Someone reached out to me who had a PV system installed two years ago by another contractor on her shingle roof. Almost immediately it started having loud popping noises intermittently, but pretty consistently day to day. The homeowner thought it sounded like expansion and contraction. That made sense, so the original contractor came back multiple times to tighten things up. The problem never went away and lasted about 6 months until it was driving her crazy and she had the panels only removed. The sounds stopped. Legal proceedings ensued. Everything was dropped and she now has rails up, panels in garage, and no clamps.
The panels have been in her garage for 18 months. I went to inspect today. She has Quickmount LMount flashings, Ironridge XR100 rails and had UFOs. The UFOs were tightened so much that they were tearing the t-bolts out of the top channel of the rail. I don't know if that was from the original installation or after they came back to try to resolve the issue. The UFOs had also dug in pretty deeply to the top of the module frames. None of the glass was broken. I could not find much evidence of module frames slipping on the rails and causing marks. The flashings and L-feet are all properly installed in trusses at 48 or 24-in centers. The square bolts securing the L-feet to rails are all tight and show no evidence of slippage. The attic looks great. 5/8 ply over manufactured trusses (southern pine). It's a Gable roof with about 20 feet eave to ridge. Again, everything looks great in the attic. There are two rows of panels. I thought maybe the two rows were rubbing on each other. But I could not find any evidence on the short sides of the modules that would suggest this was the problem. Has anyone seen this issue before? I'm thinking about putting a few test panels back up with standard mid clamps rather than UFOs just to see if that changes anything. Jason Szumlanski Florida Solar Design Group
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