I'm doing 6% into my 401k right now to get a full 5% match, along with maxing my HSA. I plan on maxing the 401k starting in March next year. I should still be able to save $2,000 a month for the house as long as I stop spending stupid money on rare beers lol. I appreciate the advice though.

Ahh, a smart saver and an appreciator of fine beverages!

So you're putting money into a 401K and IPAs? Solid investing!

Microbet,

My wife got hooked by a salesperson for vivint.solar. It of course sounded amazing, no money down, save the world. He's persistent and has stopped by the house twice when I'm not home, and will probably keep coming. So I e-mailed to say just give me a ballpark number because I'm pretty sure it's not practical for us and I don't want to waste your time. I really just wanted him to go away, but his response is pretty convincing, and makes me want to hear more. Can I get your professional opinion?

Solar Dude:

The typos in that make me think it's from a Nigerian Prince.

I agree. He must be way more charming in person. He does have a point though, we haven’t found a way to cut off the sun.

With Solar, they see how much energy you use and see how much Solar you need and give you the price. Obviously your monthly solar bill should be less than your current bill to make it worth while.

Stumpy,

That email was pretty lame. I'm going to PM you my email address. Feel free to send me some or all of your address (so I can google satellite - or send pics), your utility bill (or at least your average kwh used per unit time and average cost per kwh), and pics or description of your electrical service panel and I'll let you know what I think. If you have any bids you can send them too. Or you can post it all itt or start a new thread or w/e.

Salespeople usually don't know ****.

I am under contract to buy a house and my lending company is asking me to pay $595 now for an appraisal. That seems really high to me and multiple sources on Google say $200-$400 is standard.

I sent email asking for the company they are using and a break down of the fees. This is rural East Texas, the house is rectangular, sqft is <1700, and they already have the survey.

Does anyone have any experience with this, how can I negotiate a lower price and is the quoted price reasonable?

I was an appraiser for about 8 years (20+ years ago) and got $300 max for residential. I think prices have stayed the same or gone down, but the mortgage company is prolly taking a big cut.

I wouldn't be shocked if you just tell them it sounds high and they lower it.

This was the response:

And I just responded this:

What can i do to get a lower price?

offer to source your own appraisal?

I do think it is allowed by law and there are laws that govern how the lending companies choose one.

Microbet made me a little suspicious that the lending company is taking a cut and that isn't the actual cost the appraisal company is charging. I know it's small compared to the cost of the home, but I still don't want to overpay for anything and I don't want to pay up front for an appraisal with no garuntee that the loan will be approved.

Maybe they could lower other fees or the rate, but they work up their charges however they do and someone else may do it a different way. Just shop around a little and compare the bottom lines.

You can find a new lender.

Not an expert on this at all but...

From my understanding of the home solar power game you are entering into a long term contract where they install the panels on your roof for free, but it is some type of lease to own agreement. Therefore if you sell the home and the buyers don't want to stay with Solar Company Inc. you will be on the hook to pay the remaining cost of the panels. Also, the reason they are putting in a new electrical box is because that is what is required to run the new panels.

Now for the not so good... The reason they need your historical electric usage is to see what you have been paying. Makes sense. We be to see how many panels we need to replace your current needs. What isn't said is we can lower your bill 'short term' and save the planet. But read the fine print. They can raise your rates by 3-5% a year and you have no recourse.

Again. The 2 huge downsides are super long contracts and problems with selling the home if the new buyers don't want to assume the contract.

Now, if you plan on spending the rest of your life there, just buy everything up front. You will still be on the grid if you need extra electricity and if you generate more than you need the electric company has to buy the excess from you. Still going to be 15-20 years to see your return on investment, but after that it is all gravy.

Cliffs: Not for me.

Around here it's very easy to get an appraisal refunded by the mortgage company if you just tell them you're going to shop around or you heard xyz doesnt charge their clients for appraisals. Canada though.

Just think how much cheaper it would have been if the house had been square instead of rectangular!

Thanks Microbet. I think it's pretty clear we're not currently in a good location, and I mostly posted because the guy was so bad. But I do love the idea of solar, and it's gotten way more affordable, so I'll ask some questions here and hopefully other people find it interesting? I'd certainly enjoy some general solar panel wisdom.

CowboyCold's comments on the lease part are interesting too (thanks). It always seemed too good to be true to me, but I could see how it makes sense in really ideal locations for solar. I've been assuming if I ever did this it'd just be us paying or getting a loan.

