28 September 2026 · 5 min read · Oscar Markham
The five questions a solar enquiry form has to ask
A solar site visit is most of a morning once you include the drive, the roof, the consumer unit and the conversation at the kitchen table. Sending a surveyor to a house that was never going to work is the most expensive mistake in this trade, and it is almost always preventable with five questions asked before anybody gets in a van.
1. Do you own the property?
Renters and people buying a house they have not closed on cannot proceed, and they appear in solar enquiries constantly because the grant coverage brings in everybody.
One question, and it removes a category of enquiry entirely.
2. What type of house is it?
Detached, semi-detached, terraced, bungalow or apartment. That gives you a usable first estimate of roof area and tells you immediately whether the job is plausible.
Apartments are the important one. The resident frequently cannot make this decision at all, and finding that out on arrival is a wasted morning.
3. Which way does the back of the house face?
Most people do not know their roof orientation and will guess, but they do know which way the back garden faces, and a surprising number know roughly where the sun is at lunchtime.
Even an approximate answer separates a good prospect from a difficult one before you commit a morning to it. Offer compass points rather than asking for degrees.
4. Does anything overshadow the roof?
Trees, a taller neighbouring building, a chimney on the wrong side. Shading changes the design and sometimes kills the job.
Asking here also starts managing expectations early, which is far better than raising it for the first time at the survey after they have spent two weeks imagining the savings.
5. Roughly what is the annual electricity bill?
This sizes the system, indicates whether storage belongs in the conversation, and tells you whether the numbers will work at all.
Give bands rather than asking for a figure. People will pick a band; they will abandon a form that asks them to go and find a bill.
What this does to the numbers
Lead volume falls. Installers hate this and it is the reason most forms ask for a name and a phone number and nothing else.
But the cost per survey improves, the cost per install improves more, and the surveyor stops spending mornings on roofs that were never viable. Cost per lead is a vanity number; installs per euro spent is the business.
One more thing worth adding: how soon they want it done. 'Within three months' goes to the top of the diary and 'just researching' gets an email sequence instead of a phone call.
Written by Oscar Markham, founder of Dublin Growth Digital. We run lead generation for Irish estate agents and trades, reported every Friday in enquiries and booked work.