Jordan Jones knows the objection by heart. “No, no, no, it just adds one more process into my flow,” he says roofers tell him. “I don’t want to deal with it.”
He is pitching a racking system he designed for jobs where a new roof has to go under existing solar panels. Jones founded Ascent Solar & Roofing in South Jordan, Utah, and he says the rack is patented. It holds the panels on the roof for the entire re-roof. “My liability and risk is cut in half using this system,” he says.
He didn’t draw it up once and call it done. Jones says he has built several versions over the years and uses it on a daily basis. “I’ve proved it,” he says. He wants it to change how the trade installs and removes solar from a roof.
The problem it solves comes out of the company’s mix of work. Ascent does roofing and solar under one name, so roofs with panels on them are routine. One homeowner described a replacement in which the crew handled the solar as part of the roof job, then found the system wasn’t working and got the inverter replaced under warranty. Her original installer, she noted, had gone out of business years before.
That kind of call is a large share of what Ascent does on the solar side. Jones says the company will swap an inverter, diagnose a failed battery, run a maintenance call or install a battery in the first place, “everything from A to Z in that aspect.” In the valley, he says, the company has made a name for itself in solar maintenance by “picking up all the broken pieces and gluing them together.”
On those calls he starts simple. He tells the homeowner to go to the main electrical box and take a picture. “Send it to me right now and then we’ll proceed to the next step,” he says. He wants a caller to reach someone who is “actually running the show.” He credits Amber, who works in the office, with keeping everything else moving. “She’s the one that makes the circle go around,” he says.
Jones came up through roofing companies in the Salt Lake Valley, working as an estimator and project manager before he went out on his own, according to an earlier version of the company’s site. He started Ascent in 2021. His solar background goes back to Tesla’s solar tiles: he says he counts himself among the early contractors who installed them, working with and consulting for the company that held the first contract in the state, though he wasn’t part of it. Since then, he says, Ascent has certified itself and done tile projects on its own. The company lists certifications with Tesla, SolarEdge, Enphase, Sonnen, SMA and Franklin.
The company looks different from how it started. Jones says his wife now owns 51 percent and runs Ascent day to day while he works on other companies. “She primarily runs Ascent Solar & Roofing,” he says. He says the next step she is steering toward is government contracting.
The rack is still early. Jones has been approaching large electrical and shingle suppliers to show it, and he has learned how that goes. “No one wants to showcase it until there’s a traction of sales,” he says. The bigger obstacle, he says, is the trade itself. “Getting roofers to adopt a new idea and way of doing roofing for the last 50 years is very difficult.”
His longer-range hope is to see the method in an OSHA training manual, not as a requirement but as a concept the industry could adopt.
“Just use it once and you’ll understand exactly what I’m trying to talk about,” he says.