AI Estimate and Intake Assistant for Solar Installers in Katy, TX

What a Katy solar estimator should have before the first design pass

A solar proposal is only as good as the inputs behind it. Designers working in tools such as Aurora Solar or OpenSolar can pull roof geometry from aerial imagery, but no image tells them the main breaker rating, the household’s usage history, whether the shingles are three years old or twenty, or that the garage took on water in 2017. An estimate and intake assistant exists to collect exactly those facts, in a fixed order, and to deliver them as one structured record instead of a scatter of texts, voicemails and half-filled web forms.

This is a narrower job than a general website chatbot or a booking tool. The intake assistant does not score the lead, pick a survey slot or chase anyone after a proposal goes out. Its single responsibility is the packet your estimator opens, arranged the way your design team reads it. When the packet is complete, or the homeowner runs out of answers, a person on your team takes over.

For a Katy installer that packet has a local shape. West Houston’s mix of master-planned communities, county lines, flood history and hurricane exposure changes which questions matter, so the assistant we build for a Katy territory asks things a Plano or San Antonio version would skip.

Three counties, a city limit and an HOA: why Katy intake starts with the address

Katy stretches across Harris, Fort Bend and Waller counties, and many houses with a Katy mailing address sit outside the City of Katy in unincorporated county land, often inside a municipal utility district. Your permit coordinator and whoever files interconnection paperwork both care about that, so the assistant validates the street address and records county and city-limit status before asking anything else. Then it asks the homeowner what no map lookup can settle:

The assistant does not interpret HOA rules. Texas property law limits how far an association can go in prohibiting rooftop solar, but applications, placement preferences and approval timing still differ by community, and those conversations belong to your team. The intake records the community and accepts the guidelines as an upload if the homeowner has them.

New-build roofs, builder warranties and the reroof question

Katy’s growth puts two very different roofs on a designer’s desk in the same week: young shingles on a recent build whose owner worries about a builder warranty, and a 1980s or 1990s roof that may be near the end of its life, where the sensible sequence could be a new roof first and the array second.

Either way, it asks:

• Year the roof was installed or last replaced, with an “I’m not sure” option that asks for the year the house was built instead.
• Roofing material, shown as picture choices (composition shingle, metal, tile) so the homeowner picks instead of guessing a name.
• Active leaks, recent repairs or open insurance claims on the roof.
• Builder or roofer warranty paperwork, uploaded if available, so your designer can answer penetration and attachment questions with the actual document open.

An older roof or an open claim does not end the conversation. It adds a line to the packet, such as “roof age may warrant a replacement discussion,” so the estimator raises it early rather than discovering it on survey day. The assistant itself never tells anyone the roof is fine or that it needs replacing.

Where the water went: flood and outage questions that shape equipment placement

West Houston remembers August 2017. When the Addicks and Barker reservoirs filled during Harvey, neighborhoods near Barker on the Katy side flooded, and owners there now think hard about anything expensive mounted near the ground. Batteries, inverters and disconnects are precisely that kind of equipment, so the Katy intake includes a short flood module:

1. Has water ever entered the garage or the house, and roughly how high did it reach?
2. Where would you prefer a battery or inverter: garage wall, exterior side yard, or no preference?
3. A photo of that wall, including anything that would block mounting space.
4. Whether the home is in a mapped flood zone, if the homeowner knows. “Don’t know” is an accepted answer, and the check is left to your team.

Outages come next. Hurricane Beryl in July 2024 left much of the Houston region without power for days, and Katy inquiries that start as bill questions often turn into backup questions. When a homeowner says backup matters, the assistant asks which circuits they would want running (refrigerator, one bedroom’s air conditioning, a medical device, the garage door, a well pump on acreage) and whether a portable or standby generator is already on site. The designer receives a plain priority list to size against. The assistant never promises how long anything will stay powered.

