Solar companies - are they all hopeless?

penrhyn

Shirley you are correct. All thumbs and predictive text conspiring against me.

Kernel_Sanders

Why just approach companies? I used a Part P electrician (Scheme certified, of course).

Vomityspice

Ok, fourth company turned up on Sunday and was very good. Explained everything very well and was the only person so far to actually go into the loft and measure the angle of the roof! (And calculated the % loss from a nearby chimney). Sadly, it appears they only have 250/260 watt panels available so pitched for a 3.5kw system at £6200 (+£500 for an iBoost).......

Received the quote back from installer 3 at £8400 for the whizzy bang 12x 327w solar system. Seems a tad overpriced, particularly as the company offers the same system on EBay for £6999... I suspect in my callback call, they may struggle to explain the difference.

tunnel

Vomityspice wrote: »

Ok, fourth company turned up on Sunday and was very good. Explained everything very well and was the only person so far to actually go into the loft and measure the angle of the roof! (And calculated the % loss from a nearby chimney). Sadly, it appears they only have 250/260 watt panels available so pitched for a 3.5kw system at £6200 (+£500 for an iBoost).......

Received the quote back from installer 3 at £8400 for the whizzy bang 12x 327w solar system. Seems a tad overpriced, particularly as the company offers the same system on EBay for £6999... I suspect in my callback call, they may struggle to explain the difference.

I recently extended(again) my generating capacity and actually found the company i went with on Ebay, they were the first company that came out and actually knew what the hell they were talking about. I had a few others out but they were just window salesmen in disguise.

Is Northampton classed as west midlands?, if so i'd happily recommend them but thats as far south they'll go.
If its any help i do have a very good idea of what i was talking about when all the companies came out, some didn't have a clue what i was asking them(again,window salesmen).

Just keep reading through the various threads on here, it really does help

Tunnel

dreaming

Vomityspice wrote: »

Ok, fourth company turned up on Sunday and was very good. Explained everything very well and was the only person so far to actually go into the loft and measure the angle of the roof! .

This was what persuaded me to go with the company I pm'd you about. (One of the other companies didn't even measure outside!). Plus the fact that they put up with me ringing and e-mailing them to check certain points.

Vomityspice

This was what persuaded me to go with the company I pm'd you about. (One of the other companies didn't even measure outside!). Plus the fact that they put up with me ringing and e-mailing them to check certain points.

They are coming at 8:30am on Wednesday! Lets hope that they don't go silly on the price and they might be installing a 4Kw system before Xmas.....

That money needs to be out of my ISA by the end of December......

dreaming

Vomityspice wrote: »

They are coming at 8:30am on Wednesday! Lets hope that they don't go silly on the price and they might be installing a 4Kw system before Xmas.....

That money needs to be out of my ISA by the end of December......

Fingers crossed then. Let us know how you get on.

Martyn1981

Vomityspice wrote: »

That money needs to be out of my ISA by the end of December......

Little bit of trivia for you.

1.The current subsidy rate (14.9p) won't be reduced on 1/1/14 as the amount of installs in the quarter July to Sept wasn't high enough to trigger a degression.

2. The next date for degression is 1/4/14 and will based on the current qtr (Oct to Dec) but since it will also be 9 months since the last degession, and the rules are that one must take place every 3 qtrs, expect a 3.5% reduction.

3. Installs before the end of 2013 qualify for an inflation uplift in Apr 14, but those taking place between Jan and end of Mch 2014 don't (for that year, not subsequent years), so will effectively be about 2.5% less after uplift.

Hope this makes sense, after April there will be those with 14.9p+inf (install prior to 2014), those with 14.9p (install 2014 before April), and those with 14.9p-degression (after April 2014). [Plus of course, everyone who already has an install, on whatever rate]

None of these changes are really large enough to warrant rushing, but thought best to say just in case you had options and decided to 'leave it till after Xmas' deliberately.

Mart.

Estwing

Vomityspice wrote: »

Received the quote back from installer 3 at £8400 for the whizzy bang 12x 327w solar system. Seems a tad overpriced, particularly as the company offers the same system on EBay for £6999... I suspect in my callback call, they may struggle to explain the difference.

:eek::mad:

Dave_16

I had a 4Kw system with 16 panels fitted at a cost of £7000.