SolarCleaningBossPro Blog — Routes & Scheduling

How Many Roofs a Day? Sizing a Solar Cleaning Route by Panel Count and Pitch

“How many houses can you do in a day?” is one of the first questions any solar cleaning owner gets asked, and the honest answer is always “it depends.” It depends on how many panels are on each roof, how high the roof is, how steep it is, how far apart the stops are, and what extras are on the job. A route sized by stop count alone will be wrong most days. A route sized by the real work holds up.

Busy Seasons Make This Matter More

When the dirty months arrive, as covered in Pollen and Dust Seasons: Planning the Solar Cleaning Schedule Around the Dirty Months, the temptation is to pack every truck. Packing well means knowing what each stop really takes, so the extra work goes where there is room for it.

The Details That Decide the Day

Every job in SolarCleaningBossPro carries the panel details that drive time on site:

• Number of panels. The biggest single factor. More glass, more time.
• Mount. Roof, ground mount or carport. Ground-level work is quicker to set up and move around.
• Roof stories. 1-story, 2-story or 3+ story. Height adds ladder setup, hose runs and care.
• Pitch. Low, steep or flat roof. Steep roofs take longer to work safely.
• Extras. Bird proofing, critter guards and inspection each add real time.

They show under the address on the lists, like “24 panels · Roof · 2-story · Low pitch · Bird proofing,” so you can read the size of a stop at a glance while building the route.

Learn Your Own Numbers

Every crew works at its own pace, with its own equipment and its own standard of clean. Any rule of thumb from someone else will be off for you. The better approach is to learn your own numbers.

The tech app helps here. Techs tap Start when they begin a job and Complete when they finish, and the time clock records their day. After a few weeks, you will have a feel for how long a typical low-pitch single-story roof takes your crew compared to a steep 2-story one with the same panel count. That is the number that matters, and it is covered in more depth in Estimating Job Time for Solar Panel Cleaning So the Schedule Holds.

Think in Work, Not Stops

Once you know your own pace, start sizing days in work instead of stops. A simple way is to think of a standard stop, say a typical single-story roof your crew does all the time, as one unit. A big steep 2-story roof might count as two or three units. A small ground mount might be half. Add bird proofing and it grows again.

A full day is however many units your crew can do comfortably, plus drive time. That might be many small stops or a handful of big ones, and both are full days. When you look at tomorrow's route on the board, add up the units rather than counting the cards.

Drive Time Is Part of the Day

Two routes with the same work can be very different days if one is in a tight neighborhood and the other is spread across the county. Grouping stops from the Waiting List map and auto-routing Closest First or Furthest First from the shop keeps drive time down, which leaves more of the day for roofs.

A day of scattered stops should simply hold less work. That is a good reason to wait a day or two for more due pins to build up in an area rather than sending a truck out for one or two far-flung jobs.

Leave Room for the Unexpected

A route sized to the last minute will run late. A customer asks for critter guards on site, a gate code does not work and the tech has to wait, the water system needs attention. Leave a little room on every day. If the day goes smoothly, the office can use crew GPS to see where the truck is and add a nearby due job to the end of the route.

Heat matters too. A route that works in spring may be too much in summer, when many operators stop roof work earlier in the day. Size summer days with that in mind.

Sizing Gets Easier Over Time

The first few weeks of sizing routes by panel count and pitch take a little thought. After that, it becomes second nature: you look at a route on the board, see two steep 2-story roofs and a carport, and know whether it is a light day or a full one. That instinct is what lets a solar cleaning company book confidently and keep its promises. For the full set of routing tools, visit the SolarCleaningBossPro solar cleaning route software page.