What is starting to annoy me with solar, is that companies only want to supply and fit..... i cant think of much work that gets done at a house is like this. plumbers dont supply the bath, sink taps... leccy's dont supply the pot lights or switches etc etc.
But trying to find a solar installer or leccy that will work with the items you want fitted is like rocking horse poop
I think you would be surprised how many trades do this now.
I think because of the shortage of many of them they are realising they can start to say supply only and you will struggle to find another who will fit customer supplied. Obviously it varies but I mean for some standard stuff.
We are having a log burner fitted in a few weeks. Was normal story, contacted a load, some didn't even reply. Some sort of replied but didn't really answer the fairly specific request and went into general waffle mode (which would have saved them time as I had already researched a load and was quoting what I wanted).
One who just happened to be very local engaged quite well but after a few conversations basically said "to be honest we only fit what we supply" and he meant everything even down to the hearth.
You could see with the items we were discussing a bit of extra markup. Eg the log burner itself I could have had delivered directly, but their supply price was around 5% more.
There are some advantages of course with them supplying as its their issue if something goes wrong.
There are plenty of stories of people with issues who self supplied and someone else fitted. Someone had a dodgy shower screen on here for example.
You avoid the issues with potential argument between installer and manufacturer if something goes wrong.
Your only basically after a fairly standard process though right, please supply and fit a new inverter. So you can get a quote for that and argue the price (obviously ask for fully detailed quote) of the inverter once they quote.
Assuming they price up the inverter with a large markup.
Its funny I have been kind of thinking of retraining as a spark. I think there is a gap in the market for a flexible solar targeted spark to work with diyers.
I suppose moving the inverter could be a chunk of work. Most of them don't seem to work alone and your probably on the its a day job type position for safety. Chances are unless its super tricky they will wack it out by lunchtime and get the afternoon off paid, or use it to quote for some other jobs.
