Before the installer's vehicle pulls out of the yard, six things need to be in your hands and not in theirs: the Certificate of Compliance issued for this specific installation, the serial numbers of every panel, inverter and battery checked against the warranty registrations, isolation points that are labelled and identifiable, the monitoring platform account registered in your own name with your own login, the as-built single-line diagram together with the approved municipal documentation, and warranty terms that state who a claim is lodged with and the date the period runs from. Each one takes minutes to collect while someone is standing in front of you, and weeks to reconstruct once the number on the invoice goes cold.
The drill has been going since early morning. The tea is finished and the bakkie is idling because the radio is on, and the installer has already told you twice that everything will be emailed tonight. You are holding your phone. He is holding a screwdriver and looking at the gate.
I have waited for that email more than once. It arrives perhaps half the time, and when it does it is a photo of a certificate taken at an angle, in a folder called New Folder (2), with the top left corner cut off. So I stopped relying on it. What follows is what I collect in the twenty minutes before the vehicle leaves, in the order that hurts most if I miss it.
Paper that belongs to the house, not the brand
The Certificate of Compliance is issued by a registered person — a person with a name and a registration number, not a company logo — for that installation, at that address. That is why it stays with the property when you sell and why it says nothing about how good the equipment is. Before the installer leaves, read it. Is the address correct? Is the registered person's name and number legible? Is there a schedule of circuits or a test report attached? If it is "with the office", ask when it will be signed and by whom, and take a photo of the draft right there. A CoC is evidence that a registered person certified the work at a point in time. It is not a maintenance contract and it is not insurance.
Ask for the as-built drawings at the same time. Nobody expects CAD. What you want is a single-line diagram that shows the array, the combiner, the DC isolation, the inverter, the AC isolation, the main distribution board, the changeover arrangement, the battery and the meter, and how each is connected to the next. If no drawing exists — and often none does — ask the installer to sketch one on a piece of paper while the layout is still fresh in his head. A hand-drawn diagram with the right boxes and the right labels has saved me more than one argument with a future electrician.
The municipal file goes in the same folder: the SSEG application, the approval or the reference number, and whatever your municipality requires around the meter. Whether you needed approval before commissioning or after depends entirely on where you live, and some municipalities move a great deal slower than others. Collect whatever exists, write down what is still outstanding, and put a date next to it.
The numbers nobody photographs
Panel serial numbers live on the backsheet, up on the roof, where you are not going to read them from the ground. The installer has them — usually as a string-by-string map from commissioning. Ask him to read out what he has while you write it down. Inverter and battery nameplates are within reach, so photograph those yourself, close enough that the numbers are sharp, and then type them into a note.
Why bother? Because a panel or battery claim later on is almost always serial-number-driven, and the installer's job system archives. I have watched a two-year-old claim stall for a fortnight over a number that was sitting on a photograph nobody took.
Then the warranty registrations. Ask who registers the equipment, and if it is the installer, ask him to do it in front of you and forward the confirmation to your email while you are still standing there. If it is you, get the portal address and the deadline, because some registrations expire if they are not completed within a window after commissioning.
Finally, the two details that decide everything later. Who is a claim lodged with — the installer, the distributor, or the manufacturer's local agent? And what date does the period run from: commissioning, invoice, or registration? Those three dates are not always the same, and the difference is where claims go to die. Ask him to write the commissioning date on the handover sheet and sign it. While you are there, ask separately about the workmanship warranty on the mounting, the wiring and the roof penetrations, because that is the installer's own promise and it is a different document from the equipment warranty.
The board, the labels, and the login
I do not open covers and I do not test anything. That is not my job, and handover is not the moment to start inspecting an installation without a registered person present. What I do is walk to each isolation point with the installer and ask him to point at it, and I photograph the label from standing height. The PV DC isolation, the AC isolation next to the inverter, the battery isolation, the main switch. If a label says "solar" and nothing else, that is not much help to an electrician or a firefighter at nine at night. Ask him to relabel while the label maker is still in the van, and photograph the result.
The monitoring account is the one I see go wrong most often. The portal gets created under the installer's email, the system is registered to his account, and you are added as a guest. It works beautifully until the relationship ends, or the Wi-Fi password changes, or you want to export a year of data. Ask him to create the account with your email as the owner and add himself as installer or guest. Then log in on your own phone, before he leaves, and change the password yourself. Write down the datalogger's Wi-Fi credentials too — that little detail costs a site visit later.
What to do with the sentence "I'll email it"
One physical folder and one cloud folder, same names, dates in the file names. The CoC, the diagram, the municipal letters, the serial list, the warranty confirmations, the signed handover sheet with the commissioning date, the installer's company details, and the name and registration number of the registered person. Photograph the whole pile on the counter before it goes anywhere, because a phone photo taken on the day is worth more than a promise taken on the day.
It would be dishonest to say this guarantees anything. Manufacturers decline claims on installation grounds, and a certificate proves certification at a moment, not performance afterwards. Some installers genuinely do not have the municipal approval yet, and a few documents simply will not exist on the afternoon. Collect what is there, write down what is not, and put a follow-up date in your diary. The bakkie will still leave. The difference is whether you are left holding a folder or a phone number that stops answering.
