Pigeons under solar panels

Any experience of installing wire mesh round solar panels to stop pigeons roosting and nesting there?
thanks
Phoebe

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Welcome to the forum Phoebe! I can’t make any specific recommendations about your situation, but it looks like this is quite a common problem so hopefully someone else will have some direct experience to share.

I am sure you have seen things like these, but after a bit of a search it seems like there are a lot of different products available to help prevent pigeons from nesting. Maybe another member will have a better idea of what works well.

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I had problems with this. My parents already had this problem so I raised it with one of the PV installers who originally quoted for my array - they dismissed it as very unlikely to be an issue, but it was. My parents paid quite a lot of money for mesh to be installed around their panels - they have panels on three pitches of their roof and it required scaffolding so it was very expensive.

I’m a total bird lover but when eggs started dropping on the driveway I thought, well it’s in no-one’s benefit to have them under there. Happily, my roof (panels on two pitches) was entirely accessible with roof ladders and I used Direct Solar Care, who were startlingly efficient - up and down in a flash, cleaned the gutters whilst they were up there (even for next door!) Some of the companies boast about using “biocide” in the cleaning, which is not a selling point to me, and certainly not necessary in my case (no nests actually built).

I also got a price from the original PV installers which was about twice as much. Given my parents’ experience I would have paid a few hundred quid extra to have them pigeon proofed at install but when I said this that company also said “well this hardly ever happens, it’s not worthwhile”. There are at least a dozen companies doing thousands of mesh installs every year so :man_shrugging:

Direct Solar Care had some sort of mixup sending me details about the wrong house to start with but they totally made it up to me, replaced some roof tiles for free - so I would feel comfortable recommending them. No problems since (it was in October). I recommended them to another friend who also used them and was very happy. But I’m sure others are good too!

Hope this is useful.

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Thank you Richard, this is helpful. I compared Direct Solar Care with British Bird Control, and went for the latter in the end. So now steel mesh is installed around the panels, only took 50 minutes. They didn’t clean the gutters as said not necessary. The stuff about bird mites etc may be a bit OTT but better safe than sorry. Neighbours had more of a problem with nests, so require scaffolding to deal with it, hence more expensive as you say. So sooner the better seems the advice… although some don’t seem to have a problem
Thanks again for your helpful response
Phoebe

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My PV installer suggested bird netting, which was on my wish list anyway. The additional cost on 8 panels was minimal but I don’t remember how much. There is no point in penny pinching at install and unless you live in deepest Antarctica there is bound to be a potential bird issue at some point.

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