Flush Solar PV on a Zinc Roof.

[Pymmie]

I have had an enquiry about fitting Solar PV 'Flush' on a zinc roof.

Has anyone had experience of this before.

Thanks in advance


Regards

John Pym
Solargold SW Ltd

 

[Worcester]

Does it have vertical seams? What Spacing? What's the slope/pitch?

 

[Pymmie]

Thanks for prompt reply.

I haven't seen the drawings yet, but wanted to go prepared to the first site meeting.

The last job I did for the developer was a similar house with vertical seams at about 30 degrees spaced at around 500mm.

Regards

John Pym

 

[whinmoor]

This may (or may not) help:

ISO 14713-2：2009 Zinc coatings — Guidelines and recommendations for the protection against corrosion of iron and steel in structures — Part 2 Hot dip galvanizing

 

[Worcester]

From memory the S-5 solar clamps may be the ones you want, you can use them with our without a rail depending upon how you are installing them and seam spacing.

(Shading would be interesting in their last photo : !!! )

http://www.longworth-uk.com/s5+clamp+solution+for+standing+seam+roofing-87.html

 

[SibertSolar]

S5/Kalzip clamps, available from any K2 distributor....

 

[whlphil]

Be very careful on this one!

Ive done a couple of them and as an ex roofer I've been more than a little dismayed by the lack of knowledge of the roofing contractors installing the roof - and they were a manufacturer approved contractor.

The zinc roof is held in place with a clip thats folded into the seam of the roof, the clip is typically 0.4mm thick roof material with virtually no uplift resistance. This is in turn screwed into the decking material under the roof. Therefore when you come to design the rails to hold the panels to the roof and you are only applying your uplift load through the two support rails you end up concentrating the uplift load into one very small area were the S5 clamp touches the seam (S5 is the way to go).

The roofer should increase the density of clips in the seam to increase the uplift resistance, on our jobs needless to say the roofer didn't do this (despite being asked) and therefore we had to put in additional rails to spread the loading. The structural calcs were a complete nightmare and had our structural consultants baffled for a couple of weeks.

We ended up with some of the highest load areas with 6 runs of rails to spread the load into the seam. It was a coastal job so very high wind loads and the zinc is really very weak and can't take much loading. In our case the roof was Rheinzinc.

So be careful from the structural point of view and carefully consider not only how your product attaches to the roof but how the roof is attached to the structure underneath.

Of course you can just fix it how you would normally and blame the roofer when the system is in the carpark still attached to the roof skin!:smile5: