A later site survey is only as sharp as the information it starts with. You do not need to climb anything, open an electrical enclosure, or decide whether a roof can carry equipment. You do need a clear picture of what already stands between the sun and the roof, when that happens, and who can approve work on the property. Those notes do not replace a qualified roof or electrical assessment. They stop the first conversation from guessing.
We help households prepare those inputs: roof photographs taken from a safe place, visible shade, and access information. The same preparation helps a business put operating hours and roof rights into one brief. In both cases the job is observation, not a design.
Record Shade From a Safe Place
Stay on the ground, on a balcony you already use, or at a window. Photograph the roof planes you can see without stepping onto tiles, metal sheets, or a ladder. Include neighbouring structures if they rise above your eaves. A wide shot of the whole building and a closer shot of each visible roof face are more useful than a single distant image that hides vents, tanks, and cables.
Trees, nearby buildings and rooftop obstructions can cast shade on solar panels. Walk the boundary of the property and name what you can actually see: a neighbouring gable, a water tank, a chimney, a skylight, pipework, a satellite dish, an outdoor air-conditioning unit, an overhead cable, or a tree line. Write the object and the roof face it appears to fall across, rather than a judgement such as “too shaded” or “fine for solar.” The first version can be checked on site. The second version cannot.
If a tree or building only covers part of a roof face, say so. Partial cover still matters because shade on a panel blocks sunlight and reduces what that panel can produce. You are not measuring that reduction from the yard. You are flagging the obstruction so a solar shading assessment can treat it as a real object instead of an empty sky.
Do not prune, cut, or move anything to “test” a clearer roof. Removal, trimming, and neighbour negotiations are separate decisions with their own permission and safety questions. Your notes should describe the scene as it is on the day you look.
Access photographs help in the same way. Show the route a surveyor would use from the street or driveway, any gate, and whether a neighbouring wall or parked vehicle blocks the obvious approach. If the only view of a roof face is from the road, take that view and say you could not see the other side. Missing information is still information.
Note When the Shade Appears
A morning photograph and a late-afternoon photograph of the same roof often disagree. The sun’s path changes through the day, so a wall that leaves a roof face open at 9 a.m. can throw a hard line across it after lunch. If you can do so from the same safe positions, take dated pictures at more than one time on the same day and label each file with the clock time.
Shade also changes through the year because the sun’s path is not fixed. A tree that leaves a roof open in one season can reach it in another. You are not expected to watch a roof for twelve months before asking for a survey. You are expected to be honest about what you sampled. Write the date, the approximate time, and whether the sky was clear, hazy, or overcast. Overcast light can hide a shadow line that a bright day would make obvious, so a single grey-day photograph is a weak basis for claiming there is no shade.
If you already know a change is coming, record that too. A neighbour may have started a second storey. A tree may be scheduled for work by the owner who controls it. A water tank or antenna may be due to move during a renovation. Planned change is not the same as current shade, and it is not a reason to ignore what is there now. Put both on the list: what casts a shadow today, and what you have been told will change.
These time notes are still observations. They do not produce a kilowatt-hour figure, a percentage loss, or a verdict that roof shading for solar panels in the Philippines will or will not work on your house. Software used on site, with measured geometry, is what turns objects and sun paths into a model. Your job is to make sure the model is aimed at the right objects.
Collect Roof Facts You Already Have
Roof age, shape and slope are part of assessing whether a roof is suitable for solar. You can often supply the first of those from memory, a renovation file, or the person who last re-roofed the house. Shape and slope are visible from the ground: a simple two-face roof, a hip, a mixed roof with a lean-to, a low slope, a steep pitch, a sawtooth, or a roof interrupted by a courtyard. Describe what you see. Do not convert that description into a mounting method or a panel count.
Age matters because a solar array is a long-lived installation sitting on a roof that may already be near a replacement. If you are already planning to re-roof, say so, including any timing you have. If you do not know the age, say that rather than inventing a year. A survey still has to inspect condition. Rot, rust, leaks, brittle sheets, and undocumented alterations are not things you should diagnose from a photograph, and they are not things you should inspect by walking the surface.
From the ground you can also note features that occupy roof area: solar water heaters, existing small panels, skylights, vents, and parapets. Those objects affect where an array could sit even when they do not cast a dramatic shadow. A crowded roof face is a layout problem as well as a shade problem. Listing the clutter saves the survey from treating the whole plane as empty.
Do not estimate whether the structure can carry equipment, whether wind on your street is acceptable, or which fixings belong on your sheets or tiles. Those are qualified structural and mounting questions. Putting them on the list for the surveyor is useful. Answering them yourself is not.
