Person

Nineteen Years on Phoenix Roofs

JS Jaime Solorio

Roofing at seventeen, PV at twenty one, a worker co-op at thirty. This is what I have learned about building things that survive a 118 degree summer, why half our work is shade rather than panels, and how seven people run a company by vote. Written for homeowners deciding who to hire and for other small shops deciding whether any of this is worth copying.

01 Building for real heat

What the Valley does to a roof, a racking system and a person, and the details we changed after learning the hard way.

Most PV leaks are roofing failures

The penetration detail is a roofing job, and it is being done by people who have never torn off a roof.

We take warranty calls on other companies' work every month and it is nearly always the same thing: racking feet driven through tile with a smear of sealant and no pan flashing. Sealant is a five year product on a roof that sees 160 degrees of surface temperature. Tile has to be relayed over a proper flashing, and on the 1950s decking common in Maryvale and Sunnyslope you had better look at what you are screwing into first. If you install PV and you have never done a tear off, go pay a roofer for two days of their time. It is the cheapest insurance in this trade.

Paid heat stops

We come off the roof when it hits temperature and nobody loses an hour of pay. This is affordable and it is why our crew is still here.

May through September we start at 4:30am. When the roof surface hits our limit we stop, and the hours are paid regardless. The co-op voted that in our first year. Every shop in this valley could afford it and most simply have not been made to. The argument I make to other owners is not moral, it is that I lost four good installers in one summer at my old company and replacing an experienced installer costs more than a season of heat stops. Six years in, our turnover is one person, and she left to have a baby and came back.

Why half our work is shade

Shade on glass and wall is the cheapest degree of cooling available in this city and it needs no power at all.

Nobody puts a shade structure on a brochure cover. But on a west facing block house with no tree cover, steel shade over the windows and wall brings peak indoor temperature down 7 to 9 degrees for a fraction of what a PV system costs, and it keeps working during an outage. We measured that with loggers on the Sunnyslope project, not from a manufacturer's claim. The membership votes twice a year on a budget of at cost shade work for households with someone over 70 or a medical need. Forty three so far.
02 Running a company by vote

Seven worker owners, how the decisions actually get made, and the parts that are harder than people expect.

Why we left

The company billed our labour at 190 an hour and paid me 24. Four of us walked in 2020 and started over with a truck and a ladder rack.

It was not only the money. It was running crews through August with no schedule change and losing people because of it, and being told by an office that had never been on a roof what could be done on one. When four of us left we had no financing arm, no call centre and no marketing budget, and we still do not. We have seven owners, a written pay band the membership votes on, and health coverage from day one at 26 an hour starting. The hard part nobody warns you about is that a vote takes three weeks and a boss takes an afternoon, and some months you feel that.

The board that certifies PV installation professionals, worth checking on anybody you are about to let onto your roof, us included.

🔗NABCEP certification boardnabcep.org↗
03 Small shops together

What the Southwest Energy Trades network is actually for: shared equipment, shared apprentices and one voice at the utility.

The boom lift arithmetic

Four shops each renting the same machine six or seven times a year at full day rate plus delivery. Pooling it costs less than half.

I ran the numbers on a shared boom lift and spider crane with a booking calendar and a written maintenance agreement. Per shop it comes in under half of what we each spend renting now, and the machine sits idle less. The obstacles are not financial, they are trust and scheduling in the same two weeks of October when everybody wants it. We are working through that in the network and I will publish the agreement once it holds up for a year.

Apprentices who see everything

Six apprentices rotating across four shops in one year, which is the only way they get structural, electrical and PV work together.

An apprentice at a single small shop sees whatever that shop happens to sell. On the Sunnyslope project six paid apprentices at 21 an hour rotate across a fabricator, two electrical contractors and us. In one year they get steel fabrication, service and panel work, and PV install and commissioning. No single one of our shops could offer that and the national contractors will not. At the end at least four get an ongoing offer, and the network is writing the rotation agreement up so the next project does not start from nothing.