I am looking to do a small ~5kw ground-mount system at my house. I'd like to be able to use the area under the panels for storage of trash cans, bikes, and such (understanding that they won't stay completely dry due to the difficult of reliable seals between panels). I'm thinking to arrange the panels in a roughly square 5x3 panel configuration, in "portrait" mode, so that when you're standing south of the array and looking northward at it, you see 3 rows of 5 panels each.
My understanding is that on roof-mount systems, there are usually two aluminum rails for each row of a panels, as I've shown. These rails are screwed to house rafters, and panels are bolted or clamped to them.
I would like to build the thing completely from wood. So I'd have posts at the 4 corners of the array, bolted to concrete piers (with embedded J-bolts). I'd run beams between posts along the west and east sides, and some bracing along the north and south sides. The I'd simply run 2-by boards between the west-side and east-side beams; these boards would be located where the aluminum rails (shown on my drawing) are located. Seems to be this would be cheaper and simpler than using metal rail systems.
Does this make any sense ?
How would I attach the panels to the wooden rails ? I've been looking an the installation manual for some Solaria panels I'm considering: https://static1.squarespace.com/stat...ion+Manual.pdf
and there appear to be 4 mounting slots, 2 along each long side of the panel. Seems like I'd need to somehow run lag screws through these slots into the wooden boards. But how do I access this ? I can't quite visualize it, but I can't figure out how the metal screws alluded to in the manual are attached either. I guess I just need to see an installation in person and maybe it'd suddenly make sense to me.
My understanding is that on roof-mount systems, there are usually two aluminum rails for each row of a panels, as I've shown. These rails are screwed to house rafters, and panels are bolted or clamped to them.
I would like to build the thing completely from wood. So I'd have posts at the 4 corners of the array, bolted to concrete piers (with embedded J-bolts). I'd run beams between posts along the west and east sides, and some bracing along the north and south sides. The I'd simply run 2-by boards between the west-side and east-side beams; these boards would be located where the aluminum rails (shown on my drawing) are located. Seems to be this would be cheaper and simpler than using metal rail systems.
Does this make any sense ?
How would I attach the panels to the wooden rails ? I've been looking an the installation manual for some Solaria panels I'm considering: https://static1.squarespace.com/stat...ion+Manual.pdf
and there appear to be 4 mounting slots, 2 along each long side of the panel. Seems like I'd need to somehow run lag screws through these slots into the wooden boards. But how do I access this ? I can't quite visualize it, but I can't figure out how the metal screws alluded to in the manual are attached either. I guess I just need to see an installation in person and maybe it'd suddenly make sense to me.
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