Scheduling Update

Yesterday Derrick came out with the crew and gave me an update on the project schedule. Since we’ve only had one “rain out” we’re on track toward the lower end of his timeframe estimate; he’s hoping they can get the whole project done by July 4! Meanwhile, the attic work is scheduled for Thursday and Friday of this week so they’re putting in some nice long days to try and get the tiles up near the ridge line so that they’ll know just exactly where the cables need to go through the roof. Sure enough, as you can see in this photo they got the front of the garage mostly done after I talked to him yesterday!

Interesting side-note: He explained that even though the cables that tie the solar tiles together spend most of their lives shaded by the solar tiles they make the sheathing out of a special material that’s resistant to being photo-degraded by the sun. That thick cable goes into the attic to the junction / emergency cutoff device, and from there it’s a thinner wire that’s easier to bend, fish through walls, etc.

I just realized I haven’t mentioned on this blog one of the complications of our project, which Derrick had filled us in on when we first met with him before the project began. We have a small octagonal window at the end of our upstairs hallway which overlooks the garage. Here you can see a photo of Ryker and Skinny Thor shot through that window. The problem is, as you can see, the window is pretty close to the surface of the garage. As it turns out, building code says that all windows have to be a certain height above the roof to prevent rain from getting in under the bottom of the window, and the solar tiles raise the height of the roof a little bit — which will make this window too low to meet code. So, they’re going to bring in a contractor to take out the window and replace it with a new window a little higher in the wall. Anyway, Derrick said the new window is on back-order so they’re going to have to do that work probably next week or even after the rest of the roof is done. (They can leave a little “notch” in the tiles where the window is and then come back out to put those tiles down after the window is done.)

We also talked guttering. He normally has the guttering guys wait to come until the roofing guys are all done, just to reduce the amount of parking needed, the chance the roofing guys will bend a gutter with their ladders, etc — but he was talking to another project manager in California who always brings the gutter guys out at the same time as the roofing guys so he’s thinking of trying it that way on our project. In this case one benefit to that is when the guttering guys do the “top roof” of the main house they can stand on the porch roof before there are crunchy slippery glass tiles on it. We also asked him if the guttering guys could install the off-brand “gutter helmet” stuff we bought at Home Depot; the silver maple in the front yard drops an obscene amount of helicopters into the gutters and typically I’ve cleaned them out by going out a window onto the porch roof and crab-crawling along each gutter scooping them out by hand, but with the most fragile roof tiles being at the edges that’s not going to fly. So, this wire mesh that’s sized to slot onto the 6-inch gutters Tesla will be installing was our solution. Derrick said sure, he can have those guys install that stuff for us while they’re at it. Score!

They also did some work on the back of the main house — the rim around the bottom edge and a row of tile brackets (or maybe posts the bottom tiles rest on?) which sets them up to get right on doing that area today.

Here’s a closer look at the brackets from the side:

I would have gotten a closer look at the brackets with the drone except it was pretty windy yesterday and I was struggling to keep it in position long enough to snap a photo as it was. There definitely wasn’t any event that made me gun-shy about the wind blowing my drone into things…