All of the parts for the East-West array were ordered and delivered at the same time as the Office and Garage array parts, they have just been kept in storage until I was ready to use them.
The first task was to cut 5 of the 3,550mm lengths of rail in half, this was a simple task for my cold cut chop saw.
Next I needed to mount these rails on the roof with the roof hangers.
This involved drilling through the fibre cement roof panels first, so that they did not split and then drive the hanger bolts into the wooden purlins underneath.
The above picture shows the second of two pieces of rail attached to the roof with 2 hanger bolts, I am then measuring where to mount the next ones.
The purlins are not exactly ideally situated for mounting the rails, with one at each extreme of the corrugated fibre cement panels and one in the middle.
I opted to use the top and middle purlins and then drop the solar panels down as much as I could to still have a gap in the middle of the roof to walk down.
All ten supports mounted
Garage as seen from my loft bedroom.
I also opted to mount the array as close to this end of the garage as there is a tree in the corner near the garage door that will cause shading on the end panel.
The tree is in the access way and is actually dead, but covered in Ivy that needs cutting back every year, so I will need to ensure that the Ivy does not grow over/under the panels and provide yet more shading.
Next I chopped 4 more lengths of rail to be connected to 4 complete lengths to act as the cross braces, these were joined together on their backs with the rail splices.
These long rails were then attached to the roof rails using the cross connect pieces after swapping the hex nuts for rail nuts
Roof with cross mounts in place
Garage as viewed from my loft bedroom
You can just see some shading from another tree in my garden, that I have been cutting down, on the West side of the roof, I have a new chainsaw coming, so this tree should be down in the next week or so.
My old chainsaw doesn’t oil properly (design fault) so the chain gets hot and goes blunt fast, even with manual oiling – it was a relatively cheap Ryobi petrol model that I should have read up about more before buying, it stopped oiling the chain after about the first 20 minutes of use!
The new to me (second hand from Cash Converters for less than 1/3 of the new price) chainsaw is a Stihl MS 271 C 50cc, 20″professional petrol chainsaw that should outlast me.
The next step will be to add the micro inverters and associated wiring before attaching the solar panels.