So this morning LB and I went to collect those two old solar panel racks from Landlady’s yard. No, we’re not stealing anything; she’ll want them gone no matter what I end up doing with them.
One of these seemed to come down off the roof in pretty good shape…
The other did the other thing. It was loose and floppy by the time I got it unbolted from the roof, so we didn’t spend a lot of care getting it down. Sometimes gravity is your friend.
So the best one went into the trailer…
…and the other one went to the firewood pile. (Sorry, Claire.)
A shoutout to my excellent cordless drill/driver here. It’s been with me over a year and I’m still besotted. People, DO NOT try to get through life off-grid without a good cordless driver, if you can charge batteries at all.
These panels will also be coming to the Lair, once we figure out how to get them down without damage to them or us.
Then I need to repair the wooden rack, modify it to accept the metal racking so it’ll hold the four panels, and only after I’m sure that’s going to work will I pour footers. I’ve got everything I need for the footers…
…but I’m no longer convinced this is a good idea. The racks went up in … I think late 2009, and they’re more weather-damaged than I’d hoped. In truth we’d have had trouble with these in the next couple of years if we hadn’t taken them down.
Doesn’t really look like I’m going to get a lot of afternoon work done today. Probably just stay indoors and bake bread
So you need to start over with some new pressure treated 2X4’s? Would any of that wood scrounged from your “clean up” job be usable for that? Even if it were crazy heavy for the job? (Since wind is your main enemy “too heavy” shouldn’t really be a problem.)
I couldn’t start over, Ben, with the materials at hand. And if I could I wouldn’t, because this is going to need some modification I wouldn’t have to do if I were starting from scratch. But I did rummage around in that stuff I hauled up in May and found three good pressure treated 2X4s. That allowed me to replace the two horizontal bottom side braces – and make them longer so they’re screwed into something besides end grain – and also one of the uprights which was a bit dry rotted. All in all it’s a lot stronger now than it was this morning.
Tomorrow before the storm I’ll haul it home and lay out where I need the foundation piers.