Solar Equipment Shed

While waiting for warmer weather for the floor, we needed to get moving on our solar equipment shed.  It will house the batteries, inverter, power panel, etc. and will be placed right by the solar array.  Cooper Power Solutions asked that we make it at least 6'x8'.  We opted to go with 8'x8' to allow us a little extra room for maneuvering heavy batteries in and having a little less waste of materials when we construct the shed.

We decided to put the wall panels and floor framing together at the rental house where we have a garage and a level driveway to make it much easier to keep things square and level.  We are also very happy that we bought the compound miter saw as it made this project also go much faster.  In less than one day, we built the floor and all four walls.  They are stacked in the garage waiting to be transported to the work site.  We opted for a wooden floor rather than a concrete floor, so the floor is heavily reinforced as the batteries weigh a lot!  This shed is solidly engineered.  The roof will be constructed onsite as well.

October has been a little strange for weather in this area and we actually even had some snow while building this.  We've been told that October is normally gorgeous weather here, but instead we're in a cold, windy, wet (gloomy) streak.

We will rent a trailer to transport the floor and wall panels up to the work site.  Well worth the cheap rental price of $15!

Here's the shed floor framed up.  Gads, this sucker is HEAVY!  We did go with pressure treated lumber and it's doubled up 2x6x8 - so yeah, freakin' heavy.  Not sure how we'll get this on the trailer....  We used those orange straps to shuffle it into the garage from the driveway.  I could barely keep my end from dragging on the ground.

Solar Shed Floor

Door Wall (also our north wall)

We did the constructing in the driveway, then moved finished pieces into the garage.

All ready to go.

The floor and all wall panels are framed and ready to go.  You can see the top two (east and west walls) have a sloped top to them - the roof will have a slight pitch to the south so water can run off that way.





The earthworks guy is coming tomorrow to dig the 8ft deep hold for the solar array post.  He'll also be digging the trench for the ground arc.  The ground arc is put in by Cooper Power Solutions to spread out any electricity that might occur should a lightning strike happen.  He will also be bringing a tractor up to help Cooper Power Solutions mount the panels as the unit is 400#.  Once he's done bringing in big equipment like that, we can put our shed up.  We probably are looking at the first or second week of November for that.