Are MicroInverters the way to go? The cost didn't seem that much more, and simpler wiring, better efficiency? Do they really last 20 years?

Installing panels seems like a lot of holes in my roof, and a lot of potential for things to go wrong 5 or 10 years down the road. What kind of guarantees do installers usually offer on leaks, wiring failures, etc?

Here's the layout they did, which shows the orientation of the house.


My roof pitch is 45 degrees, and I'm located in Virginia, right outside Washington DC for reference.

I count 47 panels, and guessed 14 kW. He's quoting $41k installed, which seems high just looking at what materials would cost? Are there any major material costs outside of panels, inverters, health monitor? Wiring, mounting rails and stuff seemed pretty reasonable, is $100 a panel an OK estimate?

Google sunroof says I'd get 878 hours of sun a year. I'd seen somewhere else 1,600 hours was about right for an ideal location in my area?

All else being equal, can you rank NE, NW, SE, SW directions? Any of them not worth panels at all? I'm guessing the back roof (4) would be one of my better spots if not for my trees.

We're considering having the trees removed for unrelated reasons, but our neighbors have 100+ foot tall trees too, is there a rule of thumb like if the angle from the panel to the top of the tree is 45 degrees or more you're probably OK?

We have net metering here, and it seems like it's just a 1:1 exchange for when I need/give power. I can't see any case where I'd generate more for the year than I used. if that's the case, do I ever get renewable energy credits, or does the power company claim those?

We use 18,500 kWh a year, and our electrical panels are pretty much brand new. I did the electrical, and have a 100A sub-panel right below the attic. It'd be easy to run a new 30A line up there, which seems like all I need? There's some automatic cutoff switch needed in case the power goes out right?

Thanks for any feedback.

Ok.

1. Lease

This is a financial decision and depends on things like whether you can use the federal tax credit or not and it should be compared to loans. Generally a home improvement loan is going to be better. PACE financing through property taxes is maybe about the same. I really wouldn't much worry about selling your house with the lease, but that's me. It happens all the time.

2. Microinverters

Either microinverters or power conditioners (SolarEdge) allow you to design with just about any string lengths and module orientations. So, sometimes they are almost mandatory. But, often not. They are a bit more efficient. They have better warranties. I have no reason to believe they won't last 20+ years or at least be covered by warranty. They have been reliable so far. I used to not recommend them because they cost more and were more work, but they have improved their cabling and not such a pain and there's a new requirement for something called rapid shutdown on string inverters that costs a fair amount and is a fair amount of work so that has swung the balance and I usually recommend microinverters now.

3. It is a lot of holes, but I've never caused a leak from a mounting hole in like 11 years. So, get someone who doesn't cause leaks. (3 leaks ever caused by people working for me. One from stepping on a nail that made a hole, one from cutting some flashing, one from moving a big vent. None were too big a deal and that over several hundred jobs.) In CA there's a required 10 year warranty from the installer.

45 degrees is hella steep. When I first started I didn't charge extra for that. Then I would charge a bunch extra. Now I think I'd just turn it down.

That layout would not pass fire in most places in CA because you need 3' at edges, ridges, 18" valleys and hips where panels are on opposite face. They very well may not have those requirements where you are.

The price is fine considering how chopped up the system is and how steep the roof is. It's large, which is a point in its favor, but still, not a bad price. You could probably do better - but you could also probably do worse. And the lower price people are probably going to go out of business. Material cost altogether are like $1-$1.50 per watt, maybe $2/w if you use some unnecessarily expensive panels.

On a relatively flat roof North(ish) facing isn't soooo bad, but at 45 degrees it's pretty darn bad. There are calculators for this, but offhand it's not a great place for solar panels. Something 45 degrees definitely makes some shade. If you can trim trees maybe more can fit SE. A rule of thumb is that there is pretty much no shade if the nearest thing is twice as far away as it is above the array.

Your electricity rates are likely tiered and the more you use the more you pay. That means the ROI on smaller systems (assuming the price per watt is the same) is much better. So, don't be reluctant to get a smaller system that just reduces your usage imo. You have 17 modules Southish on there. That's not a bad sized system.

The renewable energy credit thing depends on your local rules and lease if you get one. Around here one utility will pay a wholesale rate for extra power at the end of the year and the other big one won't. That's cash, not RECs. No one I know deals with RECs outside of large commercial/industrial/utility installations.

