Solar installers consider roofing material when deciding which mounts to purchase for each gig, but many pass on job opportunities due to unfamiliarity with certain types of roofs. A prime example of this is stone coated steel roofs.
Stone coated steel roofs are known by a few other names such as stamped metal, metal tile, metal shingle, etc., and they are often overlooked as a viable roofing material for solar installations. Why? Well, we asked installers at the recent Intersolar 2022 trade show in Long Beach, Calif., why they haven’t installed on roofs before and the consensus was clear: While many didn’t know about the available mounting solutions, most simply didn’t know how they could work with the roofing material and haven’t considered it any further.
There’s a goldmine of solar installations out there waiting to be claimed. Adaptable teams could take advantage of the gap in the market and open an entirely new line of income for their businesses if they only looked a bit further than they are currently.
roofs are one of the easiest kinds of roofing material to install on after asphalt shingle, and certainly easier than installing on asphalt shingle with sheet metal flashing.
Roof manufacturers like Decra and Boral have guides on how to walk on their roofs, and it’s rather simple and not too different from walking on Spanish tiles. The key is to step on where the panels are strongest which depends on whether they rest on battens or not.
Walk on the top of the overlap if the panels rest on battens, and if the panels are a direct-to-deck roof profile, walk just below the overlap where the metal is closest to the roof deck. If you stick to these guidelines, you’ll be walking on roofs in no time.