DAY 1

 

A team of two arrived early (Uh oh - We hadn’t finished clearing the access to the attic).  It’s a little icy today, so they’re not going to be on the roof installing the panels just yet.  That’s okay – plenty of other work to do.  Such as:

 

• Installing the inverter inside the house.

 

• Reconfiguring the breakers to allow the inverter to be connected to the house’s electricity supply. 

 

• Drilling a hole through the wall for the wire from the panels to the inverter.  I’m not a big fan of holes in my house, but this turned out to be smaller than I thought.

 

• Installing the conduit from the attic, down the outside of the house, through the hole in the wall to the inverter. 

 

• Installing the combiner box in the attic, then running the conduit from the combiner box to the hole in attic, down the outside of the house, through the hole in the wall to the inverter. 
  

 

All this, and I haven’t even seen the panels yet!  I’m glad we opted to pay someone else to do all this for us.  We’re pretty capable when it comes to home improvement projects, but this seems to involve a fair amount of specialized knowledge.    

 

It feels weird to be so excited about solar energy on a cloudy, cold January day, but I am.  My roof’s pitch, my roof’s orientation, and my latitude may all not be ideal for solar energy, but we’re going to make it work. 

 

Day 2 

 

8:15 a.m.

Four installers arrived & started getting their safety gear together.  We’ve got a pretty steep roof, so they had to attach themselves to the roof a little more securely than they do with most roofs.  Plus, it’s a tall roof - good for avoiding shady trees – bad for falling off of.  Like I said on Day 1 – I’m glad we’re not doing this job ourselves. 

 

The next step was taking a picture of the Pathfinder up on the roof, to double check that we weren’t going to get too much shading. 

 

9 a.m.

Oh dear… I can hear the drills.  I know it’s a beautiful sunny day & that everything will be sealed up tight once they’re done, but really, it’s nerve wracking to have a hole in one’s roof, even for a few minutes. 

 

When the panels came out of the boxes they looked bigger than I remembered.  I guess you’re generally looking up at them on roofs while you’re on the ground, so they look smaller than they really are.  However, they seemed awfully light.  In fact, they look suspiciously like the pretend solar panels that come with some Lego kits.  Getting them up on the roof looked silly too.  I’m struck by the idea that my whole house is really made of parts that are fairly standard – just like Lego bricks.  So maybe this isn’t such a big deal after all… 

 

12 p.m.

There was a fair amount of measuring & prep work in the morning (don’t ask me – aligning things, I suppose).  The first panels didn’t go up the ladder until after noon.  Apparently everything takes longer on a steep roof like mine… mostly because it takes time to maneuver around the safety lines. 

 

4 p.m. 

We have 12 panels on the roof!  The second row of six went up much faster than the first row.  I’m hoping they can finish today, because the weather doesn’t look good for tomorrow.

 

6 p.m.

All panels are on the roof!  It was getting really dark by the time they were screwing in the last ones, and even though the panels were up and wired to each other, they aren’t wired to the combiner box (located inside my attic) yet.  So, there will have to be another day of work on the roof to finish the job. 

 

Day 3

 

Surprise!  The installers called on Friday to ask if they could come on Saturday instead of Monday.  Luckily, we didn’t have plans, so it worked out great. 

 

The wiring from the panels on the roof into the combiner box and then to the inverter was finished today… so we’ve got Solar!  The work was finished when it was almost dark. 

 

So, here’s what it took:  2 people on day one, 4 people on day 2, and 2 people on the final day.  Just so you DIY types will have an idea of the man-hours.