

Are you saying my curve is mild based on the first photo or the second one? I don't think the first one is mild at all. I probably shouldn't have included the second photo since it looks more mild there because I couldn't hold the level perfectly straight in the center of the tile. But if you look at the center of the tile you can see how much higher it is from the gutter than it is on the ends.

And now that I know some tiles are bowed, I am seeing the bowing all over the place. Blech.

Are the tiles really that flexible? I've held them in my hands and they felt solid so it doesn't seem possible they can flex this much. I never imagined glass could bend like that.

The tiles are not very flexible. It they were flexible like shingles your roof would look flatter since the singles more easily conform to the sheeting changes.

My guess is what you are seeing is that the long width (45") of the solartiles amplify the visibility of the dips and rises in your roof. If the solar tiles were shorter, like the width of a normal tile, and had a less glass like appearance like a normal tile, it would better hide the slight imperfections in the underlying roof structure.