What a solar panel cleaning visit actually includes.

Angel Oquendo Owner, Sunshine Solar Panel Cleaning · Waianae

When you call us for a quote, the first thing you get is a video of the equipment we're going to use on your house. We don't hide from it. If your equipment's right, people look at your truck and go: that guy knows what he's doing. Then, on the day, this is what happens.

1. The 5-point inspection

Before anybody cleans anything, we go over your system. We make sure there are no cracked panels, no shattered panels, no missing fasteners, no wires hanging down or disconnected, and nothing else wrong with the system. You get a video of that. If we find something, you know before we've touched it, and you have the footage.

2. The before video

I'll show you the condition of your panels and what type of dirt is on them. On Oahu it could be black mold, it could be red dirt, it could be an accumulation of both. We show you whether the soiling is on the top of the panel or the bottom. This is the video that explains your electric bill.

3. The clean

All of our brushes are rotating brushes, and they're water-fed. Water pours out of the brush the whole time it spins, forwards and backwards across the whole panel, so the brush cleans and rinses in one pass. The water comes from your tap through the truck: a sediment carbon filter, then reverse osmosis, then a DI filter. Pure water, so nothing spots when it dries.

If you try to scrub 28 panels by hand, it's not going to happen. You miss too much. That's why the brushes spin.

4. The after video

Same angle as the before. Your panels, clean. That's the proof you keep, and later on it's also proof of what your roof looked like when we left.

5. The rest of the roof

While we're up there we look at your gutters. If they're packed with dirt, if there are trees growing out of them, we show you on video and tell you it's time. We look at your windows and screens the same way. If you haven't cleaned them in five years, you probably need to; if you don't clean your screens, they start deteriorating and they'll break. And if none of it needs doing, we say that too.

6. Hot-water panels, thrown in

People don't include them when they set up the quote. They say "I have 30 panels," not "30 panels and two hot-water heater panels." Instead of redoing the quote, we decided we'd just give you that for free. The service is the same; a hot-water panel gets hot from the sun instead of making power.

"What we don't do is nickel and dime our clients."

After the visit

The tech sends the videos to you and to me from the truck. That's also our safety check: if the videos haven't come in 30 to 60 minutes after the job should be done, we call. And next year, when we come back, the rate goes down, because we're doing maintenance now, not a first clean.

Related

• How we clean: the equipment
• What it costs
• Residential solar panel cleaning