Make sure to share this video, we want to help inspire change in the industry and make sure people get the best and highest quality install that they possibly can. It is time for us to do better, so let's change the industry.
I am sure a lot of these government backed schemes are free to certain customers and therefore, it is not their hard earned cash that is being taken but our tax money being wasted. In my view there is a degree of responsibility when providing funding for these schemes to ensure that the installers are reputable so that payments are only made after the installations have been verified by an independent assessor who cannot be linked in any way with the installers. It is in my view lazy to simply provide funding but not put in place checking mechanisms to ensure above all, safety of customers.
Was considering Solar Together following West Berkshire Council recommendation. The old adage ‘buy cheap buy twice’ was ringing in my head like a claxon! Thanks for this video, will keep undertaking my due diligence 👍🏿
The safest way is to keep trades away from your property as long as possible and certainly not sign up for non-essential work like for example a solar installation.
They are still in talks with “Solar together” to try and get the situation fixed without having to fork out thousands for us to rip it all out and start again…
@@artisanelectrics Could you as a company even dare offer a warranty if you were to rework the installation, given the solar panel installation may be just as bad?
Thanks for taking the time to share this, Jordan. More and more people are getting fleeced by "cowboy" installers as the home solar market continues to grow in the UK, and as you say, these installers find it easy to hide behind councils in scheme-commissioned installs, with consumers not realising that those councils are purely facilitators, not holding any liability themselves. I recently released a video on my own channel covering the criteria that customers should be looking for when choosing an installer, to de-risk their project as much as possible. I'll add a link to this video in my post production notes as a good example of when things go wrong for customers who jump in blindly... Cheers, Gary Does Solar.
Great, people are not allowed to install solar on their own house even if they do it by the book. Meanwhile cowboys with a piece of paper can go around installing deathtraps while the customers are thinking that everything is fine... Yey, got to love regulations.
You can do what you like in your own house. You just can't sell your excess without an MCS certificate. (It's a bit more complicated than that, grid connection is not yours etc so you need permission from DNO and so on)
@@James-k2c9k You can't simply do what you like in your own house. There are still Building Regulations (England and Wales only) that require you to notify your Local Authority Building Control department. Octopus Energy has an export tariff available for non-MCS/FlexiORB certified installations.
I went for a mid range quote, not cheapest, nor most expensive. The amount of issues I had was ridiculous, I just flat out refused to pay until it was paid, was then threatened with debt collectors. Eventually they resolved all the issues, would recommend anyone doing reading up beforehand.
Thanks for sharing your experience-sounds like a tough situation! Doing thorough research beforehand is definitely a smart move, especially when dealing with mid-range quotes where expectations can be tricky. Glad to hear the issues were eventually resolved, but it’s frustrating when it gets to the point of debt collectors. Your advice to others will definitely help people avoid similar problems!
@@artisanelectrics basic advice would be pay the deposit or any payments via credit card, and only offer to pay a deposit. In my case they left 250kg worth of batteries on standard loft joists, panels installed so low rain would miss the guttering, broken meter box door, and as your video showed, all cables loose in loft, just to name a few. There was 15 issues I had to point out!
Threatening with debt collectors is a bluff if you are in dispute and would be enough for me to engage a solicitor. Check your house insurance to see if you have family legal cover and if it covers you.
It is good to hear that some installers have done well, it is not a case that all of them are bad but just quite a few cases of installers doing poor work.
I will by watching your videos and others I was able to ask appropriate questions about the instal , they did not instal anything in my loft their own policy it was neat and tidy labelled all works without issues
I would prefer to rip it all out and start again but that would cost the client a fortune and they can’t afford to pay for a system twice so they are pursuing action with the solar together scheme
I had to write a letter to the installers exonerating them from any responsibility for me wanting the inverter inside rather than in the roof space . They maintained that the DC cables would overheat, and we would get virtually no power from the panels. I tried to explain cable loss, current and cable sizing! That did not go down well, as you can imagine!! Keep up the good work. Ray Peto
Just from looking at that I can tell the installers have no electrical installation experience, PV Ultra cable is a must, we don’t use single core DC cable anymore.
key word there .... anymore. Not saying they actually knew anything on this install but installs using traditional DC cabling doesnt mean the install is bad or the installer(s) have no electrical experience. Also sometimes could be used on a budget install but still safely.
