Solar panel removal and reinstall for Phoenix roof work

Before anything is unplugged, we ask for the system details: who installed it, whether it's owned, leased or financed, and who monitors it. Leased and financed systems often carry terms about who may touch the equipment, so we check those with you first rather than discovering them halfway through a tear-off. When the paperwork says the solar company must handle the electrical disconnect, we schedule around their visit. When it doesn't, our roofers shut the system down in the correct sequence and sketch the panel layout before a single module moves.

Monitoring is the part homeowners tend to forget. Once the array goes dark, the monitoring app will flag a production drop, and some providers open a service ticket automatically. We give you the shutdown date so the alert doesn't catch you off guard, and after reinstall we confirm with you that the system is reporting again. If the inverter or gateway shows a fault after reset, we sort out whether it's a connection on the roof or a component issue the solar company needs to look at.

A home array can sit on anywhere from two dozen to more than fifty attachment points, and each one drives a lag bolt through the roof deck. On shingle roofs we install new flashed mounts with a metal base that slides under the course above. On tile roofs we use tile hooks or replacement flashing tiles, and we cut or swap tiles so nothing rests on a cracked edge. On foam and other low-slope roofs, mounts get a proper flashing detail tied into the coating, not a blob of sealant.

The older way of setting mounts on many Valley homes leaned heavily on caulk. Sealant cooks in Phoenix sun, where roof surfaces run 150 F to 170 F in July, and it shrinks away from the bolt within a few summers. When we reset an array, we don't reuse tired sealant details. Each penetration gets flashing that sheds water by overlap, with sealant only as a backup, and we check that every bolt lands in a rafter or solid blocking. On tile roofs nearing 20 years, we usually pair the reset with new underlayment beneath the tile so the roof and the array start over together.

Panels come down in rows and get numbered against the layout sketch, so each string goes back where it came from. We stack them on padded supports in a shaded part of the yard or driveway, glass up, away from where tear-off debris falls. Wiring connectors are capped to keep dust out, which matters in a city where one haboob can coat everything in grit. Rails are bundled with their hardware so nothing gets swapped or lost between removal day and reset day.

If the roof job uncovers soft or delaminated sheathing, we repair the deck before the new roof goes down, because a weak spot under a mount is a future leak. This is also the moment to decide whether the array should go back exactly where it was. Sometimes shifting a row a few inches clears a valley or keeps a mount out of a low spot. Our article on getting an older roof ready for solar covers that planning in more depth.