Vertical rail challanges

Hi, had a second look at the install manual. (Always a good idea)

Page 25 of http://www.unirac.com/pdf/ii227.pdf

heh, we blokes only read instruction manuals halfway through the job when we hit a wall.

[solardan]

Found it in the manual

Hi, had a second look at the install manual. (Always a good idea)

Page 25 of http://www.unirac.com/pdf/ii227.pdf

[Mike90250]

1. With vertical mounted rails on a significantly pitched roof, are there any concerns that the mid and end clips will not hold under load (snow load is an issue here) ? I was thinking of drilling through the rail and attaching the bottom end clip with a long bolt.

I have a thought on this, but unirack should be the reliable source. I'd use a clevis pin, instead of a long thru bolt, which may void some sort of warranty, if it's OK to drill thru the rail, sideways, and insert a pin and keeper. That would block any sliding movement.

How high are the rails / panels off the roof ? With a little sun, the panels should warm thru 6" of snow, and begin to self shed the snow. Watch the lower panel and if anything is blocking the departure of snow from it.

[dannym]

Hi all, I'm in the process of installing a 10kW system on a big barn roof, and have just finished getting the rails mounted.

The rails are Unirac SolarMount, and are mounted *vertically*. The modules will be mounted landscape. Before I proceed to install the modules I was looking for some advice with regard to the following questions:

1. With vertical mounted rails on a significantly pitched roof, are there any concerns that the mid and end clips will not hold under load (snow load is an issue here) ? I was thinking of drilling through the rail and attaching the bottom end clip with a long bolt.

2. The Unirac solarmount instruction manual says to start from the top and work your way down, row by row when installing modules. Once everything is installed then trim the excess rail from the bottoms. This is impossible to do with vertically mounted rails as the rail has to be the right length to get the bottom end clip in place. This means that ideally the module would have already been installed. How do I solve this ? Do I go column by column, from bottom to top ?

Thanks in advance for any help