Installing Solar Panels on our Workshop Roof. Snap-N-Rack Roof Mount with 7.36 Kilowatts of Solar

So today we're going to be installing 16 solar panels they're going to be roof mounted up on top of our Workshop roof hey guys I'm Evan and welcome to Country View acres and from up here on the roof today it is definitely going to be a very nice view it is a beautiful day out today so we're going to install a single row of solar panels and they're going to go almost the entire length of this lower porch roof but before we do that we actually have to put the roof racking up and that is the mounting system for the solar panels so we need to start getting that attached to the roof first foreign so I ended up buying a system called snapping rack and um I'm not sure exactly what's the best system to use on a roof but this is what I decided to use I got in a black color to match the roof it's just basically it's got a channel in here that you bolt your your solar panels to it's aluminum it's fairly light and hopefully it's going to be easy to work with on the roof so to attach the rail to our roof I've got a mounting bracket here that is specifically designed for a metal roof it's got a it's got a rubber pad here on the bottom to help seal against the metal roof and make sure you don't have any leaks and the way this works is this little piece on the bottom just comes out and then you can see you got a hole in there and you use a lag bolt we're going to use like a three and a half inch lag bolt and we're going to go all the way through that into the roof truss and then this gets securely mounted to the roof and then we're going to attach this back onto there and then our rail sits up here and then this is adjustable up and down and side to side so you can make sure everything's nice and straight so we've located our first truss and we've measured off the bottom of the roof and we're going to go ahead and pre-drill [Music] so even though this has a Rubber seal on the bottom we're going to add some sealant around the outer edge just to guarantee that it will stay sealed and that we don't have any leaks put our lag screw through here and the cool thing about this is this whole system is all going to go together with a half inch impact so I shouldn't have to change bits apparently I should have drilled a bigger hole [Music] foreign in here I brought one just in case [Music] [Music] foreign so I've got my first two roof attachment points at this end now I got to measure all the way to the other end and put in the other side so that we can run a string in between them to make sure that we put everything in straight so we've got our string ran from the center of the anchor all the way to the other end so now we can start putting these in every four feet into a truss foreign [Music] so I just finished mounting all of the attachment points so now we can go ahead and start putting up the the snap and rack rail at least they're light thank you so this should just snap into these I'm going to try to line this up the same spot there you go just snapping right in so I line the top one up with the side of one of these ribs on the metal roofing I'm going to do the same thing here and then we'll know they're straight with each other snap it in place so I'm just going to Snug these up just a little bit just I still want it to slide up and down so I'm just butting these up next to each other as we snap these in place well I'm pretty happy with the way this is looking so far the next thing we need to do is where each one of these sections meet and come together we have to put a splice and that's going to that's going to bond those two rails together it's going to make sure that they stay nice and straight but when I say Bond it has some clips on here that will dig into the aluminum and it's going to guarantee that each one of these is electrically electrically bonded so that when we ground this every piece on this system is grounded so I'm going to go ahead and put these splices on they just go up underneath and then when you tighten it down it'll dig into the metal and and bond it so this splice just goes underneath get your rails up inside of it and then tighten it down and I don't think I had one in quite right there we go a lot better now they look nice and straight I will say I don't think you could have picked a better day for this foreign with the roof rack system I've tightened up all the bolts everything looks nice and straight everything looks nice and level so I think we're to the point where we can start trying to put some solar panels up here there is my ladder my ladder just fell off it's getting too windy for this you guys have them solar panels are going to be like a big sale well it's getting windy out here and Rebecca my is nice enough to set my ladder back up because it actually fell down and she's been kind of sitting here spotting me all day making sure I don't do anything dumb so luckily she's here to put my ladder back up hopefully this wind is not going to hurt us when we install these solar panels so these are all 16 of our solar panels and it's kind of a trick to make sure that they don't fall over when you unload these we're going to put a pipe clamp on here just to keep them together while we take these apart Moment of Truth stay right there and let's hope that the wind doesn't get these