So after sorting out the issue with “alternate roof” from my previous review, the install continued. At this point, the original roof was off. And since work cannot be done over the labor day weekend, my roof was bare for several days, until Tuesday when the crew came back to continue work. So far, these were only the local roofer’s people, and not people from Tesla. And it took them a couple more days to install the regular shingles. They discovered some dry rot which needed to be replaced, which supposedly was something I had to pay out of pocket, and got the city inspector to come by to OK everything. By Wednesday, which was the 4th day into the install, a Tesla van made its appearance while the local roofers were still working. Apparently the Tesla van came to drop off some items to my front yard. I assume these were the valuable solar tiles, and I’m surprised they weren’t afraid of theft. Fortunately, nothing was stolen, despite boxes labeled Tesla, which I imagine would get the attention of the local thieves.

So once the local roofers were done with installing the shingles around the 5th day, it was 2 truck loads of Tesla roofers coming at 7am every day until the end of installation. It was around 10 people or so. There’s not much to talk about in terms of the install, since I don’t know what they’re doing other than “installing a roof/solar tiles.” I would say that you could anticipate loud noises from hammering, sawing, and stuff. House-shaking noises, but I was able to keep working despite this, having virtual meetings would be hard. So this continued for the next 6 days.

Also what you can anticipate, is they will be everywhere: backyard, front yard, side yard, driveway. They just need a lot of space for machines to cut tiles and put stuff. By this point, my front yard had a porta-potty since day 1, boxes of stuff, and my backyard had what looked to be a cutter of some sort. And there was a ladder with some electrical lift, which remained there for days in my driveway. I guess it’s to transport the heavy solar tiles up to the roof, and it’s hard for them to remove nightly. So I had to not park in my garage for over a week (and consequently parking in front of my house turned out to be a bad idea because of nails and I got a punctured tire which I had to fix…). Anyways, they also left ladders in my side yard. In essence, it’s a full-blown construction zone. As such, they do tape off your house with yellow caution tapes. For this reason, I was not able to get mail for over a week, and getting in and out of the house was a challenge, as once I open my door to go anywhere, I’m greeted by the yellow caution tape. It’s an inconvenience, but everybody was very nice and upon seeing you, they’ll yell “STOP WORK!” and everybody stops until you’re at a safe distance then they’ll continue work.

By the 6th (or 7th?) day they were done. It was a Saturday, where they came back to do minor touch ups, of painting silver flashings black to match the color of the roof and shingles. They also showed me the new inverter boxes and told me which lever controlled what and how to turn the system on. They also told me that the system already automatically send stats to Tesla, so that if they discover any anomalies, such as the panels suddenly generating less than a certain percentage of electricity than usual, they will send someone out to fix it. With this monitoring capability, they were already able to see it generating over 2 kW at the time, which was early afternoon, given my 3.98 kW system. And in terms of maintenance, they advised me to not try to clean it myself, as going on the solar tiles will be slippery as if walking on glass, and typically spraying it with water is good enough to wash off pollens and stuff. And if worse comes to worse they’ll send someone to help clean it.

And speaking of clean, they did a thorough job cleaning up everything. And for the next few days, someone came by to remove all the boxes in my front yard. Also the city inspector subsequently came by for the final inspection. Apparently there were two permits: one for the electrical system and one for the roof. After passing that, the field manager returned out of the blue one day to give me a Tesla solar gateway, which is something you plug into your router to send additional stats to Tesla about your energy usage…or generation. I suppose sending them data about usage is a privacy issue, but I’m not sure. Meanwhile, my project advisor sent the application to PG&E and it took 2 weeks for them to process. And by the way, I know I mentioned this several times in my review, but it was only after the installation that they asked me to pay. And yes, I was able to pay with credit card (through Paypal).

And also, doing anything with the gutter was optional. Though if you decide now while roofing is done, changing the gutter would be easier given they won’t nail down “stuff.” And in theory if you replace the gutters down the line when stuff are nailed down, it’ll be more costly. So I had my gutters replaced for around $3000.

So overall I would say the roof install has been a positive experience. Definitely anticipate noise, random people/stuff showing up at your house, inconvenience in terms of no mail and getting in and out of your house, especially if you have kids since they do throw stuff down from the roof.

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Now in terms of the results….I’m not sure. I haven’t gotten my first PG&E bill with the solar roof yet so all I comment on is the look. Looking at my house I don’t see solar tiles. I only see newer asphalt shingles. So the biggest change to me is that now my roof is black instead of brown. And sometimes I feel the itch to look at the solar tiles, so I have to walk farther away to get a good angle of the roof, which was hard because it’s pretty much on top of a hill. And it just looks…weird with the mixture of shingles and solar tiles. I don’t know. Could’ve been a regular solar panels given the top of my roof is kind of out of sight.

I will do another review once I’m hooked up to PG&E to update y’all on the timeline and delight from supposedly having to no longer pay for electricity. I’ll also let you know if there are any leaks and stuff. Thanks for reading!