If you live in Orem, you have probably answered the door to a solar rep more than once, maybe more than once in a single week. Neighborhoods here are walkable, dense enough to canvass efficiently, and full of homes that look like good candidates from the sidewalk. Crews work them in waves, and a knock often arrives with urgency attached: a program ending, a limited number of homes in the area, terms that only hold tonight. None of that pressure has anything to do with whether solar makes sense on your roof. The two questions are separate, and it helps to keep them separate.
We are not going to tell you that everyone who knocks is dishonest. Plenty of reps are ordinary people doing a hard summer job, and some represent solid companies. The problem is the format. A conversation on your porch is built to produce a decision quickly, from someone who has never been on your roof, has not seen twelve months of your usage, and is working from an aerial image. That is not enough information to design a system. It is enough to create a sense of momentum, which is an entirely different thing.
Slowing the process down is simple, and you do not have to be rude about it. Ask for the company name in writing, the name of the person at the door, and a callback number, then say you will follow up once you have looked at things. Do not sign on a tablet at the door, and do not agree to a same-day appointment because a deadline was mentioned. Real incentives and real utility programs are not gone by morning. If an offer genuinely cannot survive a week of thinking, that tells you something useful about the offer.
It also helps to control the sequence. Pull your own electricity usage for the last twelve months before anyone quotes you, so you can tell whether a proposed system was sized to your house or to a template. Ask each bidder to show you the roof planes they intend to use and how they handled shading through the seasons. Ask who does the actual installation, who pulls the permit, and who files the utility interconnection application. Those questions get answered the same way by every honest company and get vague fast with the rest.
A no-pressure evaluation looks fairly plain. Someone comes to the property, gets on the roof or at minimum measures it properly, records pitch, orientation, condition, and shading, looks at your electrical panel, and reviews a full year of your usage. Then you get a layout of your own roof and an explanation of the assumptions behind it. You are given time to read it. Nobody follows you around the kitchen. If the roof is near the end of its life, you are told to reroof first rather than pushed forward because a quota is due at the end of the month.
That is the standard we hold the installers we refer you to. We are a referral service, not a sales team working a territory, and we have no reason to hurry you. If the honest answer for your home is not right now, that is an acceptable answer. Incentives and utility rules exist and they change over time, so confirm anything financial with a tax professional and with your utility directly, because we do not give tax advice. When you want an evaluation on your own schedule, call 801-644-9000 and we will arrange one.
Treat urgency as a sales technique until it is documented. Programs and utility rules do change over time, but they change on published schedules, not overnight for one street. Ask for the claim in writing with a source you can verify, then confirm the details with your utility directly and with a tax professional if taxes are involved. Anything that cannot survive that check is not worth signing tonight.
Long enough to read the full document, gather twelve months of your usage, get more than one evaluation, and ask your questions without someone waiting in your living room. For most households that means at least a couple of weeks. A system stays on your house for decades. Spending a few evenings comparing what is actually being proposed is a reasonable trade for that.
Ask who the company is, whether the crew is their own or a subcontractor, how mounts are attached and penetrations flashed, who pulls the permit and files the interconnection application, and what happens if a leak appears later. Ask for the shade analysis of each roof plane and the layout drawing. Clear answers to those tell you far more than any number quoted at your door.
A few details about your home is enough to start. Or call 801-644-9000 and skip the form.