GAF Energy customer Shannon L. knew that when it was time to reroof her house, she had to go solar. “Our house still had the original roof. It had been over 25 years, so we knew it was time to replace the roof. And I thought the environmentally appropriate and responsible thing to do was to make it solar,” Shannon recalled. “And we really wanted it to be integrated solar. We did not want to have panels on our roof.”
Unlike sunny California, where it seems like every other home has solar panels on their roof, Shannon lives on the east coast. At the time she was looking into solar roofing options, there were not a lot of installers near her. Shannon was delighted to be able to find GAF Energy and our roofing partners Bachman’s Roofing to install Timberline Solar™ on her house.
The installation process went smoothly, and Shannon was very pleased with how supportive and efficient the GAF Energy team was. “The folks at GAF are fantastic,” Shannon said. “We had a performance issue at the beginning, and GAF Energy immediately had a team of people looking into it. They didn’t stop until they solved it.”
Shannon is so excited about her solar roof, that she loves to show it off. But sometimes, that’s not so easy. “It’s funny because people have no idea that we have solar,” she said. “My sister lives nearby and when she saw the roof she said, ‘oh, I thought you were getting solar.’ And I said, ‘no, I have solar,’” Shannon laughed.
But that’s not the only time her Timberline Solar™ energy shingles were difficult to spot. “We had someone doing some landscape work and he wanted to put a tree up,” she recalled. “I said, ‘that’s fine, but I don’t want you to block my solar panels.’ And he goes, ‘what solar panels?’”
“It surprises people. I’m very proud to be solar.”
Due to Shannon’s relatively complex roof layout, shading around her home, and other factors, the team was somewhat limited in how much solar they could install. “I think the team was very diligent in their design to be able to get us as much solar as possible,” she said. Shannon calls herself a “data nerd” and enjoys calculating how much energy her home is generating and then consuming; she expressed excitement to see the difference as the summer went by.
In the same way GAF Energy’s vision is energy from every roof, Shannon also hopes that solar roofing becomes more widely adopted. “The fact that I can have these little solar arrays dramatically decrease our energy consumption from what’s being produced from fossil fuels is such a great feeling,” she said. “I really hope that products like this become more mainstream so that it is a normal part of getting a new roof, as opposed to it having to be a separate project.”
We hope so too, Shannon!
If you’re interested in seeing if solar is right for your home, contact us at www.gaf.energy/homeowners.