SOLAR PANELS ON THE ROOF, PART 3: PANELS IN PLACE

As I mentioned in Part 2 of this series, I'm not going to run through every technical detail of the solar panel installation because the general procedure has already been described by others.  I'm intentionally limiting the description to just those aspects that are unique to this installation on our 2007 T1N Airstream Interstate.  Photo coverage continues below.

Board for the charge controller, which my husband constructed.  There's also a fuse and a switch on here. 

This is the other side of that board, with the solar panels' On/Off switch visible.  The black object at photo bottom is our black water tank - this is the view upon opening one of the drop-down bottom cabinet doors.  On the other side of this new board is the existing electrical converter.  

Now for the reveal of how exactly we got those fixed-frame solar panels nine feet into the air without damaging them and/or killing ourselves.

The long ladder in the middle is an extension ladder covered with blankets and lashed to the roof rack at the top.  That was the "skidway" upon which the panels were raised.  The panels are shown on the ground to photo left, and you can see two ropes tied to their frame.  I stood on the roof with one rope in each hand.  My husband helped guide the panels up the skidway so that the assembly wouldn't topple over the side.  Gradually I cranked them up the skidway and then positioned them upright on the roof.  

See, I come by my skidway knowledge honestly, because I grew up around this sort of stuff.  This pic shows a conventional skidway upon which small fishing boats are raised.  Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia.  

Unfortunately I have fewer photos of the raising process than I would prefer.  There was just my husband and me working on this, and so I was too busy with the job to take pics.  No free hands for most of it.

See where I've indicated the hinge here? There are two of them along this front crossbar.  The hinges were the key to success of two people getting this into place with no special equipment.  We were able to stand the panels up 90 degrees to the roof, and my husband fastened the hinges with it in that upright position.  With the front edge secured like that, we were able to then pivot it into place and proceed to the rear fasteners.

Oh, BTW, the 80/20 has nice end caps that set in place with stainless steel screws.  We hadn't installed them when this pic was taken, so you can see the open lattice at photo left.  

There's hubster tightening the down-rod that fits into one of the two rear clamps.  The un-tightened clamp is temporarily leaning toward photo left.  We screwed the rear pieces into place, but it was a complicated and time-consuming job to set those screws and their corresponding 80/20 track pieces.  We are probably going to replace those with a cotter pin type apparatus.  If we decide to stay somewhere remote for a few days, it would be useful to raise the panels to a more advantageous sun angle, pivoting it up on the front hinges.  We will have to make a supplemental support for the rear of it as well, in order to angle it up like that.   

You can see a slight pitch forward of the solar frame - the front (photo right) is lower.

We would have preferred to install the whole assembly an inch or two lower than shown here, such that the bottoms of the panels were even closer to the top of the A/C unit, but that would have required a whole 'nuther fastening system.  Unfortunately the OEM T1N Interstate roof rack had been set at the exact worst height - if it had been either higher or lower, this would have been an easier job.  

"I'm sore," he said a couple of hours following this monumental task.  It's little wonder.  Working on the roof of an Interstate requires a lot of contorting.  

There's the near-view as it was being lowered into place at the rear, and before we cleaned up the roof and trimmed our black plastic clamp gasket material. 

And there's a farther view, also prior to full completion, but I propped the extension ladder against the house and climbed up so I could look down on it.  

What's left of this task is to (a) verify that it actually works, and (b) confirm that there are no unexpected or intolerable vehicle handling ramifications.  In theory there should not be - Airstream specified a weight limit for their OEM roof rack (as useless as it is), and we are significantly under that limit.  Plus we angled the front of our panels down so that they would not catch wind at freeway speeds.  But this is brand new DIY territory here, so nothing is declared a success until it is fully tested and proven.

I actually sort of looked a bit like this when I was a kid...