or else I'll have some destroyed panels foreign so the solar panels we bought are 460 watts and we've got 16 of them so that's around 7 300 and some Watts that we have and we're going to hook eight of these together in a string so there's going to be two arrays of eight and we hook those up in series so what that means is the positive of this panel is going to hook to the negative of this panel and then the positive hooks to the negative and you you make it's basically like a big row of batteries all in a row like the old flashlights where you used to stack the batteries in there it's kind of the same thing so you've got a bunch of solar panels in a row and then that voltage adds up and this is going to be somewhere around 400 volts when it when it's done when eight of those are together so according to the National Electric Code any solar panels that you put on top of a roof or a structure need to have a rapid shutdown system and what that is is each panel will will basically have a module for each panel and it will turn those panels off now it doesn't turn it completely off it turns it from a like 40 to 50 volts that these would be it turns it down to a very low voltage a safe voltage and um this is what one of those modules looks like this is a rapid shutdown module instead of this one being for one panel this is actually a dual and it will hook up to two panels at a time and the way this works is there's a rapid shutdown system and it sends out when everything is good it sends out a heartbeat and when this senses the heartbeat that pulse on your PV wires it'll turn your solar panels on so they can produce power but if that is not hooked up every one of these panels will be off in a safe voltage and that's what's going to happen today well we're hooking them up as we put these modules in there it's going to make sure that the voltage is actually low it's not going to be 400 volts as we're hooking this up today it's going to be a nice safe voltage as as we're hooking it up to these these rapid shutdown systems now the way that that shutdown works is you you locate an e-stop or an emergency shutdown or some type of switch and that's going to be located on the the edge of the like the exterior of the building or near your where your power comes in so when you have a fire a firefighter can easily identify it and they can turn off this the voltage on your solar system so they don't get electrocuted while they're trying to put out a fire so these solar panels are huge and they weigh a ton and you were looking at the back side earlier you can see that the the front side is is nice and black it's a mono click crystalline panel and these are actually from a company called what is it called Blue Sun blue sun and I never heard of them before I bought them off a signature solar they ended up being the perfect size to fit the length of my roof and they ended up having a 30-year warranty most solar panels have a 25 year warranty and these had a 30 so I ended up purchasing these and hopefully they're going to work out fine for me but we're gonna go ahead and start getting the solar panels up there and hopefully the wind doesn't isn't a problem so I think we're going to try to see if we can lift the solar panels up to the roof with the tractor we're not 100 sure this will work um if it's going to necessarily lift it high enough but if this does work it's going to save us a bunch of Labor carrying each one of these up by hand close let's try there [Music] foreign don't leave your tools underneath solar panel so before I get too far mounting these solar panels since they're in series and it's basically negative to positive negative to positive the the negative wire is going to be all the way down there and the positive wire is going to be all the way here so I need to run the positive back down that direction and that's what I have I have some PV wire so according to the National Electric Code any solar panel wiring that is outside in the sunlight or the weather has to be PV wire and that's what we're going to run from this end down to the Middle where we're going to end up having a junction box and our wires are going to go inside the building so this is 10 gauge PV wire which is a plenty big for what we're doing and the the connectors on the solar panels are called mc4 connectors we've got new connectors here that we're going to put on this wire so we can connect it up exactly the same way so they make crimping tools to put these mc4 connectors on and just basically got a crimp on a pin so after you get your pin on put it into your connector it'll lock in place and then you got to tighten up the back of it so it holds the wire nice and firm and makes it water tight so I'm just going to feed this wire down the inside of our rail down to the Middle where our junction box will be so now I'm going to pre-wire the rapid shutdown systems to each other down the way and then I'm going to wire them to the panels as I lay them on the roof foreign well we we've got first eight panels on the roof I'm starting to try to you know kind of get into Rhythm to how I'm going to put these on and wire them up so we went ahead and loaded the last eight hopefully I can get this done in the next few minutes so we ended up putting a couple big pieces of wood here to drive the tractor on and they gave us that extra three