In the headlong rush to go green, plumbers and electricians are fitting solar panels. But, as Grant Prior reports, poor installation is costing billions across Europe as roofs fail

You wouldn’t call a roofer to fix your boiler. Yet a similarly bizarre job swop is happening as plumbers and electricians, who have rebranded themselves as ‘solar specialists’, are called upon to install solar panels on roofs.

The confusion highlights current problems in this sector which are threatening to hamper its growth as the clamour for green energy intensifies.

But the roof installations need to be done by specialist contractors trained in the latest techniques involving solar energy collectors. Problems caused by botched work are estimated to cost nearly £3bn across Europe every year.


‘Because solar systems are linked to the electricity or hot water supply a lot of fixing work has historically fallen into the hands of plumbers and electricians,’ explains Kevin Taylor, technical manager at the National Federation of Roofing Contractors (NFRC). ‘Obviously those trades aren’t specialist roofers and there have been a lot of problems with leaks and failures.’

The NFRC has launched a new training course for member firms and the first raft of companies qualified last month. The course is aimed at federation members who want to tap into the market by becoming qualified installers.

Taylor claims that the roofing industry is not trying to take work away from the M&E sector. ‘We are looking to expand the role of roofers, but it is not our intention to take work away from other trades. We want to work together. It’s easier to train a roofer how to install these systems than to train a plumber to work on a roof,’ he says.

The courses have been approved by manufacturers that include Solar Century, Alpha Boilers and Viridian Solar. Backers of the programme hope it will regulate the industry and set new site standards which will mean roofing specialists carry out the installation of solar panel systems all the way through to the electrical/thermal connections, which will then be completed by qualified plumbers or electricians.

A Viridian spokesman said: ‘Previously the approach has been for a specialist solar installer to clamber around over a finished roof lifting tiles to attach brackets and drilling holes for pipes to pass through without a thought for the integrity of the roof.

‘New products like our Clearline solar panel separate roofing and plumbing. The roofing contractor can take responsibility for the integrity of the roof, while the plumbing contractor is responsible for the whole plumbing installation.’

Contracts supervisor Stewart Orton, of Sheffield-based Composite Cladding Systems, was one of the first to take the NFRC course. He believes roofing contractors are missing a trick at the moment and can win a lot more work in this booming sector.

‘We found out that we can do a lot more than we thought,’ he says. ‘Up to now I thought we could build the substrate then help install them, but we can do a lot more than that we can install the new systems all the way through to the control panel. Once we get to a control panel then an electrician or plumber takes over, but that is a lot later in the process than we thought.’

Composite is due to put theory into practice next month with two solar panel installation jobs on residential buildings in Doncaster and Hull. ‘This will save money for clients because we can do a lot more before another trade comes in,’ says Orton.

‘Plumbers don’t really want to go on roofs because they have to be retrained. Now we can do it all in one go all the way to the electrical connection. There is definitely a growing market for solar panels and courses like this are a major step forward.’

Experts at AMA Research predict the market for solar photovoltaic installations will grow enormously in the coming decades. Prohibitive costs have meant that fewer than 1,500 domestic installations of solar roofs and 200 commercial jobs since 2002 have been completed. That total is expected to jump to 31,000 by 2020 and 160,000 by 2050. An AMA spokesman said: ‘Social housing and public sector buildings such as schools could be areas that provide good levels of growth within the market in future, providing lower prices can be achieved.’

The federation is hoping to establish a database of at least 100 roofing contractors trained in solar work. ‘It’s a funny sector of the industry at the moment,’ says Taylor. ‘There are a lot of smaller companies around who got in early when solar panels first took off. We are not trying to stop them working because a lot do a decent job.

‘We are just looking to avoid the dangers of there being thousands of people out there who don’t know what they are doing when this industry really takes off.

‘We still see it as a two-trade operation because roofers won’t do M&E. We’re not being aggressive with plumbers and electricians, we want to work with them to achieve the best result.’

R S Miller contracts manager Gareth Little was also among the first wave taking the course. The firm will now be targeting new-build housing jobs and is expecting workloads to grow rapidly.

‘The solar market is a new thing for us, but we see it as a growing market considering the amount of resources being put into it by the government,’ says Little. ‘The major solar manufacturers are driving this to try to improve installation standards for their products.’

As Taylor observes: ‘This course is still in its early days, but it’s a very exciting time to be in the roofing industry at the moment.’ cm

Solar power need to know

There are two methods of harnessing the sun’s power commonly in use:

Photovoltaics
The sun’s energy is converted directly into electricity using photovoltaic cells. PV cells were first seen on calculators, but have now been developed to become large grid-connected arrays of panels. The attraction of PV technology is that it delivers electricity at the point of use panels are integrated into buildings to supply the buildings themselves.

Active solar thermal
These heating systems convert solar radiation into heat which can be used directly. In the UK uses are primarily domestic water heating and other low temperature heating applications such as swimming pools.

Domestic water heating uses solar collectors, a preheat tank, pump, control unit, connecting pipes, the normal hot water tank, and backup heat source such as gas or electric immersion heater. The collectors are mounted on the roof and heat the water tank via a fluid circulated between the collectors and the tank.

Europe counts the cost ofm substandard installations

Substandard fitting of solar panels is costing £3bn a year throughout Europe as one in five roofs fail.

Poorly fitted panels lead to failures caused by leaking rainwater, wind damage and condensation. The problem has become so acute across the continent that the European Commission is funding a three-year study into the sector to see how standards can be approved.

The Eur-Active Roofer project aims to standardise training programmes for firms across Europe and publish research on the effects of rain, snow, wind and condensation on solar systems. Its aim is to reduce the failure rate from the current rate of 20% to no more than 5% within five years.

A Commission spokesman said: ‘Good products get poorly installed by inexperienced firms and this leads to significant numbers of failures which would be preventable if adequate standards and guidance for installation existed.

‘The programme will reduce the risks for the European roofing trade and installers of solar energy systems, enabling them to fully guarantee the quality of their products. It will also provide added value to the building, significantly reduce failures and increase the overall quality of roofs.’

Source

Construction Manager