Snow Guards

[peakbagger]

The other thing to note is if you can access the panels with a rake, if its raked right after a storm, the snow is no where near as dangerous as if the you wait a few days or let it just slide on its own.

[Mb190e]

Yeah I'm worried about it falling on the dogs and the kids. So I take a proactive approach and try to get it off of there before it slides off unexpectedly on its own. Plus the quicker I get it off the more power I can make. Last thing I want to do is trap it up on the roof.

[inetdog]

Yeah I'm worried about it falling on the dogs and the kids. So I take a proactive approach and try to get it off of there before it slides off unexpectedly on its own. Plus the quicker I get it off the more power I can make. Last thing I want to do is trap it up on the roof.

Nice video with good production values.

I like the way raking a small section can trigger a large wide area slide. If you had projections that increased surface friction that would not have been nearly as dramatic.

Are you speculating at the end that if you had not snow blown the deck the top section would not have slid so soon?

[Mb190e]

Are you speculating at the end that if you had not snow blown the deck the top section would not have slid so soon?

No, we were forecasted to get 2 feet of snow I had the camera out there rolling all day waiting for it to slide off. I was recharging the battery on the camera when the rest of it slid down.

[SnowGuards]

Roof Things LLC carries a variety of snow guards/ snow stops that could be helpful.

Admin note, hi snowguards, no advertising links for newbies please.

[Spectrum1c]

What is everyone's experience with snow guards or solar guards (whatever you call what is put on your roof to prevent falling ice)?

I recently had solar installed on my house, and have a fairly large installation (58 250w panels) We had some crazy weather last week in NJ with a lot of ice accumulation, and basically had sudden avalanches off my fairly-high roof of very heavy ice/snow that cause a bunch of damage in front of (basically all the shrubs, bushes, trees landscaped around my porch) and behind (a bunch of patio furniture was destroyed) my house. From a safety standpoint, I'm worried someone (like my 5 and 3 year-olds, or even a mailman or someone walking up to my house) could get seriously hurt or worse. And then there is future damage to consider, especially as my homeowner's insurance have told me they don't cover personal property from falling ice. There was just an incredible amount of weight that came off my roof all at once, and not something I ever even considered when deciding to go solar (the fact that my normal roof was going to become closer to a metal roof that stuff slides off much easier).

Is there a product out there that really works well, and at the same time doesn't look terrible? My understanding from what my original installer has been telling me is that this ice situation is very rare, and normal snow is not going to be an issue even without solar snow guards (and in truth, we have had 5 or 6 snow falls already this year and only the 1 ice-storm situation caused damage). They mentioned that these guards will do nothing the 98% of the time there is no snow, and then 95% of the time there is normal snow will keep it trapped on my roof longer and hurt production. However, even if it what happened last week is just a .01% occurrence, I feel like i need to deal with the safety issue. With the amount of weight, I'd assume they would have to attach these guards into the frame the panels all sit on (as anything else like my gutters would just be ripped off my house). Optimally, it would be great if these things were pretty much unnoticeable, would stop large ice avalanches off my roof, but would not impeded regular snow from falling (or shade the panels in any way). Not sure how realistic that is.

Appreciate any thoughts anyone has on this. Thank you.

I'm in a similar situation. What was your final decision.

Anyone else have other recommendations?