Choosing a solar installer is like choosing a mechanic

The analogy that actually holds

Think about how you choose a mechanic. Not the cheapest quote in the suburb - the one you trust to do the job properly, tell you what actually needs doing, and still be there next year. You know from experience that the cheap one costs more: the part that fails, the fault that was never really fixed, the second visit that becomes a third.

Solar is the same trade with a longer memory. A car gets serviced every year and its problems announce themselves. A solar system sits on your roof for twenty-five years and its problems announce themselves as a slightly higher bill, a leak after the third storm, or a warranty claim nobody answers. The consequences of a corner cut are slower to arrive and harder to attribute - which is exactly why some operators cut them.

Where the corners get cut

The panels on the brochure are almost never where a cheap job saves money, because everyone checks them. The savings come from the parts nobody sees at signing: the mounting hardware and how it is sealed into the roof, the cable runs and clearances, the isolators and labelling done to standard rather than to schedule, the commissioning that verifies the system against its design rather than just switching it on.

It also comes from who is on the roof. Subcontracting to whoever is cheapest that week, compressing a job into fewer hours than the roof needs, sending an unaccredited crew under an accredited name. None of that is visible in a quote. All of it is visible in year six.

Why we accept the cost

Doing it properly costs more, and we do not pretend otherwise. Accredited installers paid enough to work carefully. Engineering hours before a quote rather than a postcode guess. Compliance done right the first time. Black racking because it lasts as long as the system and looks like it belongs. A ten-year workmanship warranty from a business structured to still be here to honour it.

We accept that cost because the alternative is asking a customer to accept a worse one, later, when the corner we cut reaches their roof. We would rather explain why a quote is what it is than explain why a system underdelivered. That is not a slogan; it is the reason the price is the price.

The questions a good mechanic would want you to ask

Bring the same instincts to solar that you bring to your car. Who exactly is doing the work, and are they accredited? What is the mounting system and how are the penetrations sealed? What does the workmanship warranty actually cover, for how long, and who honours it? Is the company accountable to an external standard - are they on the NETCC register? Can you check their contractor licence?

A retailer who welcomes those questions is one who has already answered them internally. One who deflects to the panel brand is telling you where their attention stopped.

The honest version of "you get what you pay for"

It is not true that the most expensive quote is the best one. It is true that the cheapest quote has found its savings somewhere, and the somewhere is usually your roof. What you are buying from a good installer is not a panel or an inverter - it is the twenty-five years of someone having done it properly. Like a good mechanic, you notice the value mostly by what never goes wrong.

If you have a quote you would like assessed against that standard, send it through. We will tell you what is in it, what is not, and if theirs is the better job - we will say that too.