No. Solar panels do not cause roof leaks. A panel is a sheet of tempered glass in an aluminum frame sitting on rails a few inches above your shingles, and it never touches your roof except through the mounts holding it up there.
When water shows up under an array, the panel is almost never the culprit. The leak traces back to a hole somebody drilled through your roof, the flashing around that hole, or the condition of the roof the array was bolted to.
So the honest answer goes like this. Panels don’t leak. Penetrations do. Whether you’re weighing solar, planning a reroof, or standing in the driveway while a roofer tells you the panels are the problem, that’s the sentence to hold on to.
If water is coming in right now, this isn’t the article you need. Go read what to do about a roof leak under solar panels, which covers tracing the source and the repair. This one is for the homeowner who doesn’t have a leak and wants to know the real risk.
How an array actually meets your roof
Picture the system with the panels taken off. What’s left is a grid of aluminum rails sitting on mounts, sometimes called feet or standoffs. Each mount is a bracket held down by a lag bolt that should be driven into a rafter below the decking, not just the plywood. A 20-panel system usually needs 20 to 40 of them.
Every one is a hole through your shingles. That is the entire physical relationship between your solar system and your roof.
A mount built right gets a metal flashing plate that slides under the shingle course above it. Rain passes over the plate and back onto the shingles below, so water never gets a shot at the bolt. Same principle as a plumbing vent.
The part most homeowners have backwards
Ask a homeowner which part of their roof is in the worst shape and most point at the array. It’s usually the reverse.
Asphalt shingles fail mostly from ultraviolet light and heat, which dry out the asphalt and loosen the granules. Panels block nearly all of it. The roof under an array spends its life in the shade, and when we pull panels for a reroof, those shingles often look years younger than the exposed ones.
Hail behaves the same way. The panel takes the strike, the shingle underneath doesn’t. The covered part of your roof isn’t the vulnerable part. The edges of the array and the open roof around it are.
Do solar panels cause roof leaks, or does the install?
The mounts are the only real exposure, so it comes down to how they were built and what’s happened since. Four things decide it.
Flashing versus sealant. A flashed mount sheds water mechanically and needs no maintenance. A mount relying on a bead of sealant over the bolt head is depending on a wear item, and on a Colorado roof that swings from freezing nights to a scorching deck in July, sealant ages fast.
Whether the bolt found the rafter. A lag bolt that missed the framing is anchored in half an inch of plywood. It works loose, the hole wallows out, and water follows the bolt into the attic. Invisible from the ground, and it’s why a fast install can look perfect for three years and then start leaking.
The roof the array went onto. Mounting a new system on shingles with five years left is borrowing trouble. The array isn’t the problem, the timing is.
Who has been on the roof since. Every trip across an array is a chance to step on a flashing plate or crack a shingle at a mount. Roofs with solar should see less foot traffic, not more.
Notice what isn’t on that list: the panels themselves. A well-flashed mount on a healthy roof is not a countdown timer.
Hail is the Northern Colorado variable
Weld County sits in one of the most hail-struck parts of the country, so no honest answer skips it. Hail rarely drives water into your house by way of a panel. Tempered glass takes a beating, and a cracked panel is an electrical problem, not a water one.
What hail does is chew up everything around the array. It bruises the exposed shingles and cracks the sealant bond at the mounts. The roof gets compromised while the panels sit there looking untouched. That’s how one hailstorm turns into a leak eighteen months later.
After a bad storm, learn the signs of hail damage on solar panels. An adjuster who walks a roof without lifting a panel is scoping half the job.
The riskiest day in your array’s life is the reroof
Here’s where we’ll be blunt, because it’s the call we take most often. The highest-risk event in an array’s life isn’t a hailstorm. It’s a roof replacement where the panels go back on using the original mounts and the original flashing.
New roof, old holes. Sometimes old flashing gets slid under fresh shingles it was never cut to fit. Sometimes a bead of sealant is asked to do a flashing’s job because no flashing was ever ordered. The roof is brand new, the array sits on twelve-year-old hardware, and nobody wrote down who owns the mounts.
A solar detach and reset done properly puts new flashed mounts into the new roof: new penetration points, new flashing, new bolts into sound framing, and the electrical verified before anyone leaves. In Northern Colorado that runs $200 to $500 per panel, so a 20-panel array lands around $3,500 and an 8 to 12 panel system falls between $1,500 and $2,500. On a covered hail claim it’s typically a line item in the roof claim.
If a quote doesn’t itemize new flashing, that’s the quote to ask hard questions about. The cheapest number in the stack is usually the one that left the flashing out, which is a good part of why detach and reset quotes vary. You find out about it in the third spring.
If you think you already have a leak
Don’t diagnose it through a blog post, and don’t let it wait for the next storm. Water under an array can travel along a rafter and stain a ceiling ten feet from where it came in.
Start with our guide to leaks under a solar array, which covers how the source gets found. The panels have to come off before anyone can see the penetration, and the roof repair belongs to a roofer. We handle the solar side: array down, out of the way, back on flashed mounts.
Keeping the risk low for the next 25 years
Most of the leak risk over a system’s life comes down to a few ordinary choices.
- Keep casual foot traffic off the array. A gutter cleaner or a satellite tech can undo good work in an afternoon.
- When somebody is up there anyway, ask them to look at the mounts and the flashing plates.
- Have the array looked at after a bad hailstorm, not just the shingles.
- Plan the reroof around the roof’s age instead of waiting for a stain on a ceiling.
That last one matters most. Asphalt shingles generally last 20 to 25 years. Panels are generally warrantied for 25 to 30. The numbers don’t line up, so the roof under a healthy array wears out first. Doing it on your schedule means a reroof planned around an aging roof with panels on it instead of an emergency callout with water in the drywall.
A detach is typically one day and the reset one day, with the roof work in between, so downtime is usually under a week when the trades coordinate. We do this across Greeley and the surrounding towns. Book the solar crew when you book the roofer, not after the shingles are off.
Greeley Solar Reset provides solar detach and reset, panel removal, and storm-damage service across Greeley, Evans, Windsor, Johnstown, Eaton, Firestone, Fort Lupton, and the rest of Weld and Larimer counties. Free written estimates. Licensed and insured. Call (970) 286-3417 or request an estimate.
FAQ
Are the shingles under my solar panels in worse shape than the rest of the roof?
Usually they’re in better shape. Panels shade the roof from ultraviolet light and heat, which is what wears asphalt shingles out, and they take hail strikes that would otherwise hit the shingle. When an array comes off for a reroof, the covered section often looks younger than the roof around it.
Can solar panels be installed on an older roof?
Physically yes, but it rarely makes financial sense. If the roof has under about ten years left, the array has to come off and go back on long before the panels reach the end of their life. That is a cost nobody budgeted for, so most homeowners replace the roof first.
Does having more panels mean a higher chance of a leak?
Not in the way people assume. More panels mean more mounts and more penetrations, but each one is either flashed correctly or it isn’t. A large array with proper flashing carries less risk than a small array held down with sealant. Workmanship decides the outcome, not the panel count.
Do the mounts need new flashing when panels go back on after a reroof?
Yes, and this is the thing to insist on. New shingles deserve new penetration points with new flashing and new bolts into sound framing. Reusing old mounts and old flashing on a fresh roof is a common way a new roof ends up leaking, so confirm it in writing first.
Can hail crack a panel and let water into my roof?
Hail cracking a panel doesn’t create a path for water into your house, because the panel isn’t part of your roof’s weather barrier. A cracked panel is an electrical and production problem. The water risk from a hailstorm comes from bruised shingles and damaged flashing around and between the panels.