Solar panel cleaning in Rio Vista
Rio Vista sits just south of Las Olas Boulevard between the New River and the Intracoastal, with Rio Vista Isles pushing out onto the canals. It is one of Fort Lauderdale’s oldest estate neighborhoods and one of its most rebuilt: a 1930s tile-roof house next to a new standing-seam metal one, both with a dock and often both with solar. The arrays here are large and the roofs are steep, and the water is never more than a few hundred feet away.
Canal-front salt, on two kinds of roof
The New River carries tidal salt water right through the neighborhood, and the Intracoastal is at the east end, so salt film builds on every roof in Rio Vista. It is a thin haze that cuts output steadily and does not rinse off in the rain. Tap water makes it worse by drying into calcium spots on top of the salt. We clean Rio Vista with deionized water, which dissolves the salt and dries clean, and we put the canal-front homes on a quarterly schedule.
The roof type decides how we get there. Standing-seam metal on the newer estates is cleaned from a water-fed pole at the eave; we never walk a wet metal roof, and deionized water leaves no streaks on the panels or the seams. Barrel tile on the older homes is worked from the pole wherever the array can be reached, with walk pads on the tile overlap when it cannot. Either way, every panel is photographed before and after.
The rest of the year
Rio Vista has a good tree canopy on the interior streets, so the February-to-May pollen film shows up here too, dew-glued to the glass and immune to rain. Summer brings Saharan dust and the wet-season algae streak along the lower edge of each panel. On the canal lots, gulls and pelicans leave large droppings on the glass, and the tile-roof homes get pigeons roosting under the array; see the bird guard section below. The whole year is on the soiling calendar.
Seasonal homes
A good share of Rio Vista is occupied from fall to spring. The maintenance plan handles that: a pre-departure clean in March or April, a pre-arrival clean in October or November, an August visit for the salt if you want it, and the before and after photos emailed to wherever you are. We do not need anyone home, and we register with any gate or private-road patrol ahead of time.