Just looking into - Do they need access inside your roof?

[SMAlset]

Just getting started here with potentially a Tesla solar panel system and 2 Powerwalls and still in the initial stages of supply info -- not even sure our house/yard layout has room for everything with the way our current electrical and landscaping has been done. Anyway was curious if when installing the roof solar panels if they need to go inside your attic to complete that part of the job? How intrusive is the work?

Also curious if anyone has had an installation done on concrete roof tiles? Would love to do the solar tiles at some point but our roof isn't that old at this point. Thanks.

 

[Tam]

...need to go inside your attic to complete that part of the job? How intrusive is the work?...

I have no experience but if it wants to hide all the wiring and move/hide/consolidate the vents away then it's logical that it needs to access your attic to poke some holes and tunnel all those wiring and vents.

 

[jjrandorin]

My roof is concrete roof tiles, and I have a solar city installed system, that was installed in 2015. Its now Tesla, so should be the same. When Solar City did my install, they brought extra tiles to replace the ones they knew they were going to break on my roof. Unfortunately, when they left, I looked out of one of my upstairs windows and saw a couple broken tiles.

I made them come back out to fix those, and the crew chief came a few days later, apologized, and promised to make it right. He did, but he ended up having to replace like another 20-25 tiles (this is in addition to the ones they broke and replaced on installation day).

They did not need to come inside on installation day, but they DID come inside during the survey, and go in the attic and take pictures etc. On installation day it wasnt very intrusive, but it took about a day, and they had 4-5 people doing the install.

 

[roblab]

I would think, and I have solar panels and inverters and wiring galore, that there is hardly any way they can do the job and NOT get into the attic, unless they run conduit across the roof and down a wall to hook into the circuit breaker panel. You want the job to look good. Most people don't have much in the attic, and conduit there would go unnoticed. I have three places my solar panel wires come into the attic, which then come down to my inverters and my breakers. And you can't see the wires from the ground.

 

[destructure00]

I had Tesla solar installed a few weeks ago. The guy went into the attic to make sure everything was structurally sound and took pics before starting the installation. Other than that they did not need inside my house at all. All of the panels were secured from the top and the conduit is run on the roof, not inside the ceiling.

They broke 50+ clay tiles while installing. Granted, my roof is nearly 25 years old. Broke so many that they ended up hiring a roofing company to come replace them and paint to match. Took a couple weeks but that was a completely hands off process, they took care of everything. I'm really pleased with the installation and quality of service from them.

 

[jjrandorin]

There probably is no "one size fits all' on this. My house is 2 stories, and they ran the conduit externally. There is a conduit going from my inverters up to the 2nd story roof (which they painted the same color as my house so it blends in nicely) and my roof is not visible from the street (nor my back yard) so you can hardly tell I have solar panels let alone conduit up there.

I dont walk up there myself as I dont want to break the cement tiles and know it requires walking a specific way to not do so, and I neither know how, nor care to know how to do it.

 

[d21mike]

There probably is no "one size fits all' on this. My house is 2 stories, and they ran the conduit externally. There is a conduit going from my inverters up to the 2nd story roof (which they painted the same color as my house so it blends in nicely) and my roof is not visible from the street (nor my back yard) so you can hardly tell I have solar panels let alone conduit up there.

I dont walk up there myself as I dont want to break the cement tiles and know it requires walking a specific way to not do so, and I neither know how, nor care to know how to do it.

Same here. And maybe replaced 15-20 broken concrete tiles.

 

[charlesj]

I have flat concrete tile roof. I did the panel installation mostly by myself. I managed not to break any of those or perhaps a couple.
The flat tile is stronger than the mission tile. Went into attic.

 

[SMAlset]

Really appreciate all the feedback. Good to know what to sort of expect in advance. Kind of floored by all the equipment that gets installed.

Our house is two story and the utility wall with the electrical panels has a SW exposure. This is also the outer wall to our double garage, where inside our NEMA 14-50 is installed for charging our cars. May look into doing the equipment installation in the garage. As far as the roof goes can’t see an attic thru wall to the garage happening so thinking it will be painted conduit on the exterior from the panel to the roof and run on the roof. But we’ll see I guess. More concerned about broken roof tiles and any roof leaks.

 

[gpez]

Really appreciate all the feedback. Good to know what to sort of expect in advance. Kind of floored by all the equipment that gets installed.

Our house is two story and the utility wall with the electrical panels has a SW exposure. This is also the outer wall to our double garage, where inside our NEMA 14-50 is installed for charging our cars. May look into doing the equipment installation in the garage. As far as the roof goes can’t see an attic thru wall to the garage happening so thinking it will be painted conduit on the exterior from the panel to the roof and run on the roof. But we’ll see I guess. More concerned about broken roof tiles and any roof leaks.

If I could do it over again I'd probably opt to put the Powerwall inside. The challenge for me is that we have a two car garage that is already pretty tight (the furnace takes up a chunk) and I didn't want the risk of bumping in to the Powerwall or a protective bollard so some creativity would probably have to be involved.

