You may have noticed that sanding artificial stone kitchen countertops is banned in 2024.
Health and safety regulations have caught up with the silica dust produced by grinding cement products, and for solar installations this means that dry grinding of tiles is no longer acceptable.
Solar system that keeps me busy
I recently received a complaint from a customer that was disappointing for everyone involved.
The installer had lifted a few tiles, grounded them to create clearance for the brackets, and bolted the system in place with great efficiency. The problem was that the homeowner had recently paid a lot of money to vacuum all the dirt and dust from the attic space and installed new bulk insulation.
This work was in vain as the new insulation was now filled with concrete dust and tile fragments.
What a mess.
Dear SQ,
I don’t have anyone qualified/experienced to ask for advice on what practices are or are not acceptable for solar installation. I don’t know if I’m being unreasonable or if this is a real issue that I need to investigate.
They cut my concrete roof tiles on site (still on the roof) to install the brackets, didn’t use dust repellants, and filled my house with concrete dust – in the roof void and partially inside the house itself.
The picture shows a garage without a ceiling – all the dust generated above it fell to the floor. The rest of the roof cavity has significantly more brackets and more dust. It’s a lot of dust, the picture doesn’t do it justice – see video.
Last week I literally installed new attic insulation and now it’s just as dusty and in just as bad shape as the old stuff I removed – getting the dust out of my roof cavity was the sole purpose of this exercise. I’m frustrated.
As mentioned, I’m hoping to get some guidance or advice on what is appropriate in this situation. It’s outside my wheelhouse. It would be good to know if I am an unreasonable customer or if I have the right to be upset.
With kind regards,
Anon
Rules require tiles to be changed
Some of the plumbers I worked for were pretty liberal with the rules – they ignored them. Hammer in the brackets, slide the tile back down and get to work.
The green arrow shows where the tile is not installed correctly. Additional sharp edges to damage DC array wiring with red arrow.
Apparently none of them have been leaked, except for the 100kW 300 modules in a pub. A catastrophe that could only be remedied by completely expanding the solar system, as the roof pitch was always too low.
Nowadays everyone has to make sure that the tiles sit exactly where they were, so make room for the holder.
The circled bracket is quite narrow, so the green shaded section needs to come out, not the entire red shaded bottom edge.
Methods vary, but many installers place a tile on their trunk and insert a 9-inch sander under the selected area to blindly cut ridges from the bottom of the tile. A classic, quick and dirty way to get through the day – I suspect that’s the reason for this particular complaint.
I personally marked, flipped, and sanded the tiles with a 5″ wheel to better fit them, which at least left the debris on the roof and not the ceiling. It was still dirty work.
Different tiles require different approaches.
Compliant works
For many, using a scutt hammer is the best solution. With a few deft taps you can get a decent fit without creating dust, and with practice it’s probably as quick as flipping and sanding. However, it won’t always be clean and in some cases it may not work, such as when you need to modify both the top and bottom of thin terracotta tiles.
In many cases, Terror-Cotta is a plumber’s nightmare.
Wet sanding is best, but it also brings its own problems. Tiles must be marked and numbered, pulled from the roof and processed, where the mess is subsequently cleaned up. In an emergency, your solar panel box would contain the spray and slurry, but basically this is the same process required to cut pavers or bricks.
Regardless, I would always recommend a wet diamond hole saw for electrical penetration.
Drilling a clean hole in a 70 year old tile without breaking it.
Tiles are really a joke
The whole concept of building a house strong enough to support a broken masonry roof is just incredible. If it wasn’t already considered normal, tiles would never emerge as a new idea.
The best roof penetration I know of is a Cobalt gland gland fitting.
If you’re having problems with your tiled roof and need to spend money on repairs, it’s best to just let it go. Throw the tiles in the trash, insulate the house while they’re off, then cover it with iron. It’s stronger, lighter and more durable, plus it’s cheaper to install more solar panels.
If you’ve found a SolarQuotes installer that makes holes like this nonsense, I want to know about it.
Maintain quality
I have often tried to explain to people that SolarQuotes is not just a customer acquisition process. We don’t just collect names and addresses; We offer a third-party guarantee to the consumer and provide business coaching and quality assurance to the installers.
This shows how the bracket should be embedded into the underside of the tile. The tile broke when an installer stepped on it because it wasn’t sanded.
So when we bring a new installer on board, we make sure they understand that phone calls are expensive.
2009 brings me back. Notice that two tiles are moved by one bracket.
Customers often come to us with concerns that they consider trivial. When these emails turn out to be genuine complaints, my phone rings, then the plumber’s phone rings, and then there is soul-searching and sadness all around.
Some customers are psychos
Not every complaint I respond to comes from a reasonable person. Some of them receive their own article, others send us photos that they received from installers in court cases that they have already lost. That’s a story for another day.
In most cases we can reassure the customer that they have already done a good job, or we can arrange for the plumber to visit again to fix some problems, no matter how honest or embarrassing. We paid for some third-party audits, but after hundreds of thousands of installs, we haven’t paid for even a handful of fixes. The system works.
In 2008 we used hand made tile brackets and a bespoke frame to directly span the low slope extension. The customer specifically wanted to drain the roof, which was already somewhat leaky.
This has come up more than once
In this case the installer has come to an agreement with the customer, but my general advice is that an electrician will spend his time more profitably completing electrical work. As long as the solar company has learned a lesson, we will put it on their record and explain that the insulation industry is the best people to solve a problem like this.
However, the best option is always to have a discussion with your trades before installation day.
To find a quality, mess-free installer near you, enter your zip code on our Solar Installers Near Me page.
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