He is going to look at the live loads the dead loads and the seismic effects of the proposed solar panels on your roof structure.
Solar panel dead load roof.
However when considered in light of the total building costs this additional costs may prove to be minimal.
The point load for different mounting or fastening locations have to be distributed in such a way that it reduces the overall load on the roof and minimize roof leaks.
Structural engineers use the solar panel roof load calculator to come up with the correct load capacity of the roof material.
These solar panels mounted on aluminum racking weigh about 2 pounds per square foot.
Distribution of solar panel weight.
This amount of steel typically supports a total roof load of about 50 pounds per square foot.
A key point to note here is to reduce the distributed weight of solar panels on the roof.
Adding the modules would increase the dead load according to the same sort of calculation.
The structure of a roof that supports solar photovoltaic panels or modules shall be designed to accommodate the full solar photovoltaic panels or modules and ballast dead load including concentrated loads from support frames in combination with the loads from section 1607 13 5 1 and other applicable loads.
Additional weight from rooftop solar panels can add approximately 10 to the total factored design load of the roof structure.
Although this point load force may appear very small consider that 30 pounds is a 12 5 percent increase of total dead load 240 lbs on a 16 foot long rafter without solar panels.
This is the sum of a 20 pounds per square foot dead load including a ballasted membrane roof which was typical for roofs on shopping centers in the early 1980s for example.
Therefore a typical roof with 24 inch rafter spacing and rafters that weight 2 plf would have a dead load of 10 x 24 12 2 22 plf before the solar equipment was added.
The weight per 100sq ft kg range is 85 110.
If 6 base mounts for 3 rows of panels were to be concentrated on one such rafter weight of solar panels 180 lbs would increase dead load by 75 percent.
For a roof live load or snow load in some.
For example asce 7 16 now clearly states that the weight of solar panels and their support are to be considered as dead loads 1 roof live loads need not be applied to areas covered by solar panels under a certain spacing or height 2 and seismic design is based on already established principles in section 13 3 for non structural component.
Note that although this technique may reduce.
Unlike new construction upgrading for solar panels on an existing steel or wood roof can lead.