That Solis RAI battery inverter is connected to the meter in the CU next to it and then the CT connected to the meter needs to measure the grid. It doesn't care about the string inverter and definitely shouldn't be measuring the solar. The Solis battery inverter does come with an additional CT to measure solar generation from a separate string inverter but that is only for showing the production in the solis app. It has no bearing on the charge/discharge of the battery.
Very timely video. Had a Solar Together quote recently. The surveyor struck me as an ex-double glazing salesman. Really didn't gel with the guy. Pulled out but still waiting for my 'survey fee' refund. My advice is if you want to go solar find a proper independent professional.
The split panels on the 2 roof faces - without using micro inverters is a big no-no too. You can see that half are in the shade in the picture (so by-passing on the diodes), and if the sun is the other side, there might not be enough DC potential to turn on the inverter with the six-maybe panels by the dormer.
I’m pretty sure the CT clamp for the battery should be on the main incoming line so it can detect power being drawn from the grid and power being sent to the grid. If it’s on the solar line then that’s probably why it only charges and never discharge as it only ever sees the power coming from the solar 🤔
In Germany there is something called "obligation of warranty", that forces the original installer to take care of his work and makes him responsible for any faults during a period of five years. The customer also has to confirm the work after it's finished, which normally happens, when the artisan shows and explains the installation to the customer step by step. Is this similar in the UK?
We have warranties and legal protection, but getting stuff fixed can be difficult, even the body that overseas solar installations isn't of much if any use, I'm talking about MCS. If the installer goes bust, then there is no one, the cow boys ride off into the sunset. You may have an insurance backed guarantee and if you paid some by credit card you could well have section 75 protection. Biggest problem is most home owners don't have a clue whether something is done badly.
I totally agree - This install is a pile of shite :(( These so-called-sparks need a good kicking!! It's hard enough for us professionals to get customers to pay us a decent price for our skills & qualifications. Without cheapskates ripping customers off & giving us all a bad name. I come across installs like this all the time. To be honest, many are so much worse!!
Can't even begin to imagine seeing some worse than this one, it is such a shame to see all the professional sparkies being priced out due to this cheap prices.
@@artisanelectricsIt has nothing to do with price. The issue is MCS and the trade bodies that are responsible for the initial assessment and annual audits. None of these organisations are going to bite the hand that feeds them (their members).
9:24 is that a DC feed to the battery going through what looks like an AC isolation switch with brown/blue colours - is that switch rated for DC operation?
Race to the bottom for some. Recently my field officer asked the EV installer from a major energy company what qualifications he had. Zero. It’s frightening that a big company will play the law of odds. Most jobs ok, poor one eats in to their profit. Stick to your guns - if they want a quality job, know you will come back, they are the customer to have.
Where in the regs does it say you can’t use the black core as the neutral? It doesn’t as long as it is identified at both ends as the neutral it is fine. The only core which can’t be over sleeved is the CPC.
Had an ECO4 ASHP Central Heating System Installed alongside a PV system by what I thought was a reputable energy provider. Ended up with flooded ceilings, no SPDs for the PV system etc... 12 weeks down the line, the compliant is due, I am taking legal action for breach of contract! What a hassle. Saying that, I still need my quotes for the remedial works. I dont suppose @artisanelectrics want to come out and make another video like this one about my install? Hmu
I'm not an electrician by trade. That install is an absolute mess if that was my house i would be deeply upset. As a consumer how would you know who is a good installer?
Why is there not an independent body that carries out random audits on solar installs? I can see many a house fire happening if this standard of installs continues.
Even if the cable is rated for, I would never put DC voltage cables for solar installations directly on wood without a conduit, especially in places where no-one normally will have a look on it, like in a hot attic with flammable insulation everywhere. With the falling prices of solar modules and inverters, the technology gets more interesting for many people, on one side to take action against climate change an on the other side to save money. It's sad to see, that unprofessional companies harm the reputation of the trade and leave unsatisfied customers behind with such installations, only to make quick money. That you take care of it and try to save and repair what's possible, is great work.
