today i'm going to share my design idea that i've come up with in inventing a solar
panel array that is for the summer and the winter fully adjustable for the
the place on the planet where you actually live because this will be varied depending
on where you live and what your needs are so this is just two seven watt solar panels
that i've constructed and mounted on a wooden frame i'm going to show you how
it all goes together here and maybe you could get some good ideas off it yourself
because for me this is ideal for what i need it's fully adjustable like i said from the summer to
the winter because as you know all of you that you know are interested interested in solar
yeah the sun rises in the east sets in the west and the amount that it comes up during the summer
is not the same as in the winter and there's some things that you really have to consider especially
if you're in a winter climate like i am in so i'm going to show you everything like how it goes all
goes together and this is for my solar ventilation project that i've i have a video on that already
i'll put a link down below if you want to see that first to see why this is all going together
as is because i'm going to provide the amount of solar power to power them three fans that i built
and it's going to provide ventilation for my cabin so that i don't have a high moisture buildup and
you know when it comes down to it these kind of projects are very easy to do
if you think them through and you know you can get some great ideas off of youtube
you know from people have actually tried different design ideas and invent their own things so
you know you're welcome to take a look at this and maybe you can get some ideas of it so let's take a
look right now and see all the different features that i've incorporated into this for a winter and
a summer solar array well the best place to start is actually at the base and you can see
how this base is pretty easily constructed and the whole idea behind this base is
all i'm going to do is just put a house block on there for weight and that will keep it mounted
down so that the wind won't be affecting it or anything and this is all made out of two by three
spruce and i am going to stain it after i have to disassemble the solar array off it
and then i can just stain it but i've got this piece here and this piece over here
in the front and that is so that where i'm putting it is not going to be you know right
on the ground so it's going to sit on this two pieces of plastic and all they are is pieces of
five quarter plastic board that you get at your building center
and they're great for projects like this that just don't allow the wood to touch you know
high moisture area like you know grass or sod or anything because i just rot these right out right
the second thing i did was i used heavy duty fasteners now you can see on the bottom here
where i put in you know two good screws here and then i've got these two adjoining boards that will
give it support so it's not going to be flimsy at all and that's it all the way around there
and if you're wondering what kind of screws i use well this is the screws here you know
they're quarter inch these are three and a half these are beefy screws they're not like
deck screw stuff right now i did use deck screws just for the bottom here and that's only because
they're just sitting on top and it doesn't make much of a difference okay so let's take
a look and see how this actually performs so if we just take a look at that right there
and that is on a 30 degree angle and all i've done is going on my table saw and i ripped a 30 degree
angle on one of these two by threes now the screw went through here and over there and
i just plugged it with some uh caulking and that there sets my angle for 30 degrees and you could
see that what angle is it now well that is 60 for the summer that's the same 30 degree angle
but you could see the position of it is altered now you can just make one 30 degree angle and
use it as a 60 as well so now you can see how how the angle on this is much different compared to
here now there's a reason why you want to do that and the reason would be because
in the winter the sun does not rise as high and i made sure that it went a little bit above here
because what you don't want to do is have snow pile up here and make the surface here where it
will not melt off so you want to make sure this is a little bit higher than on the bottom end
because during the summer time well you have no snow right so that's the design there and
here is the pivot point so how did i get this pivot point and it's very
simple to do i'll turn it around and i'll show you the design and how it works but really all it is
is just a metal rod now i drilled a hole into this stud here but only went about this far
it's a metal rod that goes through i just put some you know just some metal clips here
and it goes into this end and all i did was just pound it all the way in to here and it's
not going to go nowhere and it's on a swivel so now we take a look at the electrical hookup
and there's only two wires and two wires from the other panel
so you got the wires that come down to here and they're going to meet right here at
the junction point of the swivel so when you're looking at it you can see that them wires are
not going to be twisted they're not you're only moving this once a year right from the spring
to the fall and this is the back side of the other one and they come down
and this is the connector here right to the end and you can see where this is the join here
so you can see where this is a connector and at this end is going to go to where the fans are and
the fans are going to be approximately 25 feet away so this is the setup here
and when you're thinking about making a setup like this this whole thing cost me about 20
so you're wondering what's this gadget here well i'm gonna hook it up for you
first i'll bring it back and i'll show you how this works well there's the setup right there
and all i did i just got a bunch of scrap pieces at my place and i used like this
kind of a quick clip i don't know it's like quick connect uh snap thing here you know you can put
on for chains and that i got it going down to another one here and then i just bent up
a piece of metal and on the far side there you can see the wing nut and you just tighten this down
and you know what the piece doesn't move so it stays in that position right there and the
wind's not going to have it flopping around and everything else and what i also did was
i inserted a piece now this is 3 8 here i had a piece of copper tubing so i put the copper tubing
in there first and this goes inside the copper tubing not just the wood but i imagine you could
just put it in the wood but over time it would kind of wear it out around here so that's what
i've done there and this is a very easy setup like this so i'll show you how it looks on the
other side well there it is in the winter position and uh you know this at this 30 degree angle here
the snow will not stay on this and that's the main thing the snow will not stay on it and
just a little bit of sunlight will hit these corners here and as soon as it does that it'll
start to melt and that's why you got to make sure that you butt your two pieces up exactly
and it'll just run right off on a sheet but this is the setup on that one and
you can see the little bit of a the copper tube i stuck in there and now i'm just using this bottom
one here to hook right on and that's never gonna go anywhere so you know you can see how
i just use these screws they're just temporary for now i'm going to have longer ones in there
this is just the mock setup and that's not hard to do now is it so i think everybody could do this
and you know the whole idea between having it go between summer and winter is something that i've
thought about for a long time and it's so easy to do as long as your pivot point is right here
well you know it just swivels back and forth take me a total time of maybe two minutes to go from
the summer to the winter well i hope you like this design idea you know a project like this
you know it's easy to do i spent an afternoon out in the shop here it's the middle of the winter
and i like to do these projects over the winter time so i'm all set up and ready to go
in the spring when i start to head up to northern ontario but if you have any questions let me know
and the only thing i can say is stay tuned for next uh next summer when i'm up there and i'm
going to show you the whole system how it works and how easy it is that you can actually work
with solar it's not very difficult now this here doesn't include anything else except
the harness cable that goes all the way to my fans there's no batteries involved there's no
uh power inverters there's nothing it's going to run strictly off of this and if you'd like to see
how how it actually does work in another project that i've done i'll put a link to the ventilation
project i did using two of them fans in my garden shed for all you that haven't seen that video well
my garden shed would go way over 100 degrees every year i got a steel shed in the backyard and you
know how hot them steel sheds can get right well i just took this kind of idea put it to the garden
shed and now well it's not 100 degrees in there no more it dropped it by at least 30 to 35 degrees
because i'm taking the air out so now on my project up in northern ontario in my cabin
i'll be bringing fresh air in year round it's not going to cost me anything just the project
two solar panels twenty dollars lumber a little bit of scrap pieces and you know this will last
me for probably twenty years no problem so look forward to seeing that in the future and many more
projects that you know you lay up late at night and you just think about these things
and then you just get to it and do it and you know for a lot of people maybe they've
never tried something like this this is a very easy project to start off with
and it's very easy just to hook it up to some 12-volt fans and just watch them work so thanks
for joining me here today if you've never seen this channel before you're welcome to subscribe
and stay tuned for more interesting projects just like this cheers
you