2026 equipment update. SunModo is headquartered at 14800 NE 65th Street in Vancouver, Washington, about fifteen minutes from our shop in Washougal. That is unusual enough in solar hardware to be worth a section of its own, and it is covered below along with the current product lines and how they handle our roofs and our weather.
The Way of the Sun
SunModo, meaning “the way of the sun,” is a private U.S. company based in Vancouver, Washington focusing on innovative racking and mounting solutions make solar installation easy, more reliable and more affordable.
Perfect Fit For Any Roof Type
This American solar racking company is dedicated to providing innovative racking solutions that help us install systems quickly and painlessly. Their products set the standard for durability and safety while their R&D team is constantly engineering hassle-reducing innovations that meet industry standards and customers’ needs.
Solar Awnings
SunModo proudly introduces the SunShield™ Awning System – the next big solar application. The easy-to-install solar system does double duty, protecting your building and people from intense heat, while at the same time generating clean, renewable solar electricity.
Solar Carports
Your customers deserve the best. Install the SunPort™ Carport System and give the gift of shade and protection from the rain all the while reducing your monthly electric bills.
The system maximizes energy harvesting and minimizes structural weight with a lightweight, cost-effective, and aesthetically pleasing aluminum design.
The racking on your roof was designed in Vancouver
Almost nothing in a residential solar system is designed anywhere near the Pacific Northwest. The panels come from Georgia, Singapore or South Korea. The microinverters are designed in California. The racking, on a lot of the roofs we work on, comes from a company based on NE 65th Street in Vancouver, Washington.
SunModo was founded around 2008 by Tony Liu, an engineer who came out of Intel, and has built up more than twenty patents on mounting hardware. Its Vancouver facility is an innovation and distribution centre. The design, engineering and distribution happen here. We would not claim the aluminium is extruded in Clark County, because we have not been able to verify that, and contract manufacturing is the industry norm. But the people deciding how a solar attachment seals against a wet roof are working in the same rain you are.
Why that is more than a nice story
Roof attachment failure is a wet-climate problem. A flashing detail that is perfectly adequate in Phoenix is being asked to do something quite different on a north-facing Vancouver roof that stays damp from October to May, grows moss in the shingle granules, and gets hit by wind-driven rain off the Gorge. Hardware designed by people who live with that is hardware designed against the right test.
The current SunModo lineup
Rail-based systems
- SMR Pitched Roof System, the standard rail system for sloped residential roofs.
- SMR Tilt System, tilt legs for flat and low-slope roofs, which matters on flat-roofed commercial buildings and the occasional modern residential design.
Rail-less
NanoRack is SunModo’s rail-less system, assembled on the ground and self-aligning. Rail-less designs use less aluminium and sit closer to the roof plane, which some homeowners prefer visually. The trade-off is less adjustability once you are up there, so it suits clean rectangular roof faces better than awkward ones.
Attachments, which are the part that actually matters
The racking holds the panels. The attachment is what penetrates your roof, and it is where leaks come from. SunModo has a distinct product for each roof type we see here:
- SoloFlash and NanoMount, composition shingle, which is the overwhelming majority of roofs in Clark County and the Portland metro.
- TopTile, tile roofs, mounting above the tile rather than requiring tiles to be removed and replaced.
- MRB and NanoBit, metal roofs, covering trapezoidal, R-panel and corrugated profiles, with a dedicated clamp for standing seam. Standing seam is the happy case: the clamp grips the seam and nothing penetrates the roof at all.
SunModo markets its mounting products as UL 2703 compliant, which is the standard covering mounting systems, grounding and bonding. We deliberately have not quoted specific wind or snow span figures on this page, because those come from current engineering tables that get revised, and your numbers depend on your exposure category and elevation. We pull the real figures for your address at design time.
What our weather actually asks of racking
Uplift, not weight
People worry about the weight of an array. Weight is the easy part. What drives an attachment plan is wind trying to lift the array off the roof, strongest at edges and corners, and exposure varies enormously across our service area. A sheltered west-metro street and an open bluff in the Columbia River Gorge are not the same design problem, even with an identical house and an identical array.
Water, for eight months a year
This is the one that separates our region from most of the country. Every attachment is a hole in a roof that will be rained on persistently from October through May. Flashing quality, the seal design and correct installation matter more here than almost anywhere. This is also why we are wary of rail-less systems on complicated roofs, more attachment points, more penetrations, less room to adjust.
Moss, which is the slow one
Moss grows in the granules of a north-facing composition roof, creeps toward the array, and then sits at the lower frame edge holding moisture against the roof. It is not a racking defect. It is a maintenance reality here, and it is a reason to think about panel height off the roof plane and about access for cleaning.
Snow above about a thousand feet
At Vancouver, Camas and Portland elevations, snow load rarely governs the design. In the hills of east Clark County and the Cascade foothills it becomes a real input, and it changes something less obvious than racking spec. An array makes a roof slippery, so snow that used to sit releases in a sheet. What is underneath the shedding edge (a walkway, a heat pump, a gas meter, the front door) is a design question people never hear about until it lands on something.
Where is SunModo based?
SunModo is headquartered at 14800 NE 65th Street in Vancouver, Washington. The facility is an innovation and distribution centre where design, engineering and distribution take place.
Are SunModo products made in Washington?
SunModo is headquartered and designs its products in Vancouver, Washington. We have not been able to verify that the hardware itself is fabricated there, and contract manufacturing is standard in this industry, so we describe it as designed rather than manufactured locally.
What roof types does SunModo racking work with?
Composition shingle, tile and metal, each with dedicated attachment hardware. Standing seam metal roofs can use a clamp that grips the seam without penetrating the roof at all.
What is the difference between rail-based and rail-less racking?
Rail-based systems mount panels on continuous rails, allowing more adjustment on awkward roofs. Rail-less systems use less aluminium and sit closer to the roof plane, which suits clean rectangular roof faces.
Will solar racking leak on my roof?
Correctly flashed attachments should not leak. In this climate the flashing detail and the installation quality matter more than almost anywhere, because every penetration is rained on persistently from October through May.
Do I need special racking for snow?
At valley elevations snow rarely governs the design. Above roughly a thousand feet it becomes a real input, and it also changes where snow sheds off the roof once an array makes the surface slippery.
Want to know what will actually be holding panels to your roof? Call us at 360-313-7190 or request a free quote.
