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Solar

Paul Sweet said:
#290 - I've never seen a valley shingled quite like that.
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It;s called a "woven valley", it's a cheap way to do it but some manufacturers approve it as an alternate installation, the Tiger Code could request manufacturers' installation instructions to see if this particular manufacturer accepts it, and if it does what kind of underlayment is required.
 
I've seen a lot of woven valleys, but they have always woven one course at a time, and not 3 or 4. I know they're cheaper, but they're still FUGLY.
 
Five times this week and twice today I encountered open gear with nobody in sight. The workmen and women open it all and then find a shade tree to park under while they wait for the inspector. When I tell them that this cost them a day because I will not do the inspection I hear, "Most inspectors get upset if the covers and dead-fronts aren't removed before they get there". I hand them a few of my business cards and tell them to give them to those inspectors and ask them to call me.



 
Tiger, why don't you do these dumb people a favor and condemn all solar installations? Several neighbors have installed them and are paying way more, I've built a lot of homes in Lafayette and none of them has ever had an electric bill of over $100 a month, I live a few miles from Lafayette and average about $35 a month for the electric portion of my utility bill.

New York Times said:
Not long after moving into his house in 1973, he installed a solar water heater. The first set of solar panels went on the roof around 2008. That slashed his annual electric bill to $78 from about $1,300. But the bill shot up again after he bought the new car, a Chevy Volt electric hybrid, so he bought a second set of panels in 2014.¹
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Something is drastically wrong with this story since the house pictured looks like a rather ordinary cheap house, nothing like some of the 5,000 square foot plus homes I've built there that have never seen $100 a month bills, I can see his electric bill going from $78 a month to $1,300 a month if he bought an electric car.

Building inspectors should be protecting people from being scammed like this.


¹ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/b...olar-panels-no-longer-pay-in-some-states.html
 
"The first set of solar panels went on the roof around 2008. That slashed his annual electric bill to $78 from about $1,300."

Well he was saving $1,222 until he bought an electric car and now he has spent another $20,000 to get the bill back down. He hasn't been saving anything....he already spent the money.

"With the savings on his monthly electric bills, he figured the investment would pay for itself in about a dozen years.

But then the utilities regulators changed the equation.

As a result, Pacific Gas & Electric recently did away with the rate schedule chosen by Mr. Holtmann, a retired electrical engineer, and many other solar customers in this part of California. The new schedule will make them pay much more for the electricity they draw from the grid in the evening, while paying those customers less for the excess power their solar panels send back to the grid on sunny summer days."

Anybody that didn't see this coming wasn't paying attention. The system is rigged to bleed the utility companies dry. The next chapter of the saga is a 10,000,000 sq.ft. factory in Nevada that produces batteries. I am hearing from homeowners that say that they are going to install Elon's batteries and tell Edison to remove the service drop and quit sending a monthly bill. Smart money says to buy Generac stock.

"Building inspectors should be protecting people from being scammed like this."

As Tommy, the oldest Henderson boy said, "Here's the thing about that." Dealing with crooked contractors would be a full time occupation. It is rampant. My best estimate is that the thieves outnumber the honest contractors.

Yesterday I inspected a re-roof. The lady that owns the 1500 sq.ft. house paid $12,000 for 20 year shingles. She told me that her next project is air conditioning and the same contractor will be pulling a permit next week. I asked her if she got several bids. She said no ... she signed a contract with a $7,000 deposit. She didn't say what the total is and I didn't ask....I'm not supposed to ask....or even care.
 
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Tiger:

Tiger said:
"The first set of solar panels went on the roof around 2008. That slashed his annual electric bill to $78 from about $1,300."

Well he was saving $1,222 until he bought an electric car and now he has spent another $20,000 to get the bill back down. He hasn't been saving anything....he already spent the money.

"With the savings on his monthly electric bills, he figured the investment would pay for itself in about a dozen years.
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I build and live in this area, there is no way in Hell that the little house pictured ever used $1,300 a month for electricity without charging an electric car. The most electricity I ever heard of being used was in a house I built in 1984, it was supposed to be a "solar house" that had a very expensive solar thermal system on it designed by a mechanical engineer, fortunately we had a smart CBO there and when I went to permit the house he said there was no guarantee that the system would work, I had to have a backup system to make sure the home could meet the code minimum temperature requirements, back to the engineer and he designed a system of electric coil heating units wrapping the ducting, the system didn't work and relied upon the electric coils costing an average of $600 a month, the owner was constantly calling service people who finally told him that it had reached it's service life at 10 years and it needed to be replaced, the owner just tore the solar thermal racks off the hillside and planted a fruit orchard there, to this day the house uses the electric coils at $600 a month, that is an 8,000 square foot house, not a small tin roofed house like shown and is a few miles away.

You should at least tell the idiots that California law bans contractors from taking deposits over $1,000 and advise her to call the State License Board to get her money back. Isn't that what we have building inspectors for, to protect idiots and cheapskates? Look what the CBO did back in 1984, he protected the home owner so at least he had heat.
 
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The role of the building inspectors is not to protect homeowners from contractors and consultants. The role of the building department is to enforce the code. Licensing boards and tort law are what is supposed to protect the public from bad contractors and consultants.
 
I am not allowed to counsel people on license laws. I am not allowed to have, or express, an opinion on contractors or their fees.

