Sandy's neighborhoods have reached the age where two decisions arrive in the same year. The roof is getting close to needing replacement, and someone has knocked on the door about panels. Those two things are connected, and the order you handle them in matters more than most sales conversations admit. Solar 801 is a referral service, not an installer and not a lender. We connect homeowners with residential solar companies, we make no claims about what any system will do to a power bill, and we are reachable at 801-644-9000.
Asphalt shingles do not last forever, and a home built a few decades ago is usually on its first or second covering. If a reroof is coming within a handful of years, mounting panels over the existing surface commits you to paying a crew to take them down and put them back when the roofers arrive. That removal and reinstallation is a real job with real labor behind it, and it is among the most avoidable expenses in residential solar. It also introduces a second set of hands touching your roof penetrations.
The cleaner path is to settle the roof first and treat panels as something that goes onto a fresh surface. That may mean waiting a season, and waiting is an acceptable answer that door-to-door representatives rarely offer anyone. If you do proceed on an older covering with your eyes open, get the future removal and reinstallation terms written down at the outset, including who carries responsibility if a leak appears around a mounting point afterward. Vague assurances on that point tend to evaporate the moment a ceiling stains.
We publish no savings figures, no payback timelines, and no bill reductions, and we would treat any site that does with suspicion. What a system produces depends on your roof, your shading, your consumption pattern, and the compensation rules your utility applies to electricity you export. That last piece is decisive, and it is not fixed. Utah's rules for crediting exported power have changed before and can change again, which means any long-range number quoted to you today rests on assumptions that nobody in the transaction controls.
That is not an argument against solar. It is an argument for one specific question to anyone who hands you a projection: what export compensation did you assume, and what does this chart look like if the rule shifts? A representative who cannot answer is reading from a template. One who can will also tell you which parts of the estimate are engineering and which parts are forecasting. Those are genuinely different things, and they deserve different amounts of trust from you.
Take the proposal, close the door, and read it the following day. High-pressure tactics depend on speed, on a discount that supposedly expires tonight, and on the feeling that a decision has to happen while somebody stands in your entryway. None of that is how a twenty-year addition to your house should be chosen. A legitimate company will still be there on Thursday, and the terms will still be available then. If they are not, you have learned something useful about the company at no cost.
Look at the boring parts. Who holds the workmanship warranty and for how long. What happens if the company is acquired or closes its doors. Whether roof penetrations are covered separately from the equipment itself. Whether the agreement is a purchase, a loan, a lease, or a power purchase agreement, because those four behave very differently over time and especially when a house changes hands. Compare two or three proposals on those terms rather than on whichever rendering of your roof looks nicest.
Usually yes, if a roofer confirms the covering is near the end of its service life. Panels must be taken down and remounted for a reroof, and that labor is entirely avoidable by doing the work in the right order. There is also less room to argue later about whether a leak came from the shingles or from a mounting bracket. Get a roofing assessment that is independent of the solar quote.
The agreement does not simply disappear at closing. Depending on its terms, the buyer assumes it, you buy it out, or the sale stalls while everyone works out which of those applies. Some buyers and their lenders are comfortable with these contracts and some are not. Read the transfer and buyout language before signing, and if you already hold a lease, pull the document out well before you list.
Not with a standard grid-tied system. When the grid goes down, the inverter shuts off so it cannot energize lines that utility crews may be working on. Your panels can sit in full sun while the house stays dark, and that is the equipment behaving correctly. Backup requires battery storage plus switching gear that isolates the home from the grid, which is a separate purchase entirely.
A few details about your home is enough to start. Or call 801-644-9000 and skip the form.