As background, i've been following the solar discussions in this forum for a couple of years now. With the tesla in my garage, there is a very definite desire to put solar panels on my roof and be "driving on sunlight" - and yes, i know all of the caveats there, and the fact that i'm still likely charging off the grid if my car is charging at night. But still!
anyway - i've been waiting for prices to come down a bit so that i could run it past my wife as cost effective vs additional burden on our finances.
So this summer i found out about a program called solarize nova (solarizenova.org) that was doing community based group solar residential installs. By pulling communities together, they would get good rates from installers, etc...
I signed up, my area was involved, etc, etc...
got a reasonable quote, everything ready to go - the only hurdle was our HOA, which has a rule on the books from 1985 that says you can only install solar on the back of your house. Since my house faces south, i NEED to install the panels on the front.
That said - there was a new virginia law in 2014 that said HOAs could no longer restrict homeowners from installing solar, and could only make reasonable restrictions as to how it was done.
Further, i'm friendly with the president and vice president of the HOA, so i figured this might be doable.
I went to their board meeting in september and laid out my case, showed them the virginia law change, some suggested alterations to our architectural guidelines, etc.. Went over very well. The head of the HOA architecture committee weighted in and said he was in favor. Everyone else seemed to be as well. The meeting ended with them discussing how to amend the guidelines to allow this.
Fast forward 1 month. I missed the October board meeting (thought it was a week later than it was), but so what. I emailed the president yesterday to ask if there was any news, and got back a 1 liner to the effect of - we've denied your request to change the guidelines.
Prodding them for more details, i finally got back this response:
Does anyone have any experience with this sort of block? Do I have any grounds to challenge this? I'm not sure that this considers a "reasonable restriction" based on the virginia law here: Bill Tracking - 2014 session > Legislation
just curious - i don't really know how to proceed from here, or if i've even got a chance of getting this changed at this point.
would love to hear any collective wisdom of the forum
Tempus
anyway - i've been waiting for prices to come down a bit so that i could run it past my wife as cost effective vs additional burden on our finances.
So this summer i found out about a program called solarize nova (solarizenova.org) that was doing community based group solar residential installs. By pulling communities together, they would get good rates from installers, etc...
I signed up, my area was involved, etc, etc...
got a reasonable quote, everything ready to go - the only hurdle was our HOA, which has a rule on the books from 1985 that says you can only install solar on the back of your house. Since my house faces south, i NEED to install the panels on the front.
That said - there was a new virginia law in 2014 that said HOAs could no longer restrict homeowners from installing solar, and could only make reasonable restrictions as to how it was done.
Further, i'm friendly with the president and vice president of the HOA, so i figured this might be doable.
I went to their board meeting in september and laid out my case, showed them the virginia law change, some suggested alterations to our architectural guidelines, etc.. Went over very well. The head of the HOA architecture committee weighted in and said he was in favor. Everyone else seemed to be as well. The meeting ended with them discussing how to amend the guidelines to allow this.
Fast forward 1 month. I missed the October board meeting (thought it was a week later than it was), but so what. I emailed the president yesterday to ask if there was any news, and got back a 1 liner to the effect of - we've denied your request to change the guidelines.
Prodding them for more details, i finally got back this response:
The discussion was a polite hearing of the merits and advantages of the proposed change. At the October meeting we discussed the various ARC rules that Management gathered from other communities. The vote hinged on the perceived overall impact to the HOA. After the full discussion and deliberations the majority of board members felt the aesthetics of shiny panels on on the front of houses outweighed the benefits to individual homeowners
Does anyone have any experience with this sort of block? Do I have any grounds to challenge this? I'm not sure that this considers a "reasonable restriction" based on the virginia law here: Bill Tracking - 2014 session > Legislation
just curious - i don't really know how to proceed from here, or if i've even got a chance of getting this changed at this point.
would love to hear any collective wisdom of the forum
Tempus