{"id":676,"date":"2024-04-24T17:02:22","date_gmt":"2024-04-24T16:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/myhome\/?p=676"},"modified":"2024-04-24T17:07:20","modified_gmt":"2024-04-24T16:07:20","slug":"solar-and-storage-east-west-array-framing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/myhome\/2024\/04\/solar-and-storage-east-west-array-framing.html","title":{"rendered":"Solar and Storage \u2013 East-West Array Framing"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Next I needed to mount these rails on the roof with the roof hangers.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

All ten supports mounted<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Garage as seen from my loft bedroom.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These long rails were then attached to the roof rails using the cross connect pieces after swapping the hex nuts for rail nuts<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Roof with cross mounts in place<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Garage as viewed from my loft bedroom<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>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.<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

The new to me (second hand from Cash Converters<\/a> for less than 1\/3 of the new price) chainsaw is a Stihl MS 271 C<\/a> 50cc, 20″professional petrol chainsaw that should outlast me.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The next step will be to add the micro inverters and associated wiring before attaching the solar panels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":618,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-solar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/myhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/myhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/myhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/myhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/myhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/myhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":681,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/myhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676\/revisions\/681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/myhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/myhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/myhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/myhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}