Past the subdivisions: the acreage and ground-mount branch

Not every Katy-area lead is a house on a narrow suburban lot. Out toward Brookshire and into Waller County, and on the rural edges around Fulshear, there are homes on acreage, barns, metal shops and properties where the best place for an array is on the ground. When a homeowner mentions more than an acre or an outbuilding, the assistant switches to a different question set:

• Rough distance from the open ground to the house or main panel, which drives trenching and conductor sizing.
• Whether that ground stays wet or floods after heavy rain.
• Livestock, fences, septic fields, water wells or buried lines nearby.
• Whether the shop or barn has its own meter or is fed from the house.
• Photos of the open area from two directions and of any outbuilding panel.

Your designer gets a word-and-picture sketch of the property before choosing between a ground mount, the shop roof and the house roof.

Eight photos that save a truck roll

Most wasted survey trips trace back to a missing or unreadable picture. The assistant walks the homeowner through a fixed list, one item at a time, with a sample image beside each request:

1. Main electrical panel with the door open and the inner cover left in place, whole panel in frame.
2. A close-up of the main breaker and the panel’s label sticker.
3. The electric meter, with its number visible.
4. Each face of the roof as seen from the ground.
5. The attic entry: garage scuttle, hallway hatch or closet opening.
6. Any sub-panel, generator transfer switch or EV charger.
7. The wall where equipment could mount.
8. Trees along the south and west sides of the house.

Every upload is checked for readability only: legible label, sharp focus, full panel in frame. If a photo fails, the assistant asks for a retake while the homeowner is still in the garage. It makes no judgment about what the photo shows, and the instructions say plainly never to remove the inner cover or climb onto the roof.

What lands in your CRM and design queue

When the homeowner finishes, or stops partway, the assistant assembles the record and sends it where your team already works: HubSpot, Salesforce or the CRM you run today, and on to your design queue through an API, a webhook or a structured email where no API exists. A typical Katy packet contains:

• Site profile: address, county, city-limit status, HOA, stories, roof age and material, ownership.
• Usage: uploaded bills or a twelve-month usage export from Smart Meter Texas, plus the retail plan name exactly as printed.
• Electrical: panel and meter photos, any sub-panel or generator switch, and planned loads such as an EV or a pool.
• Goals: lower bills, backup power, or both, with the backup circuit list when one was given.
• Access notes: gate, pets, attic entry location, and a note when the homeowner asks that surveyors come before the afternoon heat builds up in the attic.
• Flags: missing items, unreadable photos, roof age, flood history, HOA review, acreage.

An abandoned chat still yields a partial packet listing what is missing, so a coordinator can finish it in a short call.

The lines a Katy intake assistant does not cross

• No system size, price, production figure, savings estimate or payback period, ever.
• No statements about which tax credits, rebates or utility programs a household qualifies for.
• No verdict on whether the roof, the electrical panel or the framing can support solar.
• No Social Security numbers, bank details or credit information; financing applications stay in your lender’s own portal.
• No predictions about HOA approval.
• If a homeowner describes sparking, a burning smell or storm damage to an existing system, intake stops, the assistant gives basic safety guidance and routes the conversation to your service line.

Spanish is spoken in a great many greater Houston households, so the whole flow, photo instructions included, runs in Spanish as well as English. Designers receive translated answers with the original wording kept alongside.

How EVOTECH builds it for a Katy installer

EVOTECH IT LLC has built web, software and AI systems for more than 20 years and is rated 5.0 on Google. Our team is based in the Houston area and works with installers remotely; building an intake assistant does not require a Katy office, and we do not claim one.

1. Free consultation by phone or video, covering how your designers and surveyors work today and what they wish they had before a first layout.
2. Packet design. We draft the question list, photo list and flag rules with your design lead, including the county, flood and acreage modules described above.
3. Fixed-scope written quote before any build work begins.
4. Integration with your website, your CRM and, where the vendor allows it, your design software.
5. Testing on real intakes, with your team reviewing packets, followed by ongoing support as your process changes.

Related reading: estimate and intake assistants for Texas contractors, AI chatbots for solar installers in Texas and AI chatbots for contractors in Katy.

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