We were in the thralls of a bad week. We purchased a car recently for Sonora and learned that it needed major repairs. Today was just about trying to get some progress on our lives and get ahead. Danelle had been missing her wireless earbuds for a while. I decided to find them. My first thought was to look in the must unlikely place possible.
We had Corvin’s bedroom door shut as he is away on his third year at college. Danelle was using it as her plant room. We could keep the door closed so the cats didn’t decide to play in the plants. I would search this room first. Upon opening the door, the room smelled horrible. Not just stuffy from a lack of ventilation, but much more.
I started looking around to see what the issue was. To my dismay, I looked up and saw staining on the ceiling. This could only mean a roof leak. And based on the amount and location of the stains, this was fairly significant.
We have owned this house since new approximately 19 years ago. In July of 2010, we had solar panels installed on the roof. We knew that a new roof would be expensive in general. In addition, we would need to do something with the solar panels. A few phone calls to roofers and we learned they want nothing to do with solar panels.
We talked with a solar vendor that said removing the panels would start around $1,000 and then we would need to pay $5,000 – $10,000 to have them re-installed as it would be all labor to correctly install the panels again. This was disheartening to us as the system has 10-15 years of useful life left in it.
Funny side note, my next door neighbor showed me a roof shingle on the ground a few months back and said it wasn’t the same style as his roof. I said it couldn’t be mine as my roof isn’t that old and I didn’t see anything when looking at it (note I only saw the lower sections).
We were able to get a handyman out to the house quickly and he tarped the bad place on the roof where the shingle was missing. He said it wasn’t patch-able and that we really needed a new roof. Further, there wasn’t any storm damage we could submit to insurance. Skipping all the boring details, we signed a contract with a vendor to put a new roof on the house and had two weeks to get the solar panels off before they showed up to put on all new shingles.
Danelle and I decided that we could uninstall the panels ourselves. 
I’ve been on the roof in the past. While it is very steep, its something I’ve done before. Danelle wasn’t going to be left out of this party and decided to join me. We have an extension ladder, but it isn’t at the house and I’m impatient. My folding ladder was just a few inches higher than the gutter and that is what we used to get up the first part of the roof. Then it was a uncomfortable climb to the second story.
It turns out that I’m not the same man I was many years ago and couldn’t get up the roof. This was my plan for getting panels off the roof… Danelle tried and also could not successfully climb up. Plan B was fairly straight forward. It costs about $500 to rent a cherry picker (lift) from Home Depot to get on top of the second story roof. From there we could access the roof and remove the solar panels and still save a fair amount of money.
I rented the lift and when we got out to the parking lot and the Home Depot lady saw my RAV4, she let me know I would be renting a truck as well to haul the lift home. I wasn’t surprised, but I was hoping to save the money. I know the RAV4 is not rated to tow something that heavy, but the drive was short and I was going to go very slow…
Back home I unloaded the lift and raced back to Home Depot to return the truck in the minimum amount of time to save money. Then I had to manually maneuver the lift so it could get up and rotate to get on the roof. This model did not rote 360 degrees, only about 30. This meant I had to work hard to get the correct position to ensure it could not only go up, but over on top of the roof.
The going up part is quite nice. You get lifted with the controls and everything feels great. Then you need to rotate to put the basket over the roof. Rotating while high up in the air causes the basked to shake. When you’re not accustomed to that movement, it is panic inducing! I can’t say I got used to it over the several hours of usage I had.
Next issue, there is a weight limit. This is for good measure. With Danelle and I together, we were over the limit. We both wanted to be up on the roof to remove the solar panels. This was for safety as well as just the nostalgia as we removed them.
Danelle decided to go up to the top first. She would use the controls in the basket to pilot herself to the top. Once there, I used the control on the base of the unit to bring it back down to the ground allowing me to go up after her and work together. I was a little nervous as I would be operating it from farther away and I didn’t want to cause any damage to the house or the lift.
It went better than I expected and before long I was piloting myself in the basket back to the roof. As much as I’m cheap, I was much happier using this method than ladders to get us up to the roof and back to the ground. Originally I was designing some sort of rope contraption to lower panels to the ground after they were removed if we were using only ladders to get up to the top.
Up on the roof, I felt like an astronaut performing a space walk. I didn’t want to drop and loose any tools. Removing the panels required using a socket wrench to remove bolts holding them to the mounts. Once the bolt was loose, the panel could then just slide right off the roof. Equally concerning was if I dropped the wrench or the socket. If they went to the ground, it was an inconvenience. If they rolled into the second story gutter, I wasn’t sure if I would just go purchase new ones or try to go the edge and retrieve them.
I worked with precision grabbing the tool and using it. Then I would separate the socket from the wrench and hand each to Danelle slowly to place in a bag. I didn’t drop any so I didn’t need to find out what I would do if they went in the gutter. I disconnected the panels and took them down to the ground two at a time. I had to be extra careful as the panels will generate electricity if they are exposed to the sun.
There were no accidents and everything worked as planned. Danelle used the lift to clean off some algae from the house before I towed it with my RAV4 (take that Home Depot, also, it drove much nicer than the F250) back.
The new roof went on a few days later. It took a full day to get the work done. The house looked strange without any shingles on it.
Danelle and I are blessed that this is just an inconvenience to us. We decided not to re-install the solar panels on the house. Since we’re planning to move in the next year, we didn’t feel we would get the value out of the money spent.
Hogan Haake