My installer offered two options to run the wiring, one through the attic and one through conduit on the roof. The latter was cheaper, easier to install and easier to maintain. They were able to snake the conduit tucked behind a gutter downspout to reach the Enlighten gateway (and subsequently the Powerwall equipment) so it's nearly invisible unless you're specifically looking for it. Initially I was going ask them to paint it the same color as the house but with how hidden it is it wasn't worth the few hundred extra to do it IMO. One additional note is that my attic crawlspace is literally that - a crawlspace only a few feet high. A regular sized person would struggle to do any real work up there and when we first bought the house the builder had to find the shortest electrician they could to fix some wiring issues the inspection found.

There is a lot of equipment and connections. Be sure to double and triple check your installer's wiring and layout proposal to ensure it meets your expectations.

 

[SMAlset]

If I could do it over again I'd probably opt to put the Powerwall inside. The challenge for me is that we have a two car garage that is already pretty tight (the furnace takes up a chunk) and I didn't want the risk of bumping in to the Powerwall or a protective bollard so some creativity would probably have to be involved.

My installer offered two options to run the wiring, one through the attic and one through conduit on the roof. The latter was cheaper, easier to install and easier to maintain. They were able to snake the conduit tucked behind a gutter downspout to reach the Enlighten gateway (and subsequently the Powerwall equipment) so it's nearly invisible unless you're specifically looking for it. Initially I was going ask them to paint it the same color as the house but with how hidden it is it wasn't worth the few hundred extra to do it IMO. One additional note is that my attic crawlspace is literally that - a crawlspace only a few feet high. A regular sized person would struggle to do any real work up there and when we first bought the house the builder had to find the shortest electrician they could to fix some wiring issues the inspection found.

There is a lot of equipment and connections. Be sure to double and triple check your installer's wiring and layout proposal to ensure it meets your expectations.

Thanks for the reply and the feedback on placement of your Powerwall. More and more I'm leaning we go that way if we can. We have too much equipment on the right garage wall (shared wall with the electrical panel outside) and it's already where we'd pull our car into charge and where the corded NEMA 14-50 outlet is with Tesla cable organizer. Went that route over a HPWC as it stuck out less from the wall and better clearance for getting in and out of the car on the passenger side, so completely understand your original decision on PW inside or out.

Had to laugh at the shortest electrician comment. I was hoping we had a gutter downspout to hide a two-story conduit run behind it like your set up but the two story wall only has one at the very back of the house (and there will be panels running along the side roof and the rear roof but not sure how attractive an outer conduit run would be along the ground level and past two doors to the front where the utilities are). Don't want to trench. We spent alot of time redesigning our yard about 10 years ago and really don't want to trash the look with lots of boxes hanging off the wall. If I knew back then we'd go EV and solar/battery would have designed things differently.

I really appreciate everyone's feedback, and love seeing photos of people's set up, as it helps you think through things before committing one way or the other. Sometimes you don't really have a good choice and just hope for a clean looking install. If we can go the garage route, we'll have to run conduit across the upper interior framing of the double garage door wall which shouldn't be too bad or expensive and fortunately we do have a decent amount of blank wall space on that opposite side of the garage. Still have to check out if it will accomodate 2 PW and other equipment what with the required spacing. Having experienced a safety power shutdown last year not looking forward to it again so will be anxious to get moving on this. Does mean some garage cleaning and rearranging of things stored tho!

 

[bob_p]

Our new solar/PowerWall system went online late last year - and has been working great.

We used a 3rd party Tesla-approved installer.

We have a two story house with concrete spanish tiles.

When planning the installation, the installers went into the attic to take pictures of the underside of the roof - and verify the spacing of the studs. This was more complicated for us because we have foam insulation sprayed inside the walls and into the underside of the roof (which has worked fantastic - the attic is always only a few degrees different than the inside of the house!).jjj

The 44 350W panels were installed in four sections over the same area of the attic. The installer needed attic access to run wiring from underneath each solar panel section into a junction box in the attic. From that junction box, conduit was run inside the attic to the edge of the attic, exiting the attic on the underside of the roof (so the conduit didn't have to wrap around the gutter). On the outside of the house, the conduit went down the wall and was painted the same color as the exterior stucco.

The 4 PowerWalls were installed in 2 stacks inside the garage. We were concerned about impacting the space around the cars (the garage is tight when we have our S & X parked inside). But there were able to mount the two PowerWalls far enough forward in the garage so that the PowerWalls didn't impact opening the passenger side front door, and we still have enough space between the PowerWalls and the car to walk around the car. The wiring for the PowerWalls was run out through the back of the PowerWalls - so we don't have any exposed wiring inside the garage.

