Two towns five miles apart, with Buckshaw Village in between them. We cover all three from our HQ in Clitheroe, about forty minutes down the M6. This is what solar actually involves on Central Lancashire housing, written by installers who survey it rather than estimate it.
From Princess Avenue, Clitheroe, down the M6 to Leyland and Chorley. Every roof is surveyed in person before anyone quotes a number.
Homes built at Buckshaw Village on the old Royal Ordnance site since the 2000s. A different job from a first install on an older house, and we explain why below.
Tesla, Fox and Aiko. A short list we know properly rather than a catalogue we half know.
Leyland is a works town, Chorley is a market town with moorland behind it, and Buckshaw is a new one built between them. The roofs are as different as the histories, and so is the right design for each.
Leyland grew around the vehicle works, and most of the town’s housing is the inter-war and post-war semis and bungalows built for its workforce. Simple hipped and gabled roofs, concrete tile, flat ground, and estates laid out with space between the houses. On a good orientation these are the easiest solar roofs in Central Lancashire, and there are a great many of them.
Stone and brick Victorian terraces around the centre, with the same single slope orientation question as any terrace, then rings of 1930s semis and later estates at Astley Village, Euxton and Clayton-le-Woods. Nothing exotic, which is the point: the design questions are orientation, chimney shading and the size of the roof plane, and all three are settled at survey.
More than 3,000 homes on the decontaminated site of the Royal Ordnance Factory, built by national developers from the 2000s onwards. Modern trussed roofs and concrete tile, easy to work on. Two things to check first: whether the house already has a small developer fitted array, and whether the estate’s management scheme has anything to say about external alterations. Both change the design. Neither is a reason not to proceed.
Chorley borough has nine conservation areas, and parts of Croston and Withnell Fold carry Article 4 Directions that remove the usual permitted development rights. South Ribble has eight, and in some of them permitted development is more restricted than the national default. The towns themselves are largely unaffected. It is the villages — Croston, Eccleston, Withnell Fold and the older cores — where a rear facing array that would be fine in Leyland needs a planning conversation first. We check the designation as part of the survey rather than leaving you to discover it.
Rivington, Anglezarke and Healey Nab rise steeply on the eastern side of the borough. Properties in Adlington, Heath Charnock and up towards Rivington lose the sun earlier in the afternoon than the same house would in Leyland, and the exposure changes the fixing calculation. It rarely rules solar out. It changes the design, the numbers, and occasionally which slope is worth using.
A share of Buckshaw and the newer Euxton and Farington developments came with two to four panels fitted to satisfy building regulations rather than to run a house. They generate, but the inverter and export arrangement need checking before anything is added, and it is not unusual for the better answer to be replacing the small original system. Newer estates also sometimes carry management scheme rules on external changes. Neither is a problem we have not met before, and both are worth knowing about before the design rather than after it.
If you are not on this list, ask anyway. The M6 puts most of it within forty minutes of our HQ.
Any installation has to be notified to them before connection. We handle it as part of the job rather than leaving it with you.
Preston, South Ribble and Chorley share the Central Lancashire Local Plan, so the strategic planning is joined up even though the conservation area maps are not. Which council your house falls under decides which map applies, and Leyland and Chorley are in different ones.
Yes. Leyland and the western side of Chorley are flat, low and open, with none of the hillside problems that shape installs in the Ribble Valley or east of Chorley towards the moors. On the right orientation this is straightforward country for solar, and a bright overcast day still generates usefully because panels run on daylight rather than heat.
What decides it, as everywhere, is which way the roof faces, what shades it, and when the house is occupied. A Leyland semi with a south facing hip and nobody home until six is a different case from the same house with someone in all day, and the battery conversation follows from that.
So we can look at the roof, which way it faces, and which estate it is on.
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.
Usually not. Solar on a house is normally permitted development. The exceptions are the conservation areas, particularly Croston and Withnell Fold in Chorley borough where Article 4 Directions apply, and some of South Ribble’s eight conservation areas where permitted development is more restricted. We check the designation before anything is designed.
Usually, but the developer’s inverter and export arrangement decide how, and the estate’s management scheme may have a view on external changes. Sometimes it is cheaper and better to replace the small original system than to add to it. We check what is there at the survey.
On the right orientation, one of the best in Central Lancashire. Simple hipped roofs, concrete tile, flat ground and space between the houses. A hipped roof splits the array across two or three slopes, so the design is about balancing them rather than filling one big south face.
It changes the numbers rather than the answer. Properties towards Rivington and Adlington lose the sun earlier in the afternoon and are more exposed, so the shading analysis and the fixing specification both matter more. The survey tells you what it costs you.
We do. For Chorley, Leyland and South Ribble that is Electricity North West, and it happens before connection as part of the job.
One to two days on site for a typical Leyland or Chorley house once the scaffold is up. Buckshaw homes with an existing array can take a little longer if the original system is being replaced.