Installing a Critter Guard for my Solar Panels

As the name implies, a "Critter Guard" is to prevent anything from building a nest under the solar panels and/or nibbling on the wires. This can cause the system to stop working and can be very expensive to fix, since the panels have to be pulled off. I.e. an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! ;-)

Many solar installers include/add this to their quote, but Tesla did not - their answer is you should contract with a 3rd party - they didn't even have a list of "approved/recommended" vendors. I chatted with the Tesla Installers and turns out they do this on the side, which is not surprising. They quoted me a $1,000 to do it, but since the material cost is ~$200 and I'm comfortable on the roof, I decided to do it myself.

Because there was some variance in the height of the panels, I got a 100 foot roll of 6" and 4" wire mesh ... plus the "fasteners/clips" to attach them. Drag everything up the roof along with a long 2x4 to "bend" the right angle in the mesh. Note this is attached to the skirt rather than the panels. You could to the later (which would be an even neater install), but in order to remove the skirt, you need a special ZEP Flat Tool which is really hard to get and costs a couple of hundred bucks.

You should be able to do 8-10' (or longer) "runs" of mesh - use tin snips to cut as needed. The fastener clips "grab" onto the skirt, pull it through tight, clip some of the end off, paint it, and bend it over. You'll get the hang of it after doing a few. It's a little more challenging doing the sides (since the height varied) plus the corners, but it's fairly intuitive how to do.

The biggest issue I had was one side of the East facing panels was less than two feet from the edge of the roof ... and it's a two story drop from there! This would be very difficult to do using a ladder ... and while I was confident I had enough space to do it on the roof, it's smart to be safe. So a neighbor who is a technical climber was willing to help me out and "belayed" me in case I stumbled ... but fortunately I never did.