mounting panels to treated-wood frame

[J.P.M.]

.

The wood frame is holding up pretty well reaching 10 years old.
It looks pretty much the same as this 2013 picture. It was originally
intended as a 5 year experiment, with possible life to 10 years.
Apparently a lot of luck caused it to perform very well in helping
the system deal with clouds and snow, and now smoke haze.

I learned a lot of what works here in northern IL , and built more
permanent stuff with concrete and rebar underground, 6061
aluminum and 18-8 SS hardware above. There is a layout on
paper of upgrading everything and moving panels. But as it
already exceeds the annual 28,000 KWh I require, some failure
of the wood may be needed to cause action.

Certainly all the wood is expendable, metal through it very soon
cannot be removed or used again. The panels are in contact
with aluminum rail, still serviceable. Perhaps not obvious, the
array follows the 10% grade of this land, the bottom of a panel
at the high end is about level with the top of a panel at the low
end. I consider efforts to make solar perfectly level on slopes
to be a waste, and even counter productive for such things as
maintenance and snow clearance.

I also do not care for all the slip bolt channels and edge clamps
used to speed up installations. All assembly holes are purpose
drilled through here. Bruce Roe

DSCN0721.jpg

Thank you.

J.P.M.

[bcroe]

Yea, and I'd be wondering how the wood frame is holding up.

.

The wood frame is holding up pretty well reaching 10 years old.
It looks pretty much the same as this 2013 picture. It was originally
intended as a 5 year experiment, with possible life to 10 years.
Apparently a lot of luck caused it to perform very well in helping
the system deal with clouds and snow, and now smoke haze.

I learned a lot of what works here in northern IL , and built more
permanent stuff with concrete and rebar underground, 6061
aluminum and 18-8 SS hardware above. There is a layout on
paper of upgrading everything and moving panels. But as it
already exceeds the annual 28,000 KWh I require, some failure
of the wood may be needed to cause action.

Certainly all the wood is expendable, metal through it very soon
cannot be removed or used again. The panels are in contact
with aluminum rail, still serviceable. Perhaps not obvious, the
array follows the 10% grade of this land, the bottom of a panel
at the high end is about level with the top of a panel at the low
end. I consider efforts to make solar perfectly level on slopes
to be a waste, and even counter productive for such things as
maintenance and snow clearance.

I also do not care for all the slip bolt channels and edge clamps
used to speed up installations. All assembly holes are purpose
drilled through here. Bruce Roe

DSCN0721.jpg

[J.P.M.]

Hello hueycol and welcome to Solar Panel Talk

You do understand that this thread is over 3 years old.

Yea, and I'd be wondering how the wood frame is holding up.

[SunEagle]

Your setup using treated wood and hot-dipped galvanized bolts sounds like a sturdy and long-lasting solution. It's great that you took the time to pre-drill and ensure everything is aligned properly. Your approach with no lag bolts and relying on the panels to provide stiffness is an interesting one. It's impressive that your array has held up well for 7 years!

Hello hueycol and welcome to Solar Panel Talk

You do understand that this thread is over 3 years old.

[bcroe]

Looks good to me. I did not bother with any concrete on my 5 year expectation, treated wood
array (still looking decent at 7 years). The front and back posts are connected together at the
40 inch depth by braces, it is going nowhere. No lateral bracing on any of my first arrays, the
panels are supposed to stiffen them.

My treated wood is held together with hot dipped galvanized bolts, no lag bolts. I was
able to keep a hole through a 2 x 6 centered by pre drilling almost everything on a drill press.
Bruce Roe

[RShackleford]

Here's a picture of my completed wooden frame (still holding up nicely ) with the "L feet" installed.

framing and l-feet small.jpg

P.S. The L-foot is a beefy aluminum bracket that holds the IronRidge rail to wood to which it's attached using a lag bolt. It was designed to be attached to the rafters of a house, but I'm using it to attach to my treated wood frame. I hope it's strong enough. It's definitely the weak point, as the aluminum rails and wooden frame are definitely strong enough. I've done computations for the holding power of the lag bolt (556 lb). But it feels like the square head of the bolt that connects the rail to the L-foot is weaker than the lag bolt. It's not fair to compare this to a roof-mount system, because it's obviously far more exposed to wind uplift. But a ground-mount system attaches the rail with this same square-head bolt (but to a bracket that bolts to the steel pipe foundation). That bracket uses two square-head bolts to attach to the rail, whereas the L-foot only uses one. However, a system using that bracket works up to 170mph and wind exposure "D". I feel like that's easily good for a factor of two over my 115mph w/ exposure "B" criterion. I thought of putting two L-feet at each corner of my array, and I have the materials, but I doubt I'll bother.

