A homeowner off the Pembury Road rang us last month wanting quotes for solar panels before anyone had looked at the roof itself. That’s more common than it used to be. Solar Energy UK reckons 2026 will beat every year on record for rooftop installs, with over 207,000 MCS-certified systems fitted already and a decent chance of passing 300,000 by December.
The trouble is a lot of roofs going under panels in Southborough and Rusthall are twenty, thirty years old, and nobody’s checked the felt or the batten gauge before the installer turns up with mounting rails. If the breather membrane’s perished or the battens are rotten under the tiles, you end up paying for scaffolding twice.
We’ve been called back to jobs where the solar fitter drilled straight through a valley without checking the lead beneath it, and Code 4 flashing that should have lasted forty years failed in five. Any roof going under panels needs its ridge and hip pointing checked, the felt laps inspected for the standard 100mm minimum lap, and any Marley Modern or Redland Regent tiles cracked from years of frost swapped out before mounts go anywhere near them.
We’d also check the roof structure can actually carry the extra load. Most can, but a roof that’s already sagging at the ridge needs sorting first, not patched round and left.
If you’re in Tunbridge Wells or the villages round about and thinking about solar, get us out first for roof repairs in Tunbridge Wells before the installer arrives — it saves scaffolding costs and headaches later. Mastercraft has been doing roofs across Kent and East Sussex for over twenty years; find us at roofersinkent.co.uk/.