I got my signal back yesterday, as abruptly as it disappeared, so it must have been a local repair thing. I checked around and wasn’t the only one so I knew it wasn’t me. Curiously it’s not the first or the fifth time in my experience that the little town nearest where I live has lost its internet and nothing ever seems to get done about it even though everything in that town seems to need the internet. ATMs don’t work. Debit cards don’t work. EBT cards don’t work – and in this county that means a substantial percentage of the population doesn’t buy food. Seems like it’d be a bigger deal, but the problem persists so I guess not.
Anyway, speaking of repairs…
This may come as a shock to regular readers but it’s just barely possible that I’m not the world’s greatest engineer. I have persistent problems with my solar panel ground mount’s front supports. This time it involves the screws that hold the 4X4s to the cemented-in clamps…
…and the way they were no longer holding the 4X4s to the cemented-in clamps very damned well.
I have temporarily remedied the issue by drilling through the clamps and 4X4s and much more securely connecting them with 3/8″ bolts and washers but having done that I noticed that the second support is coming loose from the ground…
…the first one having already done so three years ago. More like four, actually, since it took me a while to get around to fixing it. It’s not a hugely important problem but it is kind of embarrassing and I’m starting to think I need to re-engineer those front legs. Maybe to something that slants, to accommodate the sideways force the weight is apparently putting on them? The rear legs don’t seem to have any problem at all, and with six-foot 4X4s you’d think they’d have more leverage acting against them but I’m guessing the weight is pushing them straight down.
Please, get a CB radio. Build a half wave dipole wire antenna, and a sloping V. You’ll get most of your country and some surprising global coverage.
Yes, connect the front and rear legs, just above (or at) the bracket. There is a spreading force that the ground isn’t able to completely resist. I have the same problem. Once I made triangles (like I should have originally) the ground slippage disappeared and all is stable.
I AM an engineer, and I shouldn’t have left those off in my original design, but I never would have though that the 12″ high chunk of buried cement would have drifted that much. I guess I can burn my geologist hat.
“Thought” not “though”. Dang spell-wrecker.
Around here 4x4s in concrete the 4×4 rots at the level of the concrete. Faster than when in the ground “naked”. Bu I have always blamed it on too much water pooling.
While I’m no engineer, one thing does come to mind. Wouldn’t it have been easier to have made the solar panel support out of angle iron? The iron could have been welded, or bolted together and with paint to protect it from the elements, it would last longer than the wood.
Do a deep enough hole and plenty of concrete and it won’t move. (Had to have a pro-installed mount set up for a 12-panel array. 3″ pipe, 8′ deep holes, and a large check to pay for it. Hated to have to go through the official process, but it’s solid after 5 years.)