Solar Roof Leak Repair in Gilbert, AZ

Solar Roof Leak Repair is about the penetrations a rooftop system adds: every attachment that holds the racking, every conduit that runs through the roof deck, and every junction box fastened to the roof surface. A typical array can have dozens of them. When each one is flashed and sealed correctly, the roof stays dry. When one was rushed, or has aged, water finds it. In Gilbert, where most of the year is dry, that leak may go unnoticed until a monsoon downpour drives water through.

Signs a leak is coming from the solar

• A ceiling stain or bubbling paint below the array, often showing up after a monsoon storm
• A damp or musty smell in the attic near where the conduit enters
• Cracked or displaced tile around a mount, visible from a ladder
• Daylight around a conduit penetration when you look from the attic
• Rust streaks or stains on the roof below a mount

Why solar mounts leak

On a tile roof, the mount usually passes under or through the tile and fastens to the deck. The tile itself is not the waterproofing; the underlayment beneath it is. If the installer cut the underlayment and sealed the hole with only caulk, the seal may last a few summers before heat breaks it down. Cracked tile from foot traffic during installation lets more water reach that weak spot. On shingle roofs, the common failure is a mount without proper flashing under the shingle course above it, or a sealant bead that has shrunk and opened. Conduit penetrations fail in a similar way: a boot or seal that dries out and pulls away.

Heat and sealant

Sealants and rubber boots age faster in strong sun and high heat. Gilbert's average highs top 100 degrees from June through August, and the roof surface under that sun gets far hotter than the air. That is why we rely on mechanical flashing as the primary seal and use sealant only as a secondary layer, rather than counting on a bead of caulk to keep water out for years.

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How we find and fix the leak

We start inside, tracing the stain or water marks in the attic back toward the roof, since water often runs along a rafter before it drips. On the roof, we lift tile or panels as needed to expose the suspect mounts and penetrations and check the underlayment, flashing and fasteners. Repairs range from resealing and adding proper flashing at one mount, to replacing a section of underlayment around several, to rerouting a conduit that was run through the roof without a proper boot. Broken tile gets replaced with matching tile when we can find it.

When the problem is bigger than the solar

Sometimes the leak is near the array but not from it: a valley that clogs with debris, a pipe boot that cracked, or underlayment that has failed across the whole roof. If the roof itself needs replacement or a full underlayment job, a roofer should do that work, and we remove and reinstall the panels around it. We will tell you which kind of problem you have, so you do not pay to patch one mount on a roof that needs much more.

Before the monsoon

The National Weather Service counts monsoon season from June 15 to September 30. Late spring is a good time to have mounts and penetrations checked, especially if your system is several years old or was installed by a company you can no longer reach.