Rooftop solar for the neighborhoods · Cricket Hill & Doveton · Since 2014
The installer who still answers in year eight.
Half Acre is six people and two vans, and we install the way neighbors need installing: five-to-nine-kilowatt arrays shade-modelled to the tree you will not cut, string inverters on clean planes and micros under the cottonwoods, a rate card that is the same on every street, and a phone that the person who wired your roof actually answers — on the second ring, in year eight.
Services & rates
Small-system rates, installed
Cash prices from this year’s Cricket Hill and Doveton installs — permits, interconnection filing and the ten-year workmanship warranty inside the number, the 30% federal credit still to come off it. The shade model at the free survey decides string versus micros and which row your roof earns; the price does not move between streets, seasons or how the conversation is going.
5 kW rooftop · string inverter$13,900 installed
20 panels on a clean south or west plane — the honest starter for a Cricket Hill bungalow
7 kW rooftop · string inverter$17,600 installed
28 panels, sized for the house plus the chest freezer and the summer window-unit habit
9 kW rooftop · microinverters$24,300 installed
Panel-by-panel conversion for cottonwood rows, dormers and the neighbor’s silver maple
11 kW heat-pump-ready$28,700 installed
Array plus panel work, sized for the conversion the model says is coming
Battery add-on$11,400 installed
13.5 kWh on the garage wall, the outage circuits named at the kitchen table
Monitoring, wash & spring checkincluded
The app, an annual wash and torque visit — for as long as we are in business, which is the plan
Why neighbors call us
Six people, two vans, your street
The national crews install and evaporate; the local one-man shops answer in March and vanish by October. Half Acre is deliberately sized between them — small enough that the person who quotes your roof is on the ladder installing it, established enough that the warranty letter will still mean something when the inverter beep starts in 2031. We have wired four houses on Alder Court alone. Three of them called us before their neighbors did.
The same card on every street
One rate card, printed, identical from Alder Court to the Doveton flats — no expires-Friday numbers, no door-canvass discounts, no price that depends on how the kitchen conversation went. The only variable is your roof, and the shade model settles that.
Eleven seasons in
The neighborhoods, counted
They did the Calloways’ roof two doors down, so I watched the whole thing happen before I called — one day, no drama, and the app they showed me at the block party had made more than my bill by August.
2025 — 2026
Around the neighborhoods
Six roofs from the last two seasons, all within four streets of each other. Walk any of these blocks and ask the owner — that is the marketing plan, and always has been.
Before you call
Kitchen-table questions
The five every neighborhood kitchen reaches by the second cup. The van phone answers seven to five, and Sunday mornings during storm season.
Will my bill actually reach zero?
Some months, honestly, and the annual true-up is the real answer: production banks credits through the sunny half and spends them through the dark half, with one settlement month at the utility’s published rate. The model predicts your true-up to the dollar before you sign, and "basically zero" is a month with a name on it — usually April — not a brochure line.
String or micros under my cottonwoods?
Micros, almost certainly — big deciduous shade is exactly the case panel-by-panel conversion was invented for, and the model will show the difference in kilowatt-hours rather than adjectives. One clean plane gets a string inverter: one serviceable part on the garage wall instead of twenty on the roof. We quote both off the same flight, and the price card holds either way.
What if we sell the house?
The array transfers with the roof, the monitoring app re-registers to the new owner in an afternoon, and the production history is part of the listing — a roof with receipts. The workmanship warranty travels with the house; the production guarantee settles with whoever owns it at true-up. Realtors here have started asking us for the model the way they ask for the survey.
Will you still be around in year eight?
That is the whole pitch, and the honest answer is structural: six people, two vans, no debt, no outside money, a rate card that prices the work rather than the sales cycle, and 396 arrays whose monitoring we still answer for. Companies built on door-canvassing have to keep churning roofs to keep the lights on; we were built to still be holding the ladder.
How long is the wait in spring?
Four to six weeks from signed survey to install day in the spring rush, two in the autumn — and the survey itself is usually within the week because it is one of the six people, not a booked sales route. The dated sequence is in the contract, and in eleven seasons the fenwick Lane chalkboard has never lied about a fill date.
How it goes
Coffee to first true-up
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
The first week
Coffee & the flight
We come to the kitchen table, pull twelve months of bills, and fly the roof from the driveway — the drone is in the van. If the cottonwoods win the argument, you hear it over the coffee, not after the contract.
Week two
The model on the table
Month-by-month production, string versus micros priced side by side, the payback line and the predicted true-up — printed, left with you, and identical to what every other house on your street received.
Weeks three to five
Permits & the one day
Permit, interconnection, the HOA letter if your street has one. Then install day: six people, two vans, flashed attachments, torque to spec, the attic checked the morning after. Most roofs are finished before dinner.
Month twelve
The first true-up
The app has been on your phone since the meter spun backwards; at the anniversary we read the year against the model together — on your porch, in person, which is what being the neighborhood crew means.
The inverter beeped on a Sunday in February, year six. I called the number braced for a call center and got Marcus, who had wired it, who remembered my roof, and who was in the driveway by ten with the replacement fan card. The beep was a frost warning. He showed me the log, drank the coffee, left. That is the whole review.
Three companies quoted and two of them knocked a thousand off when I hesitated, which told me what the first number was. Half Acre’s price never moved — string on the south plane, micros on the cottonwood side, both in the model, printed and identical to what my neighbor got the year before. The true-up landed within nine dollars of the prediction.
We are the fourth house on the street to use them, so this is less a review than a neighborhood fact. One day on the roof, the chalkboard dates held, and at the block party the app got passed around like a photo album — 108 percent of model in year one. The battery goes in this spring; the rate card says what it says.
Free surveys around Cricket Hill & Doveton, most within the week · (555) 029-3376 · crew@halfacresolar.example
Have the van come by
Tell us the street and roughly what the utility charges. The survey is free, the model follows in a week, and the rate card is the same one your neighbor has. crew@halfacresolar.example