What is the PROPER way to route panel leads through roof to controller?

I went with a product called "Soladeck". Made exactly for this purpose.







I had to drill a hole through the roof for the wires to pass thru, and I had to cut the shingles so the upper portion of the plate would slip under, and shed water. I buttered it in place with roofing tar (now available in caulk tubes). This product is all metal, and there is no seam between the box and the back plate. No joint for water to force its way inside the box. Bought mine here: https://www.infinigi.com/soladeck-078641-photovoltaic-combinerenclosure-p-3348.html?osCsid=8f8hr4gr7pf9m540uuja4vhde3 I have NO affiliation with anyone.

How does that gray PVC hold up to sun light?

Iron Bran wrote: »

I was looking at that photo, and it looks like the electrician used the same spice on the hot wire that was used on the ground, and then covered the spice with some electrical tape. There are some marks on the metal conduit that shows a burn mark. When the wind blows, the metal splice may be hitting the metal conduit. This would energize the conduit, the metal box of the main panel, and back feed the ground bus to all the circuits in the house. I am not an electrician, but I can tell that there is probably a better way to splice incoming grid wires...

There is always a better way but this is how they have done it for xx years, bla bla bla so on and so forth. It hasn't burned down too many houses so they keep doing it.
What you have observed here is fairly common. The current house I live in had the service drop torn off the house by falling tree branch and redone in the early 2000s, before I moved in. Making the new service drop less than 10 years old.
The tape was in the same condition; falling off, but not contacting anything.
I put on my hot work gloves, cut the tape off and redid it right with splice tape then PVC electrical tape on top.
That was 4 years ago and it still looks great as of last month.

An anecdotal story:
Literally a few minutes before my builder was going to pour the concrete to seal the slab between the floors in our house I found two lengths of spare 1.25" electrical conduit. I had him connect and install the conduit so that the top end nestled under a weather sheltered eve on the roof and the bottom end terminated close to my proposed tool/solar room. The run of 20 feet would be encased in concrete the whole way.

At the time I did not know for sure we were going solar, but it turned out to be fortuitous and we use this conduit to now send down 30-50 amps of solar panel power from the roof. Putting in a new pipe now would be a real pain.

I am glad that Cupcake got around his roof access issue. But if you are building a new house and are even just thinking of going solar, a few spare conduit runs is probably a good idea.
-SP