Before we could get a whole lot done, we spent some time with the camp director and the head maintenance guy, who were both so very excited to see u s finally here. They can’t wait to stop running off of a generator.
After spending some time going over the project with them, and just chit-chatting, the next thing to do was a real inventory of what was delivered to make sure everything that was supposed to be there was present and accounted for.
For inventory and the rest of this job, it would turn out to be a real good thing I had elected to bring our skiddy, as it would become invaluable in moving pallets of heavy gear around and making a landing pad for all our trucks and equipment.
There was a lot to go over-the solar parts alone were 10 pallets of gear, and we had packed another three pallets of electrical parts on the truck along with a bunch of miscellaneous parts.
Here’s three pallets of just solar panels.
Two and a half pallets of lithium batteries. I have battery envy.
A big pallet of racking parts.
And here’s the big, bright, shiny roof we will be half filling with solar panels. The roof is 50 by 120 feet.
It took us the better part of the day to determine the exact layout of all the components on the roof. Once we had done all the math, and double checked the numbers, it was time to load up and mark out the roof.
And that’s where Tuesday sorta fell apart. The ground around the building was supposed to have been made ready for our scissor lift and other equipment to park and operate on, but it never got done.
Lucky for us, I had sort of half expected this, and had also brought the bucket for the skiddy. So we called a meeting with the powers that be, and after making arrangements that worked for everyone, I hopped in the machine and began moving dirt and leveling and smoothing everything out and building approaches and a landing for everything. That took a little while but turned out really good, and would prove to make the rest of the install go smoother.
Finally, towards the end of the day, we began to set the feet that would anchor the racking to the roof and purlins of the building.
180 mounting feet, four ¼” diameter self drilling screws per foot, and we got about half of them done before we ran out of daylight and knee power. That’s a lot of squats at the end of the day for a couple of 50 year olds!
We were happy to be working, and happy to be in such a beautiful place, but we were now a full day behind schedule due to everything that had been going on. Oh well, Wednesday would surely be better, wouldn’t it?…