The ZIPs around Mineral Wells hold about 1,500 home lots of five acres or more.
It is the west edge of where we work, a little over an hour from Fort Worth, and most of the houses here were built before 2000.
Check the name on your bill before anything else.
In town it is usually a retail provider, with Oncor running the lines and the meter.
Out on acreage it may be a co-op: United, Fort Belknap and Tri-County all list Palo Pinto County in their territory, and Tri-County's own map reaches the land about four miles east of town.
On a co-op the buyback rules are the co-op's, and we read them before we size anything.
Oncor delivers power to Mineral Wells and reads the meter.
It buys nothing back.
The retail provider you pick sets what an exported kilowatt hour earns, and because you can switch providers when a contract ends, the rate on day one is not the rate for the life of the panels.
Every North Texas provider's terms are on one page: what each utility pays for exported solar
Inside city limits, a solar array is its own permit type, applied for on the city's permit portal, and every solar permit goes through plan review.
The city says to allow ten to fourteen business days for that.
The submittal asks for engineered electrical plans, a location plan for the panels and an attachment detail, and a letter of approval from your power provider.
That last one means the utility conversation happens before the city signs off, not after the array is built.
The job also needs a contractor registered with the city.
Outside the city it depends which county the land is in.
On the Parker County side, the county publishes that it issues no building permits.
On the Palo Pinto side, building in a mapped flood zone needs a floodplain development permit from the county's Office of Emergency Management; outside one, the county's own form says no floodplain permit is required.
Past that we ask the county before we quote.
Either way, septic and the utility's approval still apply.
Plan review is the slow part, so the paperwork goes in as soon as the design is settled.
We handle the drawings and the provider letter.
Mineral Wells is sand sitting on rock.
We ran 111 points of the USDA soil survey across the land within six miles of town: 65 percent have sandy topsoil, and only 5 percent have the dark clay you find east of Fort Worth.
The rock is the part that matters.
Just over half of those points reach bedrock inside three feet.
North of town it is 69 percent, the most of any side.
South of town is the sandiest, 81 percent sandy topsoil.
Sand digs fast, so the trench is rarely the slow part here.
Bedrock a couple of feet down is: it can stop a driven post short and change the foundation, and that is a line on the quote.
We read the soil map for your parcel before a foundation is priced.
Built facing south at a thirty-degree tilt, an array in Mineral Wells makes about 1,554 kWh a year per kW.
Call it 15,500 kWh a year from a 10 kW system.
The middle of town was the lowest of our five sample points.
The south point came in about two percent higher, so land outside town is not giving anything up.
The centre point also sits on a sixteen percent slope.
Hills matter more here than on the flat east side of the metro, and the design tool reads your slope and which way it faces from your own coordinates.
Texas law stops an HOA banning solar outright, but lets it keep a ground mount inside a fenced yard and no taller than the fence. What an HOA can and cannot do
Only about one house in eight in these ZIPs was built in 2000 or later.
That points to older lots and acreage, where there is often no association at all.
If you are in a newer subdivision, read its dedicatory instrument early.
Where a fence line does govern, we bring the tilt down on the same frame until the array fits under it — about fourteen degrees puts four modules below six feet.
No holes in your roof, panels aimed south instead of wherever the house faces, and room to add panels when the load grows. Ground mount vs rooftop
It is on the city's solar submittal list: a letter of approval from the power provider, along with the electrical plans, the panel location plan and the attachment detail.
In practice that means the provider has seen the system before the city reviews it.
We request the letter as part of the paperwork.
The city says plan review for a solar permit takes ten to fourteen business days, and inspections are booked for the next business day after you ask.
Budget about three weeks from submittal to permit and plan the build around that.
Mineral Wells is mostly in Palo Pinto County, with part of the east side in Parker County.
Parker County issues no building permits.
In Palo Pinto, the county's floodplain permit covers land in a mapped flood zone, and past that we check with the county before quoting.
Septic and the utility's approval apply in both.
The sand is the easy part.
About two thirds of the land around town has sandy topsoil, and it trenches quickly.
What sits under it is the question: over half the points we checked hit bedrock within three feet, most often north of town.
Rock that shallow changes the foundation, so we check your parcel before quoting one.
The towns nearest yours with a page of their own.
No salesman. No home visit to get a number.
