UniSolar Shingles [RE-wrenches]

[Chris Daum]

Hi Jim and wrenches:

I suggest you contact Quadrat Delawari, vice-president of North American 
Sales at Uni-Solar (e-mail:  qdelawari at uni-solar.com).  He did a great 
presentation of Uni-Solar's various PV roofing products at a Seminar at 
Kyocera, and I'd bet he could address your questions and issues.  You can 
also reach him by phone at 248-362-4170.

Regards,

Chris Daum
Oasis Montana Inc.
406-777-4321 or 4309
406-777-2632  fax
http://www.oasismontana.com


-----Original Message-----
From:	Jim Hartley [SMTP:grail at inil.com]
Sent:	None
To:	RE-wrenches at topica.com
Subject:	UniSolar Shingles [RE-wrenches]

I have no prior experience with this product but I have a probable
client who has an interest in using the product.  These shingles would
be applied onto a converted barn used both as living space and for the
client's business operations.  The current roof is shingled but is now
leaking in areas.  Re-roofing seems necessary at this point.  The barn
is quite large and has far more roof surface than would be necessarily
"power producing" or economically feasible in its entirety.  Hence, only
a portion of the roof would end up being re-surfaced with solar
shingling.  Happily, the roof has two very workable primary facets, the
lower of which is an ideal seasonal average pitch for this area.  The
roof is facing directly south across a quite large open farmfield
protected from development for the next hundred years.  The upper, lower
pitched facet would be better for summer.  The underside of the roof is
presently fully exposed and readily accessible if somewhat high up from
the current loft floor. This loft area is being considered for future
finishing off. My question in this connection is multi-fold for anyone
with experience using this product.  First, can you go over existing
shingled surfaces or are we looking at removing what's there now and
starting from scratch?  My thinking is the latter would be the case.
The roof substrate is barnboard [planking], not conventional roof
decking.  Secondly, can you successfully mix and match real shingles and
these UniSolar shingles so that just a particular area of the new
surfacing is occupied by the solar shingles?  Thirdly, who really should
be doing the application?  In Illinois, roofing/re-roofing is only
supposed to be done [officially] by licensed roofing contractors.  Since
I have done roofing myself before I know this isn't always the case [I'm
not a licensed roofer] but this situation will certainly draw some
attention from the local code people. Assuming this is the approach one
must pursue, how have roofers responded to using this product so far if
anyone has faced this issue before?  Finally, what unknowns might we run
into here?  I should note also this client has a very nice wind location
and the overall project [should it prove financially workable] could
prove to be something of a showcase thing since the client is fully open
to public visitations.  For this reason it would be quite nice to have
everything work out well. :-)

Jim Hartley
http://www.homestead-specialties.com
Business Email: JamesHartley at homestead-specialties.com
Direct Email: grail at inil.com

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