Our installers did a fantastic job. The solar panel installers were able to get the panels up onto the roof and installed, without breaking a single concrete tile. When Tesla came out earlier last year to make a proposal, they had planned to buy a lot of extra tiles, because they were almost guaranteed to break tiles during the installation. Our installers used a crew that had a lot of experience with concrete tiles, and did a great job - and after a heavy rain over the weekend - not only didn't they break any tiles - they did it without creating any roof leaks for the tiles or for the conduits run through the attic!

For anyone planning an installation, I strongly recommend you discuss the installation plans with the installers during the proposal process, and make sure you are getting what you want out of the installation. Besides locating the PowerWalls and hiding as much of the wiring as possible, the other critical item was in planning the electrical. We have two 150A breaker panels inside the house. The original plan was to do a lot of circuit shifting between the panels, creating an "essential" circuit panel to be connected to the solar/PowerWalls and a "non-essential" circuits panel connected to the grid. After review actual energy usage (two years of smart meter data at 15 minute intervals), we concluded we'd be able to run both of the 150A panels off the 200A Tesla Backup Gateway, allowing all of our house circuits (except EV charging) to run off the system, and avoid a lot of unnecessary rewiring between the two breaker panels.

And, so far the system is working great...

 

[chrisbailey13]

They did go into my attic, but my install is a single story structure which made it easy to get to the garage. I do have one conduit run between my two solar arrays. but all other conduit is inside the garage and in the attic.

In the pic you can see the run between the large array and the smaller one. then from the smaller array the conduit runs into the attic and into the garage.

View media item 120491View media item 120489View media item 120490

 

[SMAlset]

Wow some big systems here. More great info. Thanks guys. My husband has a call into our Energy contact in NV and I’ll be showing my husband this thread before hand in case it raises questions for him about the way to go. Taking pertinent photos now and formulating how we think the equipment layout would be pleasing to us and then see what they suggest. Our initial layout diagram from them had panel sections on three roof sections (so the photo of the connecting conduit across two roof sections @chrisbailey13 is helpful). Initial proposal included Rear roof, side roof above utilities, and not so crazy about panels on the front street facing roof. Did a quick look around our HOA and saw that at least 2 other homes have panels in the front but really don’t like going that route.

We will also be asking about attic access and any work in there (seems to differ so good to bring up) and the subject of broken concrete tiles and stucco repair.

@chrisbailey13, since you have exposed conduit did they say how the conduit would hold up over time in the heat? We sometimes see squirrels (and know this area has roof rats as well) so wondering if the wiring will be subject to being chewed. Not something we would notice being high up like that.

 

[charlesj]

...

@chrisbailey13, since you have exposed conduit did they say how the conduit would hold up over time in the heat? We sometimes see squirrels (and know this area has roof rats as well) so wondering if the wiring will be subject to being chewed. Not something we would notice being high up like that.

Can't speak for his conduit but most likely it is metal conduit on the roof and attic. Don't think animals will chew through it

 

[bob_p]

We were concerned about the visual impact of solar panels on a portion of our front roof.

And now that they've been up there for a month, we don't believe it adversely impacts the front perception of our house - especially since there aren't any visible conduits on the roof.

Our installers provided projections of monthly solar energy production based on the number of panels and their location. You can look at Google's Project Sunroof website and see the areas on your roof that get the greatest amount of sun.

Project Sunroof indicated the front of our house received the most sun - confirmed by the projections we received from our installers for the panel placement.

If the front facing roof is the best location - then I'd strongly recommend following the recommendation of the installers on the panel location, and instead focus on minimizing the visible impact by limiting exposed conduit.

 

[chrisbailey13]

@chrisbailey13, since you have exposed conduit did they say how the conduit would hold up over time in the heat? We sometimes see squirrels (and know this area has roof rats as well) so wondering if the wiring will be subject to being chewed. Not something we would notice being high up like that.

The Conduit is metal, just painted to blend with the roof better. even the flexible conduit used in the attic is metal sleeved so no problems with squirrels or roof rats.

 

[wwhitney]

even the flexible conduit used in the attic is metal sleeved so no problems with squirrels or roof rats.

FWIW, any DC solar wiring inside the building (including the attic) is required to be in a metallic wiring method (e.g. flexible metal conduit, FMC). May not apply in your case.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[SMAlset]

Thanks everyone about the conduit info!

@bob_p, the front of our house where the 3 panels were placed on their initial diagram are facing NW. And while I thought my husband was bothered by the look from the street if installed there he said he was concerned that their position relative to the sun was more of a concern for him instead. I saw that the info on the Q.Peak Duo solar modules we were given info on makes reference to "achieving outstanding performance under real conditions - both with low-intensity solar radiation as well as on hot, clear summer days".

 

[charlesj]

FWIW, any DC solar wiring inside the building (including the attic) is required to be in a metallic wiring method (e.g. flexible metal conduit, FMC). May not apply in your case.

Cheers, Wayne

And, I was told, decal on it to state DC voltage every so many feet.
Good thing I am using micro inverters under panels as there is no such requirement.