New Construction/Standoff/LowProfile Flashing [RE-wrenches]

Bill Brooks billb at endecon.com
Fri Jun 4 01:57:57 PDT 2004


 

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William and Nick,

I have to agree with Graham on his assessment of post and flashing. All new
roofs should be done with post and flashing in my opinion. Drilling through
shingles is okay on an existing comp roof in good shape with a single layer
of shingles--that rules out and awful lot of roofs (like 80%).

Not sure why you can't find rafters with your cathedral roof system. Are the
rails running parallel to the rafters rather than perpendicular? 20" is
pushing it for roof damming and 28" is too much in my understanding. If
memory serves me correctly, our building code in North Carolina required a
cricket (wedge-shaped waterway) above anything that was greater than 18"
wide. I would think hard before making it a SOP so it won't FLOP;-).

No offense to anyone personally, but I see too many contractors trying to
leave the straight and narrow of flashed standoffs with well-designed
aluminum rail systems that clamp the modules. This going to the "next level"
often leads to repeating the mistakes of the past from both the PV and solar
thermal industries in roof mounting. So many systems are going in these days
that I think the tried and true methods are often found to be mundane,
difficult, and slow, when in fact they are designed to last the life of the
roof.

Nick, I have never heard of anyone reroofing around a PV array. Although the
roof under the array will last far longer that roof next to the array, I'm
not sure of any roof that would be willing to feather in a new roof that
way. I think your suggestion to the customer seems misleading to me. To be
honest with them there should be an estimate for removing the array during
reroofing so they can adequately assess whether a new roof with flashed
penetrations is worth the investment today.

Bill.


-----Original Message-----
From: William Miller [mailto:wrmiller at slonet.org]
Sent: Friday, June 04, 2004 12:43 AM
To: RE-wrenches at topica.com; RE-wrenches at topica.com
Subject: Re: New Construction/Standoff/LowProfile Flashing [RE-wrenches]


RE-roofing!  The million dollar question.  We are dedicated to "top-down"
installations.  All (or darn near all) of our racks tilt up for back wiring
in conduit.  Therefore, any rack can be lifted up for re-roofing.  We
haven't done it yet, but we figure a comp roof can be re-roofed around our
racks.  Lift the racks up and then the customer pays one of us to hang out
and lift one foot at a time for new shingles to be slid underneath.  Like I
said, we haven't actually tried it yet, but it would be many times cheaper
than removing the whole shootin' match.

Also, our "Cadillac" comp installs get DPW power posts with flashing.  I've
tried the solar jacks, or whatever they are called, and I can't sanction a
stand-off with only one lag.  I'd like to see the DPW power posts with a
square flange, rather than rectangle, for more stability.  The only
flashing that will clear the flange is the Oatey solar.

Continuing with the creative process:  Just today we started an
installation on a comp roof with cathedral ceiling.  Since we can't block,
and we can't hit rafters (multiple 10 module racks, no consistent 48" foot
spacing, variable roof framing, etc.), we are placing 20" to 28" sections
of aluminum "Uni-strut" at each rack foot location.  Lots of caulk area
under each strut and the feet placement is flexible.  Water can run off
between sections of strut. So far, it looks like this may be a new SOP for
us.  I'll keep you all posted.

William Miller

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