If your roof needs replacing but you have solar panels bolted to it, here is the short version: the panels come off, the roof gets done, the panels go back on. That job has a name, detach and reset, and roofing and solar crews across Weld and Larimer counties run it together all season long.
Nobody made a mistake here. A working array sitting on a tired roof is the normal end of a normal timeline, and it happens on hundreds of Northern Colorado homes every year. Hail just forces the question earlier than anyone planned.
What most homeowners need at this point isn’t more information about solar. It’s the order. Who to call first, what to have ready, and what your insurance is likely to treat as part of the roof claim. That’s what this page is for.
Why your roof and your panels ran out of sync
Asphalt shingle roofs generally last around 20 to 25 years. Solar panels are generally warrantied around 25 to 30. Do the arithmetic and the result is obvious: on most houses, the roof reaches the end of its life while the array above it is still producing and still under warranty.
That gap is the entire reason detach and reset exists as a trade. If you want the mechanics of the job itself, the racking, the wiring, the flashing and how the system comes back online, the full explainer on solar detach and reset covers it properly.
Weld County compresses that timeline. We sit in one of the most hail-struck parts of the United States, and one bad afternoon can retire a twelve year old roof. Plenty of the arrays we take down sat over roofs with another decade left on paper.
Reroofing on your schedule beats reroofing after the ceiling stains
Waiting is the expensive choice. That isn’t a scare line, it’s arithmetic.
A planned reroof is one job. You collect two quotes, you pick dates, the panels come down early in the week and go back up a few days later.
A reroof that begins because water came through a bedroom ceiling is three jobs. There’s the roof. There’s the interior repair, which means drywall, insulation, paint and sometimes flooring. And there’s an emergency detach squeezed in around a crew that was already committed somewhere else. Storm and emergency callouts add $150 to $300 on top of normal detach and reset pricing, and that’s before anybody prices the drywall.
Panels also make a leak harder to trace. Water travels along the underside of the deck before it shows up inside, so the stain on your ceiling is rarely underneath the shingle that actually failed. By the time you can see it, the wet area is bigger than the visible damage suggests. If the roof is past twenty years, or an adjuster has already written it up after a storm, book the work while you can still choose your own dates.
My roof needs replacing but I have solar panels: the order of operations
Five steps, in this sequence. Taking them out of order is what turns a two week project into a two month one.
- Find out who owns the array. Owned, financed with a loan, leased, or on a power purchase agreement. This decides who is even permitted to touch the hardware, so it goes first. Leased and PPA systems follow the provider’s rules rather than yours.
- Get the roof assessed. A roofer inspects the deck and the shingles and tells you whether you’re looking at a full tear-off, a partial, or nothing yet. We’re the solar side, so we don’t inspect roofs and we don’t roof.
- Get the detach and reset quoted in writing. Panel count, storage, new flashing, electrical recommissioning, all of it on paper. How to compare detach and reset contractors is worth ten minutes before you sign anything.
- Find out whether a hail claim covers it. If the roof is going through insurance, the solar work usually belongs in the same claim. What insurance does and doesn’t cover on a detach and reset walks through the scope and the supplement.
- Book the two trades in sequence. Detach, roof, reset. The solar crew and the roofing crew need each other’s dates, not just yours.
Steps two and three run in parallel in practice. There’s no reason to wait on a roofing quote before getting a solar number, and holding both lets you talk to an adjuster with real figures.
The step homeowners skip is the written scope. A roofer who tells you in the driveway that his guys can lift the panels and set them aside hasn’t quoted flashing, hasn’t quoted recommissioning, and probably isn’t insured for the array. Whether roofers can remove solar panels is a longer answer than yes or no, and the short version is that a verbal promise about your panels is where trouble on these jobs usually begins.
On timing: a detach is typically one day and a reset is typically one day, with the roof work in between, so solar downtime is usually under a week when the trades coordinate. A realistic detach and reset timeline shows where delays actually come from, and it’s almost never the physical labor.
What it costs, and what you actually pay
Detach and reset runs $200 to $500 per panel in Northern Colorado, which puts a typical 20 panel array at around $3,500. A small array of 8 to 12 panels lands between $1,500 and $2,500. Large or complicated systems, meaning multiple roof planes or older racking, run $6,000 to $8,000 and up. The cost breakdown by array size has the rest of it, including what pushes a quote toward the top of a range.
