Premium Solar Panel Installation

Wiltshire's housing stock is unusually varied, and the roof you have dictates how we mount your array. A Victorian slate terrace in Trowbridge, a stone cottage in Bradford-on-Avon, a 1970s estate house in Melksham and a new build outside Chippenham all need different fixings — and using the wrong one is the single most common cause of leaks and cracked tiles we see on installs done by out-of-county firms.

Natural slate

Slate is brittle and cannot be walked on carelessly. We use stainless-steel slate hooks or lead-flashed brackets fixed directly to the rafters, dressing the flashing under the slate courses above so water sheds naturally. We carry matching spare slates on every job because some breakage is inevitable on a 100-year-old roof — the difference is whether your installer replaces them or hides them.

Clay plain tiles (Rosemary type)

Small-format clay tiles are the most fiddly roof in the county. Each bracket position means lifting several tiles, screwing the anchor to the rafter, then re-dressing the tiles around the bracket neck. It is slower than concrete — typically adding half a day — but done properly the roof stays fully weathered.

Concrete interlocking tiles

The workhorse roof of Melksham, Chippenham and most post-1960 estates. Standard roof anchors sit in the tile trough and bolt to the rafters; where a tile would rock on the bracket we grind a small clearance channel on the underside so it beds flat. This is the fastest roof to work on, which is partly why solar panels Melksham and solar panels Chippenham installs are so often completed in a single day.

In-roof (GSE) systems

For new builds, re-roofs and conservation-sensitive frontages we fit GSE in-roof trays: the panels replace the tiles entirely and sit flush with the roofline. Expect a marginally lower yield (roughly 1–3%, from reduced airflow behind the panels) in exchange for the cleanest finish available — and no roof hooks at all.

Whatever the covering, our surveyor checks rafter condition and spacing before we quote. A typical 10-panel array adds only around 12–15kg/m², well within what a sound Wiltshire roof carries, but we confirm it rather than assume it.

Most installers tell you what they fit. Few tell you the order things happen in — which is exactly what you need to plan around work, school runs and a scaffolded driveway. Here is the Lumos process from first call to handover.

Week 1 — the survey

We book your free survey within 5 days of enquiry. Our surveyor measures the roof, checks rafters and battens from the loft, inspects your consumer unit and earthing arrangement, and maps shading from trees, chimneys and neighbouring buildings. No drone-only surveys, no quoting from Google Earth.

Week 2 — design and fixed quote

Lead engineer Matt Butler signs off every system design: panel layout, string configuration, inverter sizing and battery capacity if wanted. Your quote is fixed — itemised against the design, not a price-per-panel guess. If you want to sanity-check the numbers first, our guide to solar panel costs Wiltshire shows what local systems genuinely cost.

Weeks 2–6 — DNO permissions (we handle this)

Here the timeline forks. With an inverter of 3.68kW or under on single phase, we notify your District Network Operator under G98 after commissioning — no waiting. Larger systems need G99 approval before installation, which can take up to 45 working days depending on the network operator. We submit either application for you and won't book installation until the connection position is clear.

Installation — usually one to two days

Scaffolding goes up the day before. Day one covers roof anchors, rails, panels and DC cabling; day two (on larger or slate roofs) covers the inverter, battery, AC connection and commissioning. Our employed team does the work — we don't sub-contract your roof to whoever is available that week.

Handover

You receive your MCS certificate, Electrical Installation Certificate, DNO acknowledgement, Building Regulations notification and warranty registrations in one pack, and Matt's team walks you through the monitoring app before leaving site. Scaffolding typically comes down within the week.

We install JA Solar, Trina, AIKO, Longi, REC and SunPower — deliberately, because no single brand suits every Wiltshire roof. The right choice falls out of the survey, not a brochure.

• Shaded or complex roofs — chimneys, dormers, mature trees. AIKO's back-contact ABC cells (around 24–25% efficiency) hold output under partial shade better than conventional panels, and REC's Alpha Pure-RX uses a four-section design so a shaded section doesn't drag down the rest of the panel.
• Large, unshaded south-facing roofs — JA Solar, Trina or Longi Hi-MO give near-premium efficiency at mainstream cost, which is where payback is quickest.
• Small roofs that need every watt — the highest watts-per-square-metre panels (AIKO, Longi's top Hi-MO models) squeeze a worthwhile array onto a compact semi.
• Forever homes — SunPower Maxeon carries a 40-year warranty with the lowest degradation sold in the UK, a sensible match for a slate roof you never want to scaffold twice.

Our full brand comparison lives on our best solar panels UK page; on this one, the point is that panel choice is a roof decision first.

The inverter matters more than most people think

An east–west roof needs an inverter with dual MPPT trackers so each aspect is optimised independently. We typically oversize the array against the inverter (a DC:AC ratio around 1.1–1.25) because UK panels rarely hit nameplate output — this harvests more in spring and autumn without wasting inverter capacity. And the 3.68kW G98 threshold is a genuine design decision: sometimes staying under it gets you generating six weeks sooner.

If you want storage — now or later — that decision shapes the inverter too. A hybrid inverter fitted on day one makes adding battery storage a simple job; if your solar already exists, we retrofit battery storage to existing solar with an AC-coupled unit like the Tesla Powerwall 3 or a Sigenergy SigenStor instead. Matt specifies which route on the survey, so you never pay for hardware you don't need.

The craft of a good installation is mostly in the details nobody photographs. Three of them deserve explaining before you book anyone.

Scaffolding and access

Scaffolding is included in every Lumos quote — never a surprise extra. It goes up the day before installation with full edge protection, and where it must stand on a public pavement (common in terraced streets in Trowbridge or Devizes) we arrange the council pavement licence. Rural properties around Broughton Gifford and the Pewsey Vale bring the opposite problem — narrow lanes and soft verges — so our surveyor photographs access on the first visit and the scaffolders arrive knowing exactly what they're walking into.

Bird protection

Pigeons nesting under panels are the most common post-install callout in Wiltshire's town centres. The gap beneath a pitched array is warm, sheltered and, to a pigeon, ideal. We fit stainless-steel mesh clipped to the panel frames — never drilled or glued, which would void the panel warranty. Retro-fitting mesh later means re-scaffolding, so if your street has a pigeon population, fit it on install day. We'll give you an honest view on whether your property needs it.

The compliance stack — handled, not delegated to you

Every installation generates a paper trail we complete on your behalf: the structural and Part P electrical notification to Building Control (self-certified through our NICEIC approval), the Electrical Installation Certificate, the DNO's G98 or G99 paperwork, and your MCS certificate issued after commissioning. That MCS certificate is not a formality — without it you cannot register for an export tariff, which is money left on the table at today's rates of roughly 4–16p/kWh (a good tariff pays around 10.8p). Our Smart Export Guarantee explained guide covers picking the right tariff, and we handle the registration with you at handover.

Two final practicalities: domestic solar and battery installations remain at 0% VAT until 31 March 2027, and if you drive electric it's worth adding EV charger installation to the same visit — a Zappi diverting your surplus generation into the car is the cheapest motoring in the county.