Some Saturday afternoon necromancy …
@TBJK, how Is your roof doing? Were you able to determine the impact on both your home owners insurance and your utility bills?
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Fantastic. My utility bills went down some. Middle of the summer my bill went down about a 100$ a month. My old ass ac is still shutting down, granted there is always someone at home. My home owners insurance was about another 120 less a month over last year. But I did switch companies about the same time. I did have them compare the insurance with class 4 vs regular but it was not much of a cut. Still I’m happy with it, the rain is slightly different sounding but not my much. My insurance company did issue me a refund after I sent them my form for them being class 4. Also, it was worth piece of mind that during the 4th this year I didnt have to worry about stray embers lighting my roof.
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So if you had to choose again, would you make the same choice? I don’t need a new roof yet, but the time will come and I’m curious about if the cost might be worth it for the upgrade.
Yep…people forget that just because some damage is “covered” doesn’t mean it has zero cost. Even if roof damage is fully covered (i.e. no deductible) there cost of inconvenience and ancillary damage to your house/landscape. When I had my new roof put on several years ago, I choose company poorly and they ended up costing me ~$1500 in interior cosmetic damage (nail pops, drywall seam cracks, window trim corner cracks).
Wow…this sounds amazing to believe. My monthly hazard insurance is ~$175 (with typical coverage and discounts for a ~2100 sq ft std North Texas suburb-type home). I can’t imagine anything I would/could do to decrease this by even $20/month ~= $250/year, incl. switching companies.
It’s a bit intangible/abstract, but consider factoring the peace-of-mind that comes with pretty much never having to worry about your roof ever again. If you think you are going to be in your home for long term, as opposed to moving with next promotion or when kids move out when they are 40) this would factor in as well, I’d think.
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Absolutely, I would not hesitate.
Well I certainly didn’t know I was getting overcharged. It was like 2200-2400 a year. It was just going up year over year.
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FWIW, one of my close friends is an insurance agent. Insurance costs are directly tied into claims and cost, and the pool of premium payments is shared and once its gone they have to recover losses by raising rates the next year. In the last 5 years he said there have been an unprecedented number of roof-hail claims and that’s why everyone’s insurance has about doubled in the same time. It really shouldn’t matter a whole lot if you shop around as the state caps the premium amounts. Since you got the best roof out there, that’s why your bills have dropped so significantly. You mitigated the highest risk category of home hazard claims we get in TX.
I went metal about 5 years ago. It cut my Electric Bill in HALF, instantly!
The downside is that you won’t get any assist from the Sun during Winter, so you need a good heating system.
I’ve noticed that aircraft now use my house as a landmark for lining up their approach to DFW…it’s all good.
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It is amazing how much difference roof color makes.
IF the Tesla solar roof is cheaper than a standard one (as the website claims) why not get that? Am I missing a variable? Maybe the building would stick out, but besides that it’s giving you electricity. If it’s really important that it looks standard then I suppose that might be too much.
So you have to understand Tesla and how they advertise their prices. They are really saying that their solar roofs are equivalent or cheaper than a regular roof over the lifetime of their roof. That would mean the cost of roof replacements to equal the number of years their roof is expected to last plus predicted energy savings for the life of the solar roof and government tax incentives.
Basically, it would be a HUGE amount for the initial investment, but over the life of the roof all added costs and savings would be less than a plain old roof. So you might pay $10k for a regular roof replacement, but $60k for a Tesla roof that is expected to last X number of years. Does that make sense?
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yeah, that’s the information I didn’t have. Thanks.
This has been standard Telsa playbook as long as I can remember. The actual retail price can often be had, but it’s going to be obfuscated behind whatever magic figure Tesla’s marketing whiz kids think will capture your attention backed with some truth-y claims.
Unlike a regular roof which you install only to have it devalue over time and ultimately require replacement, a ‘solar roof’ produces something, thus if it’s sufficiently long-lived and the price delta sufficiently low relative to its lifetime it Should™ have a lower TCO than a regular roof. Of course, there are a lot of assumptions that go into this assertion. First being that you’ve opted for their pricey solar shingles to displace conventional roofing, which happen to cover a large percentage of your roof, happen to be in about prime position to harvest solar energy as efficiently as your lat-long allows, and that you are paying something more like California electricity prices - with net metering and TOU billing - that’s just not a factor in Texas.
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One wonders how well those solar shingles stand up to a good old Texas hail storm…
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Here’s what Tesla has to say (scroll down to “specs”):
Hail Rating
Class 3 ANSI FM 4473
(up to 1.75" diameter hail)
If you get larger hail than that, you’re probably going to be filing a claim for all the other damage, so you can roll up the solar roof repair into the other repairs your insurer will be be paying for.
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Since we were talking about the Tesla solar roof, someone in one of my Tesla Facebook groups here in Dallas just got one installed and broke down the cost. It’s definitely expensive and not worth it at its current cost unless you have an ultra luxury house and money to burn. 
Here is the cost breakdown:
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I don’t light cigars with hundreds, that’s for sure.
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Cost per square and per watt? Amazing. And those things had better last a d__ned long time if they’re going to have a prayer of lower TCO than a conventional roof. Conventional panels would come in at a fraction of that.
I’ll take the metal roof, the conventional solar panels, and my $10k extra please lol.
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All we can hope at this point is that those rich enough to afford it buy the roof so that over time the costs can go down. It’s how all new technology starts. We all know that. It will be a loooooooong time before the cost justifies the purchase for me.
I gather that a set of conventional panels + grid-tie inverter can be had for less than $2/watt installed, unlike the $6.77/watt the fella coughed up for the solar shingles. Still not terribly advantageous in a region with <$0.10/kWH electricity and screwy ‘net metering’ but closer to making sense.