After 3 hot back breaking hours of pumping concrete and setting the j-bolts its time to let the concrete cure.
We needed an extra yard so our total was 10 yrs of concrete. Im not expecting anything to move anywhere for a long time. I’ll spend this weekend cleaning up the mess and leveling out the dirt between the footers making it easier later on to install some bushes on the sides and back of the solar panels.
Hopefully this will be the last day this home see’s a concrete truck for a long time. Last weekend I cleaned up the trenches for the solar rack concrete pads and yesterday I had a crew come in to setup the forms and rebar. Since some of the concrete beams are on a hill sloping down we bumped up the rebar to a #5 rod with #4 along side it to give extra tension strength in case of ground settling. Today the concrete will be ground pumped in from the street and 8″ j-bolts will be pushed in before it sets up. One problem we ran into was due to the slope falling downhill all the beams had to be stepped down to compensate for the grade. This means that the lower array will actually be stepped down with cut rails. Wasn’t what I was planning but short of scrapping all the work already done and no other options for another location, this will still work just fine and shading from the upper rack wont effect the power production.
Solar PV footers
Today Oncor installed our Interconnection Focus ACR-SD meter. This will allow the power company to bill and credit us for what power we consume and sell back to the electric grid. This meter will also allow us to watch whats happening from inside the home with a RF Mesh receiver which should be on the market this summer.
I also spoke to the person who did the homes concrete foundation engineering to see what I would need to support the solar panels into the earth with concrete piers. Its a little more than I expected to do but he explained issues that might be encountered with ground shift over the years.
Now all thats left is to get the Solar PV arrays up and running.
Focus AXR-SD Advanced RD Mesh Residential Meter
The last of landscape was completed with the installation of Bermuda tiff sod. Just Add H2O Did a very nice job around the entire home. We did do some upgrading with stone edging and large stepping stone walks around the pond and the back patio areas. We also spread top soil over the entire backyard to even things out and give the grass a better chance to grow. The sprinkler system works very good dumping 20+ gallons per min from the underground storage tanks which actually did empty out on the first day.
Two areas in on the southwest side are still dirt which is for the solar array panels/racks. I might start putting in the piers this weekend once I mark everything out and rent a post hole auger.
I also posted the final pictures of the homes insides on our move in back last Dec.
More updates to come
