Little Bay High Roof

Recently Extra Hand Solar Clean was asked to clean solar panels at a property in Little Bay, in the southern part of Sydney, not far from Sydney’s Airport. The owner had viewed some of his panels from the lower roof, observing bird droppings and deposits that had accumulated on his 5 year old panels since installation in 2019, mainly under and adjacent to the tv antenna.

Our customer had a few problems, (1) He had no way of getting up safely because the panels were installed adjacent to what was previously the main access point to the roof. (2) The roof is over 7.5 metres in height, meaning an inherent safety risk, with no other viable or lower risk access point. (3) The solar installer did not take into account the tv antenna and should not have installed solar panels directly underneath or adjacent to an antenna. (4) Apparently these panels had not previously been cleaned, our customer was concerned about potential damage to his solar array or individual solar cells, possibly effecting his warranty.

On a construction site or a commercial/industrial site performing maintenance, it would be a given that a mobile work platform or scissor lift would be used to access these levels. This ensures maximum worker safety. An added benefit is that the risks and set up time needed for ladders is eliminated plus all/most of the work can now be completed by one person without stepping on the roof.

Unfortunately, in a residential setting, this adds significant cost to the work by the time the work platform is delivered to site and hired for 1 day only. This cost can exceed $600 for 1 day. Extra Hand Solar Clean are well trained and versed in the use of this equipment, but seek ways to minimise it’s use when cleaning residential solar panels to reduce customer costs.

In this case, we used a 6 metre long ladder from the base of our truck, allowing us to climb relatively safely, once we’d secured the ladder at the base and top. We also needed to fit a temporary anchor point to the roof for our anchorage line allowing us to work “in restraint”.

Our method still takes significant time, but is more cost effective for the customer than the work platform scenario by eliminating most of this additional expenditure.

After our three-four stage filtered water was used to clean these solar panels, the result was excellent, as can be seen.

Now the owner can now be sure he is getting maximum free electricity from the sun from the newly cleaned solar panels.

We would also recommend you do not attempt this work unless you can do it safely, as in only one moment, and a lapse in concentration, can result in an extremely serious life changing incident.

Safety and efficiency in cleaning solar panels is our thing and we do it well.

Learn more about our solar cleaning and contact us today.