Low cost ground mount idieas?

[Paul54]

You may want to consider using Superstrut or Unistrut steel channel. It is sold at Lowes, Home Depot, and most electrical supply houses. A 12 foot section of the heavy duty stuff is about $18. If assembled and anchored properly it is much stronger and much cheaper than most aluminum systems. It helps if you have a metal bandsaw to cut it, but it can be done with a hacksaw. Use stainless steel hardware to attach the panels to it. If you want to make a tilting mount and have lots of heavy panels, try having the pivot point or axle in the center of the panels, much like a see saw. Use supports at top and bottom also. It is easy to tilt several hundred pounds of panels with one hand if you have them balanced.

[Philip]

Again, that's over a buck a watt! Yikes that's expensive!

One way the quote from their tool is flawed though, is that it only seems to allow landscape layout, which requires twice the rails and rail-roof attachments it needs in portrait.

I'll do a layout and submit it to them for feedback. I'll do the same for Haticon, their system looks much cleaner for ground mount.

[Naptown]

Take a look at the ULA system runs about $150 a module if I remember the last time I priced one. I wouldn't use 100 watt modules on it though. Use big honking high wattage ones to reduce the racking cost per watt.

[Philip]

Darn, I was hoping I wouldn't hear that! That's kind of why I was thinking about using the pressure treated 4x4/4x6 for the frame and the Unirac for the actual mounting rails, etc.

I did a design with their building tool and it quoted the up, down, and side loads. They were actually pretty tame at 90 mph, even at 120 mph. Oure site is 85. One can easily do 5x that with timber framing and appropriate tie downs., (had to learn a lot building my own house!).

I would NEVER do anthing on a pole up here! I'd be basically doing a "roof" frame on the ground.

The problem is, even doing it that way, with thier recommended Solar Mount I the estimate was almost $1/watt! That pretty much would kill any chance of a reasonable payback. Guess I'll have to check pricing around the net.

Any thoughts on Haticon mounting hardware?

[Naptown]

No the unirac and others are engineered to withstand the anticipated wind loads which are substantial on a ground mount. Example I did a system with two pole mounts. each pole was 9 Canadian solar 220 modules on a DPW pole mount. This required an 8" schedule 80 pipe buried 8 feet in the ground with about 4 yards of concrete and a bunch of rebar to keep it in place. Most wood ground mounts that are home built do not account for the wind loading particularly from the rear where it is mostly uplift. You do not want to find your expensive modules in the neighbors yard because you tried to save a few bucks on the mounting which is equally as important as the rest of the system.

[Philip]

Is there a low cost way of mounting panels on ground. It seems from shopping around pressure treated wood for a "frame" then standard roof mounting for the actual panel mount might be a decent solution, though at least the Unirac stuff seems really expensive.

Has anyone done their own mounting without the commercial stuff?