inches we needed so we could actually get the forks above the roof and it's been unloading a little bit easier this last time [Applause] so why in the back of these panels is a little bit of a mess so I did end up buying these clips that you clip on the edge of the panel so you can hold your wires and I'm trying to hold them in as many places as I can but it's still kind of messy but once you lay the panel down you'll never see it foreign foreign I've got all 16 solar panels installed and turned out really good really happy with it I'm glad I got this done in one day that was a lot of work so I didn't install a junction box under one of the panels where I could wire it into the house and I also didn't bring a ground out of that junction box and ground the solar array I still have to do that I'm missing one piece to make the roof penetration and I want to make sure I have everything when I cut a hole in the roof so I'm going to come back later and I'll have to slide one of those panels down so that I can do that and get that hooked up and wired inside the building but overall the the solar array is at least mounted and done I've just got a couple finishing touches left to do [Music] foreign so I think that's everything I'm going to do with the solar array right now 16 panels 460 watts each that's three thousand three thousand seven thousand three hundred sixty watts is what I think it is so that's a pretty good start towards solar and being a little more self-sufficient with power lowering the electric bill but uh pretty pretty happy with the way this all turned out my pitch of my roof is not ideal um it is I think it's 412 pitch which is like 18 and a half degrees so it's definitely not you know the most ideal roof for solar it'll do good in the summer probably do a lot worse in the winter time but um I like having it up here because I've got plans for all of this space and you got to understand this side of the yard right here is going to have to be shaded by the house and then that side of the yard is going to be shaded by the house and there's really not a lot of Sunny real estate unless you get out past the garden over there so that's actually pretty far away from the house to be running solar over here but uh yeah definitely happy with the way this all turned out and it was just a beautiful day to be on the roof so I did mention the National Electric Code a couple times while we were putting this in but there is some building code as well so you do need to leave at least a three foot walkway for firefighters to get to the ridge of your building so we did leave three feet at that end and you can see over here we've actually got at least three feet on this end as well plus we have the whole other side so I think we're good and then you have to leave three feet down you have to leave a three foot path along the ridge so you can't put solar panels all the way up to the peak you need to leave them at least three feet off the peak of your house so firefighters can walk along the Ridge and open up the roof for ventilation if there's a fire but anyway that's part of the building code so that's one thing you got to keep in mind you just can't put your solar panels everywhere um and cover the entire roof so you just got to be aware that you need to leave a few clear places especially along the ridge for firefighters so I know I shouldn't have been doing this job by myself today Rebecca is scared of heights um she doesn't want to get on a roof I decided to try to do this myself today that was my decision and I took a chance I took some risks I realized that but I did get this installed today and I didn't get hurt and that's a good thing but I did take risks I didn't do it quite safely so please do not follow my example when it comes to this job so definitely needed to have probably at least two people on the roof to to carry the modules and install them or the solar panels and and probably three people would be good for this job so you had a person on the ground that could come up and down and bring you anything you might need so definitely suggest do not try to do this without at least two people it is a big job and these solar panels are very heavy I'm not sure exactly how much they they they they weigh but uh they're definitely probably a two-man lift I'll put I'll try to look up the weight and put it on the screen but these are heavy very big panels I can't remember they're they're as tall as I am I believe um I think they're like I was thinking they're like 80 some inches tall I mean they're they're a big panel so um to wait actually they're taller than I am I'm not very big guy so um yeah this was a very big job I am definitely sore I can feel it in my muscles I'm gonna feel it tomorrow for sure but I think that's going to wrap up this video I'm ready to get inside and relax the rest of the night so thanks for watching guys I'll see you in the next one foreign

Channel: Country View Acres

Views: 108,010

Keywords: Homestead, farm, farmstead, hobby farm, self sufficient, homesteading, rural life, country life, farm life, solar array, roof mounted, roof racking, snap n rack, snap and rack, solar panel, solar panel installation, installing solar panels on roof, Photovoltaic, roof array

Id: vn2FvxwnOmM

Length: 22min 53sec (1373 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 12 2023