Installing solar panels on your roof is not easy. The initial expense – the uncertainty over the financial gain it might bring over future years – the upheaval while they are being installed. But once the panels are installed on your roof, the hard part is over. Isn’t it? The panels will sit up there for years, gathering solar power for you.
Unless pigeons interfere.
It’s easy to overlook pigeons as bumbling fools. Pecking at the seeds dropped from the bird-feeders, waddling around comically or sitting on the road warming their feet and not understanding the danger they’re in. But pigeons can cause a surprising amount of damage to roof-top solar panels.
Solar panels are installed with a small space between panel and roof tile – a space that is ideal for a pigeon to hide and nest in. Pigeons prefer to build their nests in hidden places, and where more private than tucked under solar panels, up on a roof that no human ever visits?
Once a pigeon finds that cosy, hidden place under your solar panels, they will return to it year after year unless you take effective action to keep them out. If you don’t…
- Pigeons land on top of the panels initially; their beaks and talons are sharp enough to scratch the surface, reducing the panels’ efficiency.
- Pigeons are destructive, pulling at wires and disturbing connections.
- Bird droppings are acidic, and will damage the protective coverings on the panels’ wiring system – again, reducing their efficiency.
- Pigeons carry some virulent diseases, including e-coli, listeria and psittacosis, many of which can be transmitted to humans.
- The material that accumulates on the roof – poop, nesting material, discarded food – harbours tiny pests such as mites, ticks and parasites that can work their way under the tiles and possibly into your roof-space.
- Rain will wash nests, poop and feathers down the roof – clogging up gutters, downpipes and drains with a pestilential mush.