When the Roof Fails Under Solar Panels

This page is about the roof under the array. What the storms did to permitted systems, and what not to touch afterward, is the hurricane page. How the policy is built, including the deductible choices, is the insurance page. Read those for the parts that are already settled. This one is the mess in the middle.

Three kinds of damage

People say “the hurricane got the solar.” That is three different jobs.

• The glass or a rail is broken and the roof covering is still doing its job. The repair is the array. The roof stays.
• The shingles or the tiles are gone, or the underlayment is open, and the deck is still sound. The panels may look fine. They still have to come off before anyone can roof, and someone has to put them back on a legal attachment.
• The deck or the rafters failed. The array and the roof are one wreck. Panels that rode the failed deck into the yard are not a glass-only claim.

The first is an electrical and racking repair. The second is a roof replacement with the array as a guest. The third is structure. A crew that quotes all three as “swap the broken panels” is guessing from the street.

The array does not float above the roof

A permitted rooftop system is fastened through the covering into the frame. It is not a lid you can lift off and set on the lawn while the wind passes. If the covering tears out around the feet, the rails can stay and the roof cannot. If the deck goes, the rails go with it. That is why a Category 4 or a Category 5 is not mainly a story about glass. It is a story about whether the roof under the feet was a roof.

The hurricane page has the wind rules, what the recent storms actually did, and the reason you stay on the ground. Do not treat a utility company’s ground-mounted plant as a picture of your house. A cracked module you can see from the yard is the small version. An open roof with live wires in the daylight is the version that matters.

A lot of these roofs were already losing

Wind is sudden. Rot is not. An asphalt roof that was already old, a tile roof with cracked underlayment, a deck that has been wet for two summers, a leak that started at a mount and sat where nobody looks: those are the usual first chapters. Animals belong in the same chapter. Squirrels and roof rats chew cable, and they also open paths for water. The critter page is the chewing. The maintenance page is the stain on the ceiling and the soft spot you do not discover by opening the app.

The roof page is why the age of the covering matters before the array goes on. Once the array is on, the penetrations are hidden. A slow leak at a foot does not announce itself until the ceiling stains or the deck is punk. A hurricane does not repair that. It peels off whatever was left and leaves an argument about which thing happened first.

What the policy is willing to call a hurricane

A system you own, bolted to the house, is usually part of the dwelling on a homeowners policy. Wind during a hurricane is a covered cause on a typical policy. The check is not “does insurance know I have solar.” The check is the deductible and the exclusions. The insurance page has the deductible menu. The short version, from the Florida Department of Financial Services and section 627.701, is this. Insurers must offer a hurricane deductible of $500, or 2 percent, 5 percent, or 10 percent of the dwelling limit, with some exceptions for very expensive houses and for a small-house alternative to the $500 option. The percentage has to be printed as a dollar amount. It applies once in a calendar year to hurricane losses with that insurer group. When it applies, the ordinary deductible is not stacked on top. A separate roof deductible, the one some policies use for an old roof on an ordinary day, does not apply to a roof loss from a hurricane.

That deductible is why a few cracked panels can be entirely yours. Two percent of a $400,000 dwelling limit is $8,000, before the insurer pays a dollar. Five percent is $20,000. Ten percent is $40,000. The panels do not get a private, smaller deductible. They ride with the house.

The window is not “any windy day in the season.” Under section 627.4025 it runs from a hurricane warning for any part of Florida until 72 hours after the last hurricane watch or warning for any part of the state ends. Wind outside that window can still be a claim. It is not automatically the hurricane deductible.

Wear, deterioration, rot, and damage by birds, vermin, rodents, or insects are the usual exclusions. A deck that was already soft is that kind of damage. A storm that then tears off a sound covering is the other kind. Insurers deny the first and argue about the second, especially if the policy has a sentence that says an exclusion applies even when a covered cause also contributed, in any order. That sentence is often called an anti-concurrent causation clause. Some policies have it on the water and wear exclusions. Some do not. If wind damage can be separated from rot, say so with photos and a contractor’s notes. Do not assume the word “hurricane” covers the rot because the hurricane came last. Do not assume a denial is the last word because the roof was old. The policy in your drawer is the document. This page is not.

Flood and storm surge are not this claim. Standing water is a flood policy. The insurance page splits wind from flood. A leased or power-purchase system splits a different way: the company may insure the equipment, and you still insure the roof. Read that contract before you describe the panels as yours.

Taking the panels off is not free, and it is not automatic

Florida law does not say the insurer must pay to detach the array and reset it so a covered roof can be replaced. There is no standard solar line for that. Some adjusters include it because the roof cannot be replaced with the rails in the way. Some do not. The only useful version is a written answer on your claim, before the work, that says whether removal, storage, new flashings, and reinstall are inside the covered repair.

Put those lines on the estimate as their own rows. A roof price that says “solar by others” has not priced them. A solar price that says “roof by others” has not either. The person who disconnects the wires should be a licensed solar contractor or an electrician, not whoever is fastest with a pry bar. Those wires can be live in daylight. New feet have to be flashed and fastened for the wind rules that apply when they are put back, not for the year the old ones went in. If the layout changes, the permit and the utility may need to see it again. The permission-to-operate page is that second approval. The installer guide is how you check the license of whoever resets it.

If the array was never yours, ask the leasing company who is allowed to remove it. A roofer who unbolts equipment the contract says you do not own can hand you a second problem on top of the roof.

The week after, in the order the bills show up

Photograph from the ground and from a window. Missing panels, a lifted corner, hanging wire, daylight through the deck, a stain that is new. Do not climb. The hurricane page is the rest of the safety list, including why you do not turn a damaged system back on.

Call the insurer and say there is an array on the roof before anyone tarps or tears off. A crew that cuts rails to get a tarp down can turn a roof claim into an electrical one. Ask for the hurricane deductible in dollars, not as a percent you have to multiply yourself. Section 627.70132 is the notice clock. Give notice of the claim, or of a reopened claim, within one year after the date of loss. A supplemental claim has 18 months. Do not wait for the perfect contractor to start that clock.

Then the scope. Roof, structure, and array, as separate lines, with removal and reinstall answered in writing. Keep the pre-storm photos if you have them. They are how you show the covering was intact last month, which is the opposite of a deck that has been rotten since summer.

The decision that belongs before the next season

Do not fasten a system that is supposed to last decades to a roof that is already due. If the covering is tired, replace it first, then build the array on the new one. The roof page is that order. If the array is already up, the check is not only the production number. It is stains, a soft deck, and chewed or nested material at the edge. If the roof is the reason the whole project does not make sense, that is the skip-solar page, and it is a cheaper discovery in October than in the week after a landfall.

This page is general information, not a reading of your policy or a claim file. The declarations page has the deductible in dollars. The exclusions decide rot. The adjuster’s written scope decides whether the array comes off on their dollar.