Solar panel bird proofing Sydney

Cooing on your Sydney roof at 5am?

Scratching above the bedroom before sunrise usually means pigeons under the panels. The spot keeps them safe from hawks and rain. Sydney's mild weather lets them breed most of the year.

Nests grow every season. The sticks trap moisture and block your gutters. Droppings on the glass cut the light reaching the cells.

Signs birds are nesting under your solar panels

You can usually tell from the ground or from a ladder. Look and listen for:

• cooing or scratching from the roof, especially early in the morning
• droppings on the roof, gutters, driveway or the windows below the panels
• twigs and feathers poking out from under the panels
• pigeons flying in and out from under the array
• bird lice or mites inside the house, which can come down from nests in the roof

If you've noticed two or more, send us a photo. We'll tell you what we can see and what the fix involves.

Solar panel bird mesh installation

Solar panel bird mesh is a strip of rigid mesh fixed around the outside edge of your array. It closes the gap between the panels and the roof, and it clips to the panel frame, so nothing is drilled into your panels.

Here's how your job runs:

1. Check the roof. We inspect the array, the roof surface and anything in the way, such as conduits or vents.
2. Remove nests. Sticks and droppings are cleared from under the panels before the mesh goes on.
3. Measure and cut. The mesh is cut to follow the outside edge of each group of panels.
4. Clip and shape. We clip the mesh to the frame and shape it to the roof, so there are no gaps at corners or joins.
5. Final check. We go around the whole edge looking for loose sections.

We use stainless steel mesh with a protective coating, fixed with stainless steel or UV-stabilised plastic clips.

Same job, different names

A solar skirt is another name for the mesh fitted around solar panels. Whether you call it solar panel mesh, a solar panel skirt or pigeon proofing for solar panels, it's the same barrier doing the same job.

What matters is the material and how it's fixed. Cheap kits and chicken wire tend to fail, and screws through the frame can damage your panels. We're often called to fix those jobs.

Some roofs also need bird spikes on ridges where pigeons perch before they move under the panels.

What affects the cost of proofing your panels

Your price comes down to the number of panels and how they're grouped. The mesh runs around the outside edge, so one big group costs less than several small ones.

A steep or two-storey roof needs more set-up time, and heavy nesting adds clean-up time.