gettin' them on the roof!

W, bless his fat wallet, purchased four new 200-watt solar panels in anticipation of the big upgrade which is due today. With the snow and uncertainty about road conditions, we'll have to see if it actually happens today.
The four panels together would be 13' wide, which wouldn't fit well on our 9.5'-wide power shed. So W and I built two racks, for two panels each. One can go on the power shed, the other on the Big Dog House.
Then me and M spent four hours Monday morning getting the racks and panels on the roofs and Very Securely bolted down. We had to cut a bunch of shims to get the panel angles right for winter; multiple shims allow us to adjust the angles for summer if we want to. Since the rafters on the BDH run the wrong way for us to screw into them, we drilled through the roof plywood, used really long 3/8" bolts, and sandwiched the roof between the 2X4 racks and more 2X4s below.

W, having spent the equivalent of a used truck purchasing the panels, was very concerned about the effect of wind on our home-made racks. "The roof might come off the building," I told him, "But the racks aren't coming off the roof." We canted these so that each rack points to solar South for that little extra bit of efficiency. Yesterday we had a loverly all-day windstorm, and nothing moved at all. Last thing in the world we all want is to lay awake on windy nights, listening for the crash.
And now, once they're actually connected, our collection capacity should be more than doubled. We'll see how well it works in practice.