Panel storage during a long reroof is normally included, and electrical recommissioning is part of a reset rather than an add-on.
Now the part that matters more than the sticker price. On a covered hail claim, the detach and reset is typically paid as a line item within the roof insurance claim, alongside the shingles and the underlayment. So the figure on our estimate is often not the figure that leaves your bank account. Homeowners who assume they’re writing a $3,500 check sometimes postpone a roof they could have had done for a deductible.
Have these five things in front of you before you call anyone
- Panel count. Count them from the ground or read it off your original installer’s paperwork. Pricing is per panel, so this is the fastest route to a real number.
- Roughly when the system was installed. The year is enough. Racking and connectors have changed over time, and older hardware occasionally needs parts ordered.
- Whether the system is owned, financed, leased or on a PPA. See step one.
- The age of the roof. If you don’t know, the closing paperwork from when you bought the house usually does.
- A recent production reading. Whatever your monitoring app or inverter display says you produced last month, plus the same month last year if you can get it.
That last one earns its place. If production was already sagging before the roof job, you want that on record now, because after a reset every missing kilowatt-hour gets blamed on the crew that touched the panels most recently. Screenshot it now and that argument never starts.
With those five in hand, quotes come back faster and tighter, and the second contractor you call is pricing the same job as the first.
What happens if you do nothing this year
Possibly nothing at all. A fifteen year old roof with no missing shingles, no soft spots and a system producing normally isn’t an emergency, and we’ll say so if that’s what you have.
What gets homeowners is rarely slow decline. It’s one storm. A single afternoon in Weld County can take the decision out of your hands, and then you’re calling the same week as everyone else on your street. After a big regional hail event, every roofer in the county books out for months and the solar crews stack up behind them. Dates stretch, quotes firm up, and the people who had already decided get slotted first.
There’s a quieter cost to waiting as well. Every season you leave an aging roof under an array, you’re betting on the flashing around the mounts. Those penetrations are the oldest and most weathered part of a solar install, and they take more punishment than the shingles around them.
Who does what on your job
Your roofer does the roof. That’s their trade, their insurance and their warranty on the shingles, and we’re not going to pretend otherwise.
We handle the solar side. That means taking the array down before the tear-off, storing the panels while the roof is open, mounting everything back on new flashing once the roofers are clear, and bringing the system back online. We don’t roof, we don’t inspect roofs, and we don’t install new solar systems.
If a single contractor offers to do all of it with one crew, ask a plain question: who carries the warranty on the electrical work when a panel stops producing eight months from now. If you’re partway through this already and just want to know your next move, call (970) 286-3417 and describe where things stand. Have your panel count ready.
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
Do the solar panels have to come off to replace my roof?
Yes, on a full tear-off. The roofing crew needs clear access to the deck, and the mounting hardware passes through the roof surface itself. The panels come down, the roof gets replaced, and the array goes back up on new flashing. A very small repair on a section of roof well away from the array can sometimes be done without touching the panels.
Who should I call first, the roofer or the solar company?
Call whichever one can see you soonest, but find out who owns the array before either visit. If the system is leased or on a power purchase agreement, the provider controls who is allowed to work on it, and that answer changes your whole schedule. For an owned system, roofing and solar quotes can be gathered at the same time.
How much does it cost to take solar panels off and put them back?
In Northern Colorado, detach and reset runs about $200 to $500 per panel. A typical 20 panel array comes to around $3,500, while a small array of 8 to 12 panels usually falls between $1,500 and $2,500. Large or complex systems run higher. On a covered hail claim, this cost is often paid as a line item in the roof claim.
How long will my solar system be offline during a reroof?
Usually under a week when the two crews coordinate their dates. The detach is typically one day and the reset is typically one day, with the roofing work happening in between. Delays generally come from scheduling and from waiting on the roof to finish, not from the solar labor itself.
Is it worth replacing an old roof before it actually leaks?
Almost always, yes. A planned reroof is one project with dates you choose. A reroof triggered by an active leak becomes a roof job, an interior repair job and an emergency solar detach at the same time, and emergency callouts carry an extra charge. Scheduling also gets much harder after a regional hail storm.