Sharp eyes will note the lack of any diagonal bracing against rotation about the vertical axis (not sure of the correct PE way to put this). Talked it over with inspector, who felt it unnecessary. The four walls are braced to be very rigid, and they're tied together at the corners.

[SunEagle]

Got the wooden frame built and so far it's holding up well. I'd like to upload a picture, but keep getting "Error uploading image".

The picture needs to be sized smaller. Sometime Paint can be used to do that. If not the bit size is too big for the upload.

[RShackleford]

I've mentioned my site is a bit sheltered, by trees mostly on the north side. A little anecdote ... the other day we had severe thunderstorm warnings, sustained 30mph winds and gusts to 55mph or more; at my house, I'd say we saw something close to that. I'd just cut up a couple of oak trees that fell in my neighbors yard, and made a stack of big logs for cutting up next winter (when I start refilling my firewood FIFO). To keep 'em dry, I covered the pile with some scraps of metal roofing lying about; about a 12ft x 8ft covering. Worried about the storm, I weighed it down with some scrap treated lumber - two 2x6s, two 4x4s, and a 20ft extension ladder (un-extended). I'm gonna say maybe 150# of stuff, tops. It didn't even think about blowing away.

Like I've said before, my installation is going to be demolished by falling trees, long before it blows away.
ADDENDUM: To which, when he came to inspect my wood support frame, the building inspector agreed.

[RShackleford]

trivia:
A shaker also called a turner ...

I only operated a jackhammer once, briefly, while doing landscape work while in grad school. Wouldn't want to do it again.

Lyric I quoted was Jason Isbell; great song. The Dead have one too: "Been balling a shiny black steel jackhammer ...".

[Mike90250]

trivia:

A shaker also called a turner, was a nervy navvy who held the drill and turned it slightly after each blow, giving it a little shake to flip the rock dust out of the hole. The heat tempered steel available in those days dulled after a few minutes at most, and the shaker had to snatch it out of the hole and insert another between hammer strokes.

Consider then how trusting was Phil Henderson, or Little Bill, as John Henry's shaker has been variously called, who turned John Henry's steel while lying on his back holding it between his legs, or by standing against the rock face holding it crooked in his arm, or holding it close to his body (depending upon whether the drill was being driven down or sideways or up), with the hammer flashing by his groin or rib cage or his face.

As the drills dulled, the shaker blindly held out his hand to the "walker" (who walked the worn steels to a blacksmith at the portal and returned with reforged one), like a busy surgeon taking a scalpel from a nurse, to grasp the new drill. So fast were drills used up that most of the men and boys employed in tunnels were walkers. On a big project the drillers could use up thousands of steels a day. In some cases the drills were weighed, and the driller was docked for the weight of steel that was worn off the points, a weird work incentive.

[RShackleford]

John Henry, and his shaker, who rotated the drill between blows)

John Henry was a steel-driving bastard
But John Henry was a bastard just the same
And an engine never thinks about his daddy
And an engine never needs to write its name.

[bcroe]

Yeah, I think I've seen tradesmen use those to great effect. Impact driver is different thing than hammer drill right ?

Mine has different settings for hammer or drill. Bruce Roe

[Mike90250]

Impact driver is rotating impacts, like tire shops use to remove lug nuts.
hammer drill is axial (for rock or concrete, the impact breaks the rock, the rotation clears it away - think of John Henry, and his shaker, who rotated the drill between blows)

[RShackleford]

RShackleford,
For those long lag bolts, an impact driver will come in very handy, even for pre-drilled holes.

Yeah, I think I've seen tradesmen use those to great effect. Impact driver is different thing than hammer drill right ?

[littleharbor]

How are your panels mounted ? Turnkey metal racking system, or something more adhoc like I'm doing ?

I used some old used Pro Solar racking. If you look closely at the top1/3 of the racking you'll see I added some inverted racking that allowed me to adjust the tilt of the array. I never ended up adjusting the array tilt being that I never seemed to need to. Now that I added the fencing the panels are no longer adjustable.