I disagree - honest traders price their services correctly in order to be able to make reasonable profit margins and ensure the sustainability of their business model for the long term. Cheap installers commoditise the solar industry resulting in a price war which only leads to disaster. So many companies have gone bust because they don’t charge enough, therefore they don’t make any money and cannot survive without cutting corners. This install is a classic example of that and it wasn’t even that cheap…
You mentioned an RCD down stairs and 1 upstairs in the attatick. You went on to say that because of this there's no "Selectively" what do you mean by this?
Name and shame the company! This is what we are dealing with on a weekly basis. Also we miss out on jobs all the time due to being out priced! This is clearly why. But majority of customers don’t care untill it stops working g
I don't see how that can be fixed without ripping it all out. They are doing the same crap in Canada. That's why I did my own install in 2015. I went with 36 Enphase micro inverters. Sept 9th this year I hit 100 Megawatt hours of generation with no hiccups at all.
It’s a British illness, we don’t train our tradesmen sufficiently nor pay them enough once trained. The Germans and Swiss start their trades learning from a young age. Whereas we are busy forcing them to study something they don’t want to, nor are able to. That’s why we have so many rubbish tradesmen, right across the trades.
I did my own install, while im sure it could be neater, it has been running well for 18 months and I didnt pay a cowboy firm a £10k premium. I have a 16kw single phase hybrid inverter, 31kwh of battery storage and 6kw of solar. Electric bill went from £250 a month to around £50. I very nearly went with solar together. Its good you highlight these issues. The main thing I learned is that almost everything in the solar setup has the ability to either kill you or burn your house down if not done properly. Even something as seemingly skipable like using a torque wrench on connections.
I got my solar installed and only I fault found it myself (I’m not an electrician) but because they failed on numerous occasions to get it working, they wired the solar into the electric shower switch with no standalone isolator for the solar the somehow had the hot water running on constant, they had tore my vapour barrier in the attic there was 10 large holes on investigation they had broke that many roof tiles they had to rip the membrane to remove the broken pieces turned out they broke 80 roof tiles and I had to have one side of my house re roofed, the hot water running on constant burnt out my water heater there’s much more to this story it took them nearly 2 years to rectify their mistakes they gave me £1000 in compensation but it was nothing compared to the hours I put in finding and pointing out their mistakes, I had initially wanted to install my own system but thought I’ll get a professional company and that way I won’t destroy my home how wrong I was
Had 3 quotes for solar. All salesmen said stay away from fox! Just one tip here for you, please use better lighting when in lofts, so the viewers can see better and you can. Doesn't look professional when using your phone torch to look round stuff 👍🏼
Presumably this has an MCS number if it was solar together? MCS certification is pointless - there are so many crap installs out there fully signed off with MCS.
Nobody is perfect so if we followed your rules nobody would ever “preach” But with regards to our work being “not to regs” can you tell me some examples please?
Nobody is perfect so if we followed your rules nobody would ever “preach” But with regards to our work being “not to regs” can you tell me some examples please?
Costs money to do things right and to an exceptional standard but people don’t want to pay. Cowboys paradise across ALL trades right now. That’s why I’m done with it!!!
@@artisanelectrics Like all good solar companies. I do laugh when any company says it has 10+ year guarantee - as if they will be around in 10 years when it inevitably would have burnt itself out in a baking hot loft. People buying solar primarily for an investment and payback in 10+ years need to think again as even when installed properly and not in a loft the odds of it not having issues over such a long period of time is not great and maintenance and repair needs to be factored in (which it never is)
I thought you were an expert? The ct clamp for the hybrid inverter battery needs to be around the main tails into the building . If not how does the battery know when to discharge ?
Hi well done you keep it up you are doing a great job and having fun making some brilliant videos superstar Ali Walsall west midlands england junction 10 m6 Walsall churckery up the walsall
