Jeff:
Good point made here. We too became concerned about lax enforcement some
years ago. We started inviting ourselves to the Building Inspector trade
group meetings. We submitted a permit application check list to the local
jurisdictions. It sat on desks for a while, but eventually the lead plan
checker was asked to make a presentation to the trade group and the
handiest document was our check list. It became adopted.
Bill Brooks has worked on this issue and has resources.
I suggest you start a dialog and then be quick and thorough on the follow
up and you can have a positive influence.
William Miller
At 03:12 PM 6/15/2010, Jeff Yago wrote:
Well, this should start up a fire storm.
I will not mention the county or state as we do work in many other areas,
but today I stopped by a county building permit office to apply for a
permit to install a grid-tie solar system that includes battery backup and
generator, which we are adding to an existing very high end home. I will
also add this is a very well populated and modern city where the county
offices are located.
I walked in with my permit application which included the permit form, a
CAD drawing of the solar system wiring showing all dis-connects, wire
sizes, conduit sizes and connections to the existing home wiring
system. We also included a spreadsheet form we have that shows all the
calculations for the solar array to inverter wiring and inverter string
sizing including high and low temperature and conduit adjusted voltage and
currents from the array based on the record temperatures for that
location. We also include a cut sheet for the modules and the inverter(s)
which show they have all the required code, IEEE, NEC and other labeling
requirements. Just to be complete, we also include an analysis printout
from the inverter manufacturer showing the correct match-up of number of
modules, number of strings, and estimated yearly performance.
The clerk looked at this stack of documentation, then returned it all to
me and asked for the $30 permit fee. She said there is no plan review for
anything like this unless its a commercial electrical project.
I guess with all the stories of really bad experiences of others on this
list with inspectors not knowing what they are looking for and stupid
permit rules I should be pleased this went so smoothly.
However, I fear this is the kind of lax enforcement that will allow my
competition to keep under-pricing me as they can get away with installing
cheap products and not taking into account hight and low temperature
effect on modules , length of wire run on voltage drop, and string sizing
on the selection of wire, conduit, dis-connects, fuses, and inverters.
I also fear this is an accident waiting to happen that will give us all
installing solar in this county a black eye. So, do I have this
discussion with the inspection office as I plan to do, or is this a fight
for another day.
Jeff Yago
DTI Solar
_______________________________________________
List sponsored by Home Power magazine
List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org
Options & settings:
http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org
List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org
List rules & etiquette:
www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm
Check out participant bios:
www.members.re-wrenches.org