The rules for the panel are a little complicated. Unless something is different from your local AHJ the rule is you can feed a panel with up to 120% of the busbar rating. That means if you feed that 100A panel with a 100A breaker from the main you can only put a 20A breaker in for solar, which is enough for about 4500 watts. (if you're calculating along you might think it's 4800 watts, but no, and there's more complexity there). Now if you feed that panel with an 80A breaker you can put 40A of solar on it. You still have to apply the 120% rule to any panels upstream from that subpanel. So if that's a 200A panel with a 200A main you can only have 40A of solar feeding it. But you could have a 150A main in a 200A panel and then have 90A of solar - but not all from that 100A sub.

So, my first pass here with very limited info is if the 100A panel is convenient and nothing else really is, put (17) 315 watt or so modules on it for 5355 watts. That will take a 30A breaker, but you can derate the feeding breaker to 90A. You'll get a much better payoff with the unshady parts of your Southish roof than the Northish parts and you don't have to do anything expensive to your electrical system. It'll only cut your usage by 1/3 or maybe do a little better than that, but if your rates are tiered it'll probably cut your bills by more than 1/2.

Obviously I don't have all the relevant info, just some guessing/approximation.

Is roof face (3) is relatively flat?

Yeah, that's our porch roof, it's about 15 degrees, but everything surrounding it is a second story higher. I think they skipped some panels there in the middle because of a very tall tree across the street.

I'm an idiot. In checking the porch on the plans, I see (2) and (4) are 9/12, not 12/12. I thought what you're suggesting is what they'd propose, basically filling that back section up with panels and nowhere else. I had wondered how you even do an install on a roof that steep, especially with trying to pack all the modules in tight, it just seems really tedious with the adjacent ones in your way.

(1) is 14/12, so even worse, and that side is right near the property line, with the neighbors having huge trees I can't control. The house is a lock to get bulldozed next time it sells, so the trees could go away in the near future, but at least for now that area seems bad.

I ran a spare 12/3 line from the main panel up in the attic too, and that sub panel isn't at capacity, probably even under 80A. The main panel is 200A.

From your materials estimate, the cost of the system is about half labor, half materials. Just because I could do the porch install myself, could that area be worth it at all? It has room for 10 panels, if materials are $5,000 or less, that's pretty appealing. The main panel is in my garage at the front left corner, so it'd be easy to drill one hole and feed a line under the porch roof.

Thanks again for the feedback.

As you get steeper here is roughly what happens:

20 deg+: You can't set stuff/tools down without finding or making something to stop them from falling. This makes things somewhat more difficult.

33 deg+: You're going to start slipping. You need a harness or to have rails in place to walk or hold onto. You often have to work with one hand and things that you could do by yourself now take two people.

40 deg+: Now you either have weight constantly on a harness or you have to have roof jacks for everything.

All these things mean way way more work and everything is much slower. It is more difficult to do second+ rows on really steep roofs, you have to do it all from above, but it's not impossible.[/quote]

The capacity of the panel, like load calcs or what breakers are in there, isn't really the issue. You are adding more supply and not load after all. It's just a code rule. The issue has to do with the possibility of your other loads now overloading the busbar, which should have been impossible not just because you didn't have too many loads, but because an overcurrent device protected the busbar. But if you mean that you could derate the breaker feeding that panel to 80A, then yeah, that does depend on the loads.

One thing that could affect the design here using subpanels is if the city/utility require a solar disconnect at the main service panel. That's not an NEC requirement, but some places call for it and if so you need to go there and then bring the wires back to the sub, or just land in the main.

If you're up for it then it'll definitely save a bunch of money. Feel free to keep asking questions if you need help doing it. 15 degrees and NW is not *too* bad.

yw

Hey guys.

Just took out a pony wall and there were 2 outlets on it. One wire looks to be the end of a series string and the other two need to be 'spliced ' together.

Problem is the wires are coming out of a load bearing column, so cutting out a square hole for a junction box in the 2×4's is not an option.

Don't really want to demo anymore drywall to see where the nearest junction box to wire everything there.

Only thing I can think of is to put a shallow junction box on the studs and just put another piece of drywall floor to ceiling on the column to make it flush with the face plate.

Any better ideas?

Holy crap at all that dust. Did you use a chain saw? Have you discovered that every single thing in your entire house now has a fine layer of drywall dust on it yet?

That column is enormous. There should be plenty of room to either notch out space for a box or run something behind the exposed studs and still have enough support. Open up something at the top so you can have a clear idea of what's bearing on what, then put in a new box accordingly.