![]() If I remember correctly I used the plastic anchor sleeves and the lag bolts that came with the mounting kit. My house has a natural gas fireplace made out of a bunch of big rocks, with a hole for a large TV above it.Īfter a lot of measuring and re-measuring I used a hammer drill to make the holes. ![]() Solid Bedrock is a great foundation to anchor to.Sort of. If your tilting racking system is supported by a row of single legs, you can either use larger sonotube diameter or place smaller ones in pairs to provide over-turning resistance. ![]() Carefull layout is the key, to have the piers in the correct locations for the structure. These are simple to do, with nothing more than a shovel, a hammer drill, and a wheel barrow for mixing. Backfill around the exterior of the pier with gravel. My go-to foundation system: remove soil in area of pier, drill in group of 4 holes 8-12 inches into rock, epoxy grout in vertical rebar dowels, place sonotube (cardboard round forms) over the dowels on rock, fill with concrete to level above surrounding soil level required for structure, set a shoe plate into top of the pier to recieve the structure. Bedrock makes a great foundation, just clear off soil and drill/grout as many anchors as required to support the rack in your conditions.Ĥ. Once you pick the racking, then set the foundation design to suit. Pick a racking system that will tilt easily - for your goals low physical effort required.ģ. We use 30 & 60 degrees, the steep angle for winter leave the panels nearly self clearing.Ģ. Living in northern climate, with long summer days, short winter ones, snow, wind and shallow rock, here are my suggestions:ġ. With the right SCC, I could just add additional panels in parallel, I believe, along with a second/third controller. We could use it for power to recharge tools and such, and if we lost 4 panels to a wind storm it would be a lot less painful than a 15Kw array. My thinking around the 4 or 5 panels was that for the smaller end of that range I could reduce the overall wind load on any one mounting structure by keeping the surface area limited, and also that I could install a very small test system on the property as we're building out there, to see how the initial ground mount fared. The big swing there is based on 1) how we decide to heat the house and 2) whether we decide to build a barn, and how to heat that. We will ultimately need a 15-30 kw array. This is what makes it more difficult to just pin mounts to ledge - it may require excavating that soil, and I am hoping to avoid that. Thanks in advance!Ĭlick to expand.We have some areas of exposed bedrock, but also a fair amount of soil (overburden) in places. I'm coming to the collective brain trust here for ideas, please. I keep thinking that chaining wooden mounts to some heavy (500-750 pound) concrete blocks might work well, and I could move those around with the loader on my 40 hp tractor, but hours of YouTubing aren't showing me any great examples of this, so I figure there might be a reason for that. That works great if kept away from ground contact via a small concrete pad such as a paver. ![]() I have access to a good supply of hemlock we can mill into lumber, which we often use instead of pressure treated wood for outdoor projects. I'd need several of these to get to the 15-30Kw system we'll need, but I can connect these together as needed while keeping them physically separate if that helps the wind situation.ģ) Be capable of withstanding winds up to about 60 mph, which will generally come from the back (north) side of the panels, unfortunately.Ĥ) Have the bottom of the panels about 3-4 feet off the ground, so that there's room for big snowfalls and for the snow to come off the panels.ĥ) Be capable of a 60-65 degree tilt in winter, to aid in snow removal amd solar collection, but which makes the wind situation much worse. The only problem is, digging post holes is a real issue, as blueberry barrens have lots of ledge (bedrock, if you don't live in northern New England US) near the surface, and so I'm trying to figure out how to build a ground mount that can:ġ) Just sit on the surface, without post holesĢ) Support at least four 400-550 watt panels (so about 64 square feet). Rather than put our solar on the roof (two story house but with space for an elevator designed in), I'd like to use ground mounts, as I figure I can clear snow from a ground mount easily, without getting on a ladder. This will be our retirement home, so we're trying to minimize maintenance tasks, especially those that require a lot of physical strength or getting on a ladder. We're slowly building another house about 7 miles from our current home in the middle of a blueberry barren (field) in rural Maine, where we get only about 3-3.5 hours of usable sun in the darkest days of winter, and where it snows (sometimes a LOT). ![]()
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