We had Sol Up Solar Power company install 22 solar panels on our roof in Jan of 2017.
They installed 3 more solar panels in October 2017 to meet our additional energy demand.
We developed a bad roof leak during a heavy rain into the bedroom of our home directly under the solar panels where the installers were walking to do the install.
We notified our home owners insurance company about our leak. They came to our home with a professional licensed roofer to investigate the cause of the leak. They determined the leak was not due to wind or storm damage but they told us their roofer did see numerous cracked roof tiles on our roof with some being located under the solar panels that were installed.
We then notified Sol Up of our leak. They sent a gentleman from their company to our home to inspect the leak. He got into our attic and said he could not detect where the leak was coming from but he did see some water leaking in.
Sol UP then said they would send a roofing company to inspect our roof and do a leak test by taking a hose and running water on our roof and try to determine the cause of our leak.
They sent a roofing company to our home called One Roofing who determined we needed broken and crushed roof tiles replaced and they gave Solup a quote to fix the leak. Sol UP then contacted another roofing company to come to our home to give another opinion called PRS roofing who was also supposed to do a leak test after Solup would remove 3 solar panels over the area where the roof had been leaking. Solup did remove the 3 solar panels and the company took pictures of what was under the roof and reported this information back to Phil Shaw at PRS roofing. Sol Up informed us that PRS roofing had told them and had signed off on a report that they had no liability in our roof leak. We asked to see that report multiple times because we wanted to understand how the solar panel installation had nothing to do with our leak since we had absolutely no issues with our roof before the install. They finally sent us a report several weeks after we had asked to see this. It was done by Phil Shaw with PRS roofing and it said the leak was caused by multiple broken and cracked roof tiles. We found nothing on the report that released Sol Up from liability in our cracked roof tiles. I called Phil and talked to him directly and he told me that Sol Up tried to pressure him to write the report releasing them from any liability in the leak and that he left the report purposely vague for that reason. He said the roof leak was due to broken and crushed roof tiles but he had no way of knowing who broke the tiles. All he could say for certain was that due to the cracked and crushed tiles the felt underlayment deteriorated over time due to sun and dirt and eventually rain leaked into the home. He said Sol Up kept saying to him how could we have caused this since we did the install of solar panels over these cracked tiles almost 2 years ago. Phil told me he told them this is most likely exactly how long it would have taken for the felt to deteriorate and allow the leak to happen inside the home especially since we do not have that much rainy weather in Vegas. Last November when the leak finally occurred was a very wet time here in Vegas.
Phil came to our home to explain things. He also sent another one of his roofers to our home to take pictures for us of what was found under these last three solar panels they installed in October of 2017 so we could see it for ourselves. I will include these pictures so you can see the damage to the tiles on our roof with some being found directly under the three solar panels they removed for inspection by PRS roofing.
No one has been on our roof at any time since the installation of the solar panels and the roof leak. We had 3 different professional licensed roofing companies, plus the roofer that came with our Allstate agent, all tell us after inspecting our roof that there were multiple cracked and crushed roof tiles on our roof.
It should also be noted that during the install of the solar panels Sol Up told us the roof tiles were breaking easily when they walked on them carrying the solar panels but they would replace any that they cracked. They said our roof tiles were no longer being made but they did find a large number of matching roof tiles at a salvage yard. They brought a large pile of these roof tiles to our home and set them beside the house. After they finished doing the initial install of the first 22 panels every replacement roof tile that was piled up on the side of our home was gone except for 2.
They installed 3 more solar panels in October of 2017 10 months after the first install to fully meet our electrical demand because the initial 22 were not doing the job. We signed the contract to do this job but we were going to be out of the country for a couple weeks.They emailed me and asked for permission to install these 3 solar panels during the time while we were out of the country. I emailed them back telling them I did not want them to do this until we got back. They then sent me an email apologizing saying they went ahead and installed them anyway. I will include a screenshot of that email exchange as well.
Now our thinking is that they wanted to do this while we were not home because they had run out of roof tile replacements and knew from the previous install they would break and crush roof tiles installing these last three panels but figured they would just cover these up with solar panels and no one would be the wiser knowing it would take many years for the felt to deteriorate. What they did not count on was the heavy rains we had last November that allowed the leak to happen in just a couple years time. When these three solar panels were removed it revealed many broken and crushed roof tiles directly under the location of the solar panels. It is very easy to see this in the pictures provided to us by Phil Shaw of PRS roofing. It also reveals several roof tiles with a thick white glue on them where it looked like they initially tried to seal up cracks in the tile with some kind of thick glue. As I mentioned we had absolutely no issues with our roof at any time until this installation of solar panels and it is a known fact that they broke lots of roof tiles with the initial install of the first 22 and it is very easy to see the replacements they used to fix the ones they crushed because they are of a different color. We also learned from several of the professional roofers who visited our home that these were not an exact match to our roof tiles and should have not been used to begin with because they said if you do a long run of these they will get further and further out of whack with the original roof tiles and eventually cause issues with our roof. We think this may be why One Roofing who gave Sol Up the original quote to fix our roof recommended replacing the entire roof under all the solar panels and not just the ones where the leak is occurring. We feel like that is why they then went to PRS roofing to get another opinion.
You can see the pictures of our roof at Google Reviews and at Yelp under Sol-Up. There is no place to upload them here. We just got a message from Google that we have had over 5000 views of our pictures already which tells us people are very interested in knowing the truth about Sol-Up.