For a Meralco-served home, the utility’s published consumer guidance also asks you to think about location on the roof, direction, and angles before you treat a purchase as settled. That is a prompt to observe and to ask, not a licence to specify tilt from the garden. If another distribution utility serves the property, use that utility’s current guidance for connection questions; location and shade still belong in the site notes either way.
Confirm Who Can Approve the Roof
A clear roof photograph is wasted if nobody present can authorise work on that roof. Owner-occupied houses with a single decision-maker are the simple case. Rented property, a family compound, a shared roof over several units, a village association rule, or a commercial lease are not. Write down who owns the building, who occupies it, and who must sign before anyone fixes brackets or runs cables.
If you are not the owner, gather whatever permission information you already have: a lease clause, a written note from the owner, or a clear statement that you still need to ask. Do not treat a conversation with us as that permission. We can help you see which facts the assessment needs. We cannot approve a roof we do not control.
Commercial sites add operating constraints to the same question. A warehouse roof may be clear at noon and busy with maintenance contractors at the hours a surveyor can attend. A shop may share a roof with another tenant. Future reroofing, a planned extension, or a landlord’s equipment already on the deck can close off a face that looks empty in a photograph. Those points belong in a commercial site assessment brief together with opening hours, because a system that only works on a roof the business cannot use is not a system you can take forward.
For a house, the parallel pack is the home roof assessment conversation: photographs, shade, access, and permission, alongside how the household actually uses electricity during daylight. Roof notes without that usage context still leave the assessment guessing why the array is being considered. Usage notes without roof notes leave it guessing where anything could go.
Keep Notes Separate From Yield and Structure
A solar roof suitability checklist is easy to misuse if every line is treated as a pass or fail. Visible shade is one input. Roof age and geometry are another. Ownership is another. None of those lines is a generation estimate, a wind rating, or a promise that an array will fit.
People sometimes watch a roof through the day and conclude that shade is minor because a shadow moves off by mid-morning. Movement is worth recording. It is not a substitute for a professional who can model the site. The model has to account for the sun’s path across the year, the height and position of each obstruction, and the way an array is laid out, not only the patch of dark you noticed on one Tuesday. Until that work is done, do not use a ground-level impression to demand a percentage, a payback, or a panel quantity.
The same boundary applies to structure. Asking whether the roof needs a separate structural opinion is reasonable. Declaring the roof sound because it has not leaked this season is not. Asking whether mounting will need a particular sheet profile is reasonable. Choosing brackets from a photograph is not. We will not treat your notes as that certification, and you should not treat a remote review of photographs as an inspection.
Electrical access sits in the same unfinished category. A picture of a meter or a service entrance, taken without opening covers, can help a later visit. It does not tell anyone the condition of wiring, the correct isolation, or whether the connection can accept a system. Stay out of enclosures. Leave testing and measurement to people qualified to do that work on the day of the survey.
If the roof is heavily shaded by mature trees or a taller building, a professional may conclude that a rooftop array is a poor fit. That conclusion has to come from the assessment, not from a rule of thumb in an article. Alternative mounting, a smaller array on a clearer face, or deciding not to proceed are all possible outcomes. They are not things to lock in from the sidewalk.
What We Do With What You Send
Send what you have, even when it is incomplete. A dated set of ground-level photographs, a short list of obstructions, the times you stood there, roof age if known, and a sentence on permission is enough to start. If you only have one usable view of the roof, send that view and say so. If you do not know the age of the sheets, say so. Filling gaps with confident guesses makes the later survey slower, because the team then has to unpick the guess.
We use that pack to prepare a home solar assessment, not to skip it. The photographs let us talk about the actual building instead of a generic roof. The shade list tells us which faces need attention first. The permission note tells us whether the conversation is with the right people. None of that is a quotation, a system size, or a finding that the roof is ready.
On site, the survey still has to see the planes you could not photograph, measure what your notes only described, and apply a proper shading model if anyone is going to talk about energy. It still has to inspect condition and raise structural or mounting questions with whoever is qualified to answer them. A remote conversation does not do that work, and a well-prepared household does not need to pretend it can.
Bring a recent electricity bill as well if you have one, because consumption and roof are different halves of the same enquiry. Shade on a clear, usable roof still has to be matched to when the house actually uses power. That matching is design work after the site is understood, not a reason to skip the roof notes.
Bring Dated Notes, Not a Homemade Verdict
Check shade before a survey by standing in safe places, naming what you see, and writing when you saw it. Add roof age, a plain description of shape and slope, and whoever must approve work. Leave the roof itself, the wiring, the yield arithmetic, and any tree work to people whose job that is.
Gather those ground-level photographs and permission notes to start the assessment conversation. We will help you organise what you already have so the site visit is spent on the roof in front of you, not on reconstructing it from memory.