Clive Evans (Crest Roofing)

Installing solar panels is going to be part and parcel of roofing soon. We're bound to see more and more of it as Housing Associations are required to meet the higher levels of the Code for Sustainable Homes. It’s looking really attractive for our business, we'd like to do more.

In the long them I think it will be very beneficial to us, although the volume of work being carried out currently is inconsistent. But, if we were supplying tiles, we have accounts with SIG etc and as 'supply and fit' it would offer an additional revenue stream as part of our business.

People are talking about solar tiles, one social housing company I spoke to sounded very interested recently. As a solution to the Code, it's very unobtrusive. None of the house builders want to sacrifice the look of their product but your solar tiles blend in very well. It's not just a panel worked into the roof, you can see the weather proofing, it’s well thought out.

It’s easy for the roofers, as long as you work in the right direction. Generally Roofers can be stuck in their ways. No-one likes change! But once they're used to, it's no problem. It's a very useable product, you don't need to be a scientist to fit it. Proper training is sufficient to show you need to take care. Anything new is slower to begin with. We use a limited number of products and we're used to them. With practice it wouldn't be a problem. Hips and valleys could slow you down but now we've done it we know how to position it on a roof.

“The one bit of advice I’d give to a new roofer, is listen to the trainer.”

On site we all sat down together at the pre-project meeting, so we knew what was going to happen. Solarcentury’s design team told us what we would need to do: we leave the two wires dangling into the roof, we test the two wires to make sure we're getting the required voltage but we have the figures and know what the voltages should be as we go along so it's absolutely fine. If you didn't test it on the way through, as you are installing the tiles, and then found a problem you'd have to strip everything back. The split between the trades was fine. The electrician just picks up the two wires and mounts the inverter etc. It's been well designed by Solarcentury so we had no problems. It was all delivered fine. We'd normally want a check list to make sure we had everything but since Solarcentury brought the slates it wasn't a problem.