Twenty minutes from our yard in Clitheroe, and a town built out of its own quarry. This is what solar actually involves on Longridge sandstone and across the PR3 villages.
Covered from our yard at The Former Ambulance Station in Clitheroe, twenty minutes down the B6243. Not a regional office running subcontractors from another county.
Surveyed in person before anyone quotes a number. Never estimated from an aerial image.
Tesla, Fox and Aiko. A short list we know properly rather than a catalogue we half know.
Longridge is unusual, and it matters for solar.
The town grew around the Pendle Grit sandstone quarries on the fell above it, which at their peak were producing something like thirty thousand tonnes of stone a year. That stone built Longridge itself, went into major civil buildings across Lancashire, and travelled as far as Liverpool Docks. Some of it is in the stands at Deepdale.
The last quarry closed just after the war, but the town it left behind is still standing. Rows of stone cottages, including the terraces put up for hand loom weavers and nail makers in the 1820s and 30s, give Longridge a roofscape that behaves quite differently to a modern estate.
Steep pitches, small roof planes, chimney stacks on the party walls. Structurally these are fine, because they were built to carry stone slate. The constraint is usable area and what the stacks shade, and the fixings have to suit the covering rather than a modern tile.
Longridge grew considerably from the sixties onward as people working in Preston and Blackburn moved out to it. Those roofs are the easiest solar in the area: simple planes, sensible pitch, concrete interlocking tile, and space around the house so shading is rarely the issue it is in the old core.
The biggest arrays and the longest process. Large roof area, often stone slate, frequently listed or inside the Forest of Bowland, and usually on a single phase supply that shapes what is possible before anyone draws a layout.
This is the thing that separates a Longridge system from a Clitheroe one, and almost nobody quoting round here asks about it.
A large share of Longridge, Grimsargh and Goosnargh commutes to Preston or Blackburn. Which means the house is empty for most of the hours the roof is generating. The panels produce at their best at one in the afternoon, when there is nobody in to use it, and the household is at its busiest at seven when the panels have stopped.
Without storage, most of that summer surplus goes back to the grid and gets bought back at a considerably higher rate in the evening. It is the single strongest argument for a battery there is, and it is a question about your week rather than about your roof. If a quote arrives without anyone having asked what time you get home, it has been sized off a price list.
The older core of the town is a designated conservation area, and Ribchester and Chipping are conservation areas too. Solar on a house is normally permitted development, but that permission narrows inside one. In practice rear facing panels are usually still fine and panels on a slope facing a highway usually are not. On a terrace where the only usable plane faces Berry Lane or Market Place, that is a planning conversation before it is a solar one.
Longridge is the gateway to it, and Chipping, Whitechapel, Bleasdale and Inglewhite sit inside or on its edge. Additional restrictions apply, particularly on prominent elevations, and listed building consent is a separate process to planning permission if the property is listed. None of it is automatically a refusal. It changes what is possible and where, and we establish it at survey rather than leaving you to find out later.
Longridge is built from its own stone, and a good deal of the older housing still carries stone slate or heavy natural slate. That needs a different mounting approach to a modern concrete interlocking tile. Get it wrong and you do not find out at commissioning, you find out as a damp patch three winters later. If you are getting quotes on a stone roof here, ask specifically what mounting system is proposed and why. It is one of the clearest lines between a competent installer and a cheap one.
If you are not on this list, ask anyway. Most of it is inside half an hour of the yard.
Any installation has to be notified to them before connection. We handle it as part of the job rather than leaving it with you.
Single phase supplies with long service cables are common around Goosnargh, Inglewhite and out towards Bleasdale, and can put a ceiling on what is possible. Better established at survey than at design.
Yes, and the gap between here and the south of England is smaller than people assume, because panels run on daylight rather than heat or direct sunshine. A bright overcast day still generates usefully.
Longridge has one quirk worth knowing. The town sits on the western slope of Longridge Fell, which is the most southerly fell in England and the only true fell in the Forest of Bowland. Property on the eastern side of town has high ground behind it, and that brings sunrise later rather than sunset earlier. It is the opposite problem to the valley towns and it changes which roof plane is worth using.
What matters far more than the county you are in is what shades the roof, which way it faces, and when the house is occupied.
So we can look at the roof, which way it faces and what might shade it.
On any annual statement, in units. A rough figure is fine.
The single biggest factor in how much of your generation you keep.
That is enough for a straight answer. If your roof is not right for it, we will say so. We would rather tell you now than sell you something that disappoints you in February.
Solar is normally permitted development, but that narrows inside a conservation area. The older core of Longridge is one, as are Ribchester and Chipping. Rear facing panels are usually still fine. Panels on a slope facing a highway usually are not.
Yes. Those cottages were built to carry stone slate and are structurally robust. The constraint is the size of the roof plane and the chimney stacks, and the mounting system has to suit the covering rather than a modern concrete tile.
It can. Additional restrictions apply, particularly on prominent elevations, and listed building consent is separate from planning permission. Not automatically a refusal, but it shapes where panels can go.
Worth checking early. Single phase supplies with long service cables are common around Goosnargh, Inglewhite and out towards Bleasdale, and they can put a ceiling on what is possible. Electricity North West is the network operator and we handle the notification.
Yes, but it changes the design. An empty house during generating hours exports most of its summer surplus and buys it back dear at teatime. That is the strongest case there is for storage, and it is a question about your week rather than your roof.
About twenty minutes down the B6243 from Clitheroe. Close enough that a survey is a normal part of the day rather than a trip.