Mike McCusker has been a Green Sun Energy Services client since March of 2019, when the roof and the solar array were bought on the same day. The roof was finished on 18 April 2019 and the array a month later.
2,000 square feet, stripped to the deck
A single layer of old shingles came off down to the sheathing and left with the dumpster. Deck protection went over the exposed sheathing, then a GAF Timberline HDZ system carrying a 50-year warranty, aluminum drip edge along 269 feet of rakes, eaves and valleys, and a ridge vent along the peak.
Two parts of the roof deliberately left out
The contract names them: the replacement covers the main house and does not include the addition over the garage or the low-slope roof. Both exclusions are worth reading rather than skipping. The garage addition is a separate structure with its own age and its own condition, and there is no reason a roof should be replaced simply because it is attached to one that needs it.
Why a low-slope roof is not a shingle job
The second exclusion is the more technical one. Shingles shed water by gravity and need enough pitch to do it; below a certain slope water moves slowly enough for wind to drive it back under the courses. A low-slope roof is therefore not a shingle roof at all — it wants a membrane, which is a different material, a different method and often a different trade. Folding it into a shingle contract would mean quoting the wrong product for that section, and the household would find out about it the first time the wind came from the wrong direction. Naming it as excluded is the honest version.
39 panels and 12.68 kW
Thirty-nine Hanwha Q.PEAK DUO panels at 325 watts each came to 12.68 kW on Ecolibrium Solar mounting, finished on 16 May 2019, running into a SolarEdge SE10000H inverter with an optimizer on every panel. JCP&L is the utility and the first year was designed for about 15,463 kWh, a little over 1,200 kWh for every kilowatt installed.
Why the roof went first
An array is bolted to a roof for twenty-five years and more, so shingles at the end of their life underneath one become a second job with a date already on them — panels off, roof on, panels back. Thirty-nine panels on a 2,000 square foot roof is dense coverage, which would make that job very nearly a full strip and reset. A month of sequencing removed the possibility.
Project Facts
- Location
- Belford, NJ
- Services
- Roofing Installation, Solar Panel Installation
- Client since
- March 2019
Solar
- Panels
- Hanwha Model # Q.PEAK DUO-G5.325
- Panels
- 39
- System size
- 12.68 kW
- Inverter
- SolarEdge SE10000H-US000NNC2
- Mounting system
- Ecolibrium Solar
- Estimated first-year production
- 15,463 kWh
- Electric utility
- JCP&L
Roof
- System
- GAF Timberline Lifetime Roofing System
- Area replaced
- 2,000 sq ft
- Warranty
- 50 years
Questions from Belford homeowners
SolarWhat is hosting capacity, and can it affect a Belford property?
Hosting capacity is how much distributed generation a part of the grid can take without affecting safety or reliability. A neighborhood with a lot of existing solar can face interconnection limits even where the individual property is ideal for it -- which is why the utility review is not a formality.
RoofingWhy do gutters overflow in heavy rain?
Usually clogging, a blocked downspout, not enough outlet capacity, insufficient pitch, or runoff concentrated from a large roof area into a short run. Standing water between storms points at pitch, sagging or a blockage instead. Water running behind the gutter is a different fault again, usually the gutter position or the roof-edge flashing.
SolarCan more solar be installed than the house uses?
New Jersey's net-metering rules generally limit a residential customer's generating capacity by reference to the electricity supplied to that customer over an annualised period. The programme is designed to offset a household's own consumption rather than turn it into a wholesale generator. Documented future loads can sometimes be relevant under the utility's procedures.