I have gone out of my way in the past and it never turns out well. It becomes a pile of angst for the customer and they roll over in the end.

The amount of money that I could save people and improve the quality of the work is substantial but I work for the government. So I am beholden to the government, not the citizens. All they have on their side is a cruel hoax called Angie's List.
 
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Yeah, but look at how that CBO used the code to protect the owner in 1984, he didn't think so at the time becasue the addition of the electric heating cost over $100,000, the addition required an 1,100 amp service to be installed on the home, which required us to pay the PG&E to dig two blocks of the street up to find large enough conductors to service the home. Had he not required it the home would have had insufficient heat.

I just went to Google the house to show you a picture of that house, the green terraces were originally covered in solar thermal panels, that lot cost $700,000 in 1983 and the house cost $1.2 million for a total of $1.9 million not counting architecture and engineering fees, I see the owner filed bankruptcy in 2013 and the house was sold out of bankruptcy for $1.1 million, so maybe the code requirements did force the people to lose their house, kind of like ADA bankrupting small businesses.
 
Conarb, The article said "That slashed his annual electric bill to $78 from about $1,300." That's about $108 per month.

I don't know if it's still in effect, but one of the federal energy acts back in the 80s or 90s required utilities to purchase power from people who installed renewable energy sources at their highest avoided cost - which was double or triple the rate they could sell that power to others for. The trouble with such subsidies is that they aren't sustainable in the long run.
 
Paul said:
Conarb, The article said "That slashed his annual electric bill to $78 from about $1,300." That's about $108 per month.
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Thanks Paul, I didn't catch that, all I know is that around here the only homes that are exceeding $1,000 a month in electricity charges are homes with electric cars, even that home I mentioned that I built with the failed solar thermal system only averaged $600 a month.
 








They called for another inspection. The only difference is that the wire isn't outside the array.

 
Tiger:

There is a section of the B&P code that regulates contractor that encourages building inspectors to notify the State License Board about contractors' offenses, obeying all codes is a requirement.

When you see these same solar contractors repeatedly violating the code why don't you notify the Board, they have online forms to fill out and submit.
 
The administrators where I work have decreed that inspectors are not allowed to contact the CSLB. I had something to do with that. It's amazing that a bandit contractor can browbeat this AHJ. It makes me wonder if .......

Do you have a B&P code section#?
 
ICE said:
The administrators where I work have decreed that inspectors are not allowed to contact the CSLB. I had something to do with that. It's amazing that a bandit contractor can browbeat this AHJ. It makes me wonder if .......

Do you have a B&P code section#?
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I'll look it up for you, as far as Solar City is concerned did you see that Musk is buying it and putting it under the Tesla umbrella, I checked the License Board and Solar City has no license, on the yard sign there was what was supposedly Solar City's website, I entered it into my browser and it lead to the site of another contractor with no license number as required by law, there also was no permit on the job. Apparently around here they are allowing them to install these things without permits. I used to get the book every year from a law service with a searchable CD but I cancelled the subscription when I retired, but I'll find it. If you could take the license number of a Solar City permit in your jurisdiction, post it here and I'll check it out.
 
Tiger:

The last volume I have is 2012 and I put the CD in my computer and can't find it, I'm sure there was a time when the License Board actually put the words "Building Inspector" in the statutes, they even had an article some years ago in their quarterly newsletter to contractor about encouraging building inspectors to file complaints against bad contractors. Looking at the current complaint form you will see under the section called "REPORTING PARTY INFORMATION (REQUIRED)" four boxes to check, Public, Government, Industry, and Other, I suspect what has happened is they changed the wording and now have one complaint form and an inspector would check the "Government" box. I've got years of these books with CDs and if we had to I could go back year-by-year until I found the language, but what good would it do now that the language has changed?

I do believe that the Board would take a complaint from an inspector more seriously than they would from one disgruntled customer, because an inspector would be complaining about a repeat offender.
 
Solar City:
Listed as Solarcity Corporation...3055 Clearview Way, San Mateo, CA 94402
(650) 963-5100

License number: 888104
Classifications:
C46 - Solar
B - general building contractor
C10 - electrical
A - general engineering contractor
C20 - warm-air heating. ventilation and air-conditioning
C39- roofing

Citation: # 2 2011 001754
Date: 05/20/2013
Status: Completed
Code B&P Code
Violation: 7030.5
Description: No license number on contracts and/or advertising
 
Tiger:

Note that the CSLB website has a page just for building officials that has a link to reporting activity. The complaint against them for no license number on contracts and/or advertising is what I'm seeing here and is ongoing. I guess they too assume they are above the law that applies to the rest of us, they need more complaints listing other health and safety violations, if you guys all started filing complaints against them you would be doing a greater public service than just tagging the things you show.
 
It's not against the law to make mistakes.... stupid is not illegal. There is no such thing as overcharging. Substandard results might be their best effort. But hey now, all is not lost for the CSLB is tough on signs.
 
ICE said:
It's not against the law to make mistakes.... stupid is not illegal. There is no such thing as overcharging. Substandard results might be their best effort. But hey now, all is not lost for the CSLB is tough on signs.
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I guess that's about it, as I went into a restaurant yesterday for lunch parked in the lot was a new F-150 with Solar City painted all over it in green, replete with the state license board number, see the License Board is there protecting us from fraud and incompetency.
 
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