Porter Ranch, CA · November – December 2023 · LADWP / LADBS

Porter Ranch: the flashing around the chimney came before the array.

Four hundred square feet of tile came off before a single module went on. The other delay had nothing to do with the roof.

Written by the Cali Energy project team · California contractor license 1032379 · Updated September 2026

An array should not be installed over a roof detail that is going to leak. On this Porter Ranch project the flashing around the chimney needed replacing and about four hundred square feet of tile came off to do it, before any module was fixed to the roof. Cali Energy carried both scopes — the roof repair and the solar installation — while the household's financing worked through a name mismatch that held funding for two weeks.

At a glance

System

9.43 kW AC-CEC

Roof work

Chimney flashing replaced, about 400 sq ft of tile lifted

Order of work

Roof repair before installation

Financing

Stopped twice: on our contract, then on a name mismatch

Meter authorized

16 December 2023

Utility / AHJ

LADWP / LADBS

The story

Two things ran in parallel on this project and neither of them was the array.

The first was the roof. The flashing around the chimney — the metal that turns water away where a vertical surface meets a sloped one — needed replacing, and doing it meant lifting roughly four hundred square feet of tile to get at it. That work went first, before any mounting hardware touched the roof.

The order is the point. An array does not cause a leak that was already coming, but it does make it more expensive to reach: modules and rails sit over the roof, and a repair underneath them means taking a section of the system off and putting it back. Any roof detail that is near the end of its life gets fixed first or it gets fixed twice.

Chimneys are where this shows up most often on tile roofs. The flashing there takes water from a large area and channels it, the joint moves with the house, and the failure is slow and invisible from the ground. A crew that is about to spend a day walking the roof anyway is the right crew to look at it.

The second thing was the financing, and it stopped twice for two different reasons. Between them they cost nine days, and neither had anything to do with construction.

The first came from the lender's document rules, which had tightened that season: the contract now has to name the manufacturer of the modules and of the microinverters, and a contract written to the old standard goes back for a rewrite. It is a fair requirement — a loan is secured against equipment, and equipment that is not named cannot be valued. We reissued the contract with the equipment named and it cleared review the next day.

The second stop was in the household's own paperwork. The name on the property profile did not match the name on the identification — an initial, a spelling, the kind of difference a person would not notice and an underwriter must. Funding waited for a letter confirming that both versions refer to the same person. The letter was produced two days later and the loan funded two days after that.

What an owner can take from that: a financed solar project runs on two calendars, and the one nobody plans for is the lender's. Two things shorten it. The contract should name the actual equipment — manufacturer and model for the modules and the inverters — because lenders check. And the names on the title, the utility bill and the identification should match before the application goes in; where they cannot, the letter that explains why is faster to write early than to chase later.

The utility work request opened at the end of November. The interconnection review completed on the seventh of December and the meter was authorized on the sixteenth. The roof repair was settled the same month.

The house ended up with new flashing under the array rather than over it, a funded loan, and both jobs closed inside the same month by the same crew.

Cali Energy repaired the roof, then designed, permitted and installed this array in Porter Ranch.

How it ran

Five weeks, and both holds were paperwork: one line missing from a contract, one name spelled two ways.

What we did

• Replaced the chimney flashing before any module went on the roof.
• Kept the roof repair and the solar work on one schedule and one crew.
• Told the household what the lender needed instead of waiting it out.
• Closed the interconnection inside three weeks of opening the work request.

System specifications

Is your project like this one?

• Your roof has a detail you have been meaning to deal with.
• You are financing solar and the paperwork has stalled.
• Your tile roof is old enough that nobody has looked at the flashing.
• You want the roof and the array handled by one company.

Cali Energy in Porter Ranch

Frequently asked questions

Should roof repairs happen before solar installation?

Yes, wherever the detail is near the end of its life. A repair under an installed array means removing modules and rails to reach it and putting them back, which turns one job into two.

Why does chimney flashing fail on tile roofs?

Because it handles water from a large area at a joint that moves with the house, and the failure is slow and hidden under tile. It is usually found by somebody walking the roof rather than by somebody looking at it from the ground.

Why would a lender reject a solar contract?

Commonly because the equipment is not named. A loan is secured against what is being installed, so the contract has to state the manufacturer and model of the modules and the inverters. A contract that lists only a system size gets sent back, and the project waits while it is corrected.

What is a name-mismatch letter and why does a lender want one?

It is a short letter confirming that two versions of a name — with an initial, a middle name or a different spelling — refer to the same person. Lenders require it when documents disagree, and funding waits until it arrives.

How long does the utility side take after the work request opens?

On this project the interconnection review completed in about a week and the meter was authorized nine days after that. The variable part is rarely the utility — it is whatever the project is waiting on.

Does Cali Energy do roofing work in Porter Ranch?

Yes, and on projects like this one the roof work and the array are scheduled together so the roof is right before anything is fixed to it. Permits run through LADBS and interconnection through LADWP.

What this would look like on your roof

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This timeline reflects this property and this permitting path. Updated September 2026.