Taking solar panels off a roof and putting them back on so the roof can be replaced runs $1,500 to $6,000, and over $7,000 on a bigger array. That is $200 to $300 a panel, and it does not include the roof.
It is the cost people know about. There are six more, and they are the reason the total is not the number on the roofer's quote.
None of them is a reason to take panels off a good roof. All of them are worth knowing before you put panels on one.
An asphalt roof and the panels bolted to it are on similar clocks. Which one runs out first is a better question than either trade tends to answer.
The panels we fit carry a twenty-five year product and performance warranty from the manufacturer. For the roof, the nearest thing to a neutral authority is InterNACHI's life expectancy chart, and it gives laminated asphalt shingles thirty years — longer than the panels.
Its separate chart for Florida's heat gives the same shingles fifteen to twenty.
Nobody publishes one for North Texas. InterNACHI will say that hot climates drastically reduce asphalt shingle life, and that roofs in areas that get hail may have a shorter than normal lifespan. It will not say by how much here.
Neither will GAF, Owens Corning, CertainTeed or the roofing contractors' association.
So the honest range is wide: somewhere between a roof that outlasts the array and a roof that needs doing twice while the array is still working.
Which end you are at depends on a number nobody has published for this climate, and on hail, which nobody can price at all.
That is the problem. Everything below is what one of those events costs, plus what a roof costs you in the years either side of it.
A roofer cannot work under panels. They come off first, the roof gets done, they go back on after.
Two trades, two visits, and a schedule that has to line up. If the array comes off and the weather turns, the panels sit in your garage until the roofer is back.
EnergySage puts the removal and reinstallation at $1,500 to $6,000, and over $7,000 on a bigger system, which works out at $200 to $300 a panel.
An eighteen-panel array — about 8 kW on the panels we fit — lands between $3,600 and $5,400 on that per-panel rate.
That is before a single shingle is bought. It is a line on the solar side of the job, not the roofing side, and it is the line that is missing from most roof quotes.
The good news first: mounting panels on a shingle roof does not automatically void the shingle warranty, and two of the big three say so in writing.
GAF's technical bulletin on solar states that solar panels will not impact coverage under its limited warranties. Owens Corning states that its warranty coverage is in full effect when shingles are installed underneath a solar panel system — with limitations.
Read the limitations, because they are the point. Owens Corning excludes damage done to the roof during the solar installation, and it does not pay to take panels off and put them back on when you make an ordinary warranty claim.
GAF says the same thing a different way: if it needs access to inspect or replace shingles under the array, the panels come off at your expense.
So the warranty survives and the removal bill is still yours. There is a way to cover it — Owens Corning's Platinum Solar PROtect warranty covers solar-mount workmanship and removal, capped at ten thousand dollars for the life of the roof, if a Platinum Preferred Solar PRO contractor installs it with one of five named mounts.
That is a real answer, and it is a different purchase from the one you thought you were making.
A ground mount does not raise the question at all, because nothing gets drilled.
Every mounting foot is a hole through the roof covering, sealed with a flashing. Done properly they do not leak.
We went looking for how often they do, and there is no number. Not from the Department of Energy, which says only that roof leaks continue to be a particularly troublesome issue in photovoltaic systems.
Not from the roofing contractors' association, which says exposed fasteners in a roof's drainage plane are prone to leakage over time and require frequent maintenance. Not from the solar industry's own draft standard, which tells you how to flash a penetration and reports no failure rate at all.
Anybody quoting you a percentage here made it up.
What is not in dispute is what fails when one does: the seal between the array and the only thing keeping rain out of your house. A ceiling stain is how you find out.
Then the re-roof puts new holes in a new roof, because the mounting points get drilled and flashed again. Some attachments can be reused; the sources do not say all of them are. Either way, the new roof carries the same number of penetrations the old one did.
Anything on a roof needs fall protection and two people. That is not a rule we invented, it is how the work gets done safely, and it prices every visit — an inspection, a cleaning, a failed optimiser, a squirrel.
A ground mount is walked, inspected and serviced standing on the ground. The same fault costs less to find and less to fix.
A roof points where the builder pointed it. Our own PVWatts runs at thirty degrees put a south-facing array about 23% above an east-facing roof and about 21% above a west-facing one.
Against a true south roof with no shade, the gap is close to nothing — which is the case for putting them up there.
Against an east-west roof, you are giving up about a fifth of the production for twenty-five years, and no amount of maintenance buys it back.
A roof has an edge. When the load grows — a shop, a well pump, a second EV — the good plane is already covered and what is left faces the wrong way.
One worked example, on a normal North Texas house. An 8 kW array, eighteen panels, on an asphalt roof, over twenty-five years.
Every figure here is either sourced or flagged, and the flagged ones are the ones that move the total most.
The detach and reset, once: $3,600 to $5,400, at $200 to $300 a panel on eighteen panels.
The roof itself: not in this number. You would be paying for that whether or not there were panels on it, and pretending otherwise is the kind of arithmetic that makes a comparison page worthless.
How many times inside twenty-five years: at least once. Whether it is once or twice is the single biggest lever on this total and it depends on a roof-life figure nobody has published for this climate, so we are not going to put a second re-roof in the number and call it evidence.
Production given up, if the roof faces east or west rather than south: about a fifth. On an 8 kW array at the 1,577 kWh per kW a year our own run gives for Weatherford, that is roughly 12,600 kWh a year against about 10,000.
A difference near 2,500 kWh every year, for twenty-five years.
What that difference is worth depends entirely on what you pay and what your utility pays you, and those two are rarely the same number.
We plan against fourteen cents, which is the Texas residential average and our working assumption, not your rate. Get your bill out.
So: one detach and reset you can put a number on, a second one you cannot, a production gap that only exists if the roof faces the wrong way, and a servicing premium on every visit for twenty-five years.
That is the honest shape of it. Anyone selling you a single five-figure "savings" total for this comparison built it out of maintenance line items they invented.
We did that arithmetic, saw what it rested on, and threw it away.
No detach and reset, because there is nothing on the roof to detach. The roofers work with the array standing where it is.
No penetrations, on the old roof or the new one. No question about what drilling does to the roof warranty, because nothing is drilled.
Servicing happens standing up. A bad footing is a bad footing; it is not also a leak in your ceiling.
The angle is the one we chose rather than the one the builder chose, which is where the production difference comes from.
And it costs more up front. Four hundred to six hundred square feet of yard for a normal house, a steel frame that has to stand on its own, a foundation, and a trench from the array to your meter that is priced by the foot.
If your roof is ten years old, faces south and has no shade, put them on the roof and save the money. We will tell you that on the phone.
Yes. A roofer cannot work under an array, so the panels come off, the roof is replaced, and the panels go back on.
It is two trades on one job and the two have to be scheduled against each other.
EnergySage puts it at $1,500 to $6,000, and over $7,000 on a bigger system — about $200 to $300 a panel.
An eighteen-panel array lands between $3,600 and $5,400 on that rate. None of that includes the roof itself.
Generally no. GAF publishes that solar panels will not impact coverage under its limited warranties, and Owens Corning publishes that its coverage is in full effect underneath a solar system.
Both exclude damage caused by the solar installation itself, and neither pays to remove and reinstall the panels for a warranty claim — that bill stays yours. Read your own warranty before the panels go on.
Not up front. A ground mount buys a steel frame, a foundation and a trench, none of which a roof job needs.
Over twenty-five years it avoids the detach and reset, the second set of holes and the cost of working at height.
Whether that adds up for you depends on your roof's age, which way it faces, and how much yard you have.
No salesman. No home visit to get a number.
