Solar feasibility home visits: what to check

A solar feasibility visit tells a homeowner whether panels make sense on their house before they spend time on installer quotes. Look at the roof's orientation, pitch, shading and condition, check the electrical installation and the space for an inverter or a battery, and compare the household's electricity use with what the roof could produce. End with a short written report: suitable, suitable with conditions, or not worth pursuing, and the questions to ask installers. That independence is what the homeowner pays you for.

Go into the loft if there is one: rafters, insulation, signs of damp and the route a cable could take down to the consumer unit. Look at the space where an inverter would hang and whether it stays cool and dry. If a battery is on the table, check the floor space, ventilation and distance from living areas. Note these details for the installers: they decide whether the project runs smoothly.

Panels reach their highest output in the middle of the day and in summer. Compare that profile with when the household uses electricity: someone working from home, a pool pump or daytime laundry uses more of the production directly than a house empty all day. Explain the difference between using the electricity yourself, storing it in a battery and exporting it, without promising figures you cannot back with the household's real data.

Planning rules, grid connection procedures and support schemes vary by country and change over time. Point the homeowner to the official sources for their area and say what to check, rather than quoting rates or amounts that may be out of date by the time they read your report.

Send a short written report within a few days. Include the roof faces you consider usable, the shading you saw, any roof or electrical work to do first, and a rough system size range to discuss with installers. Add a list of questions to put to each installer, such as panel and inverter warranties, who handles the grid connection, and how the roof is protected during the work. If the answer is no, say so clearly and explain why.

Offer a follow-up session to go through the quotes the homeowner receives. Comparing them line by line, with the same assumptions, is where independent advice saves the homeowner from a poor choice.

On Book, each service has a name, a price and an optional description shown on your public page. Create a "Solar feasibility visit" service, list in the description the bills to have ready, and publish slots that repeat weekly on the days you cover each area, with daylight hours in mind for the roof check. Each slot belongs to one service and sits within a single day, and with one place per slot a booked visit no longer appears on your public page. Homeowners book with their name, email and phone and can add an optional note with the address and their plans, which you read in your new-booking email. Add a separate "Quote review session" service for the follow-up.

Durations and prices are examples: set your own. If a visit has to move, for example because of bad weather, change it from your bookings list and tell the homeowner yourself, as Book does not email clients when a booking is rescheduled or cancelled. Book costs €5/month, all-inclusive: unlimited services and bookings, no commission, no commitment.