Hello and welcome to the Narrowboat Experience, I'm Kath and today i'm going to share with you
how I did a DIY install of two solar panels on my narrow boat roof. Before we got started with
the solar panel install we spent a few days cleaning and repainting our narrowboat roof.
We thought this was important so that we didn't have to remove the panels at a later
date to do the painting you might notice that we've decided to go for a lovely cream colour
doesn't it look nice Annamarie's done a wonderful job.
While the paint was drying I ran the pv cables through the boat.
My intention was not to have to remove any roof panels
however due to the fact that the insulation is irregular and there's lots of wire obstructions
I ended up removing the trim and cable run sections in the bathroom and saloon area.
The pv cable runs through the mushroom vent from the solar panel
and comes out in the electrical cupboard in the stern of the boat. With the cables all
run I wanted to get the panels attached to the mounting rails in preparation for going outside.
All we're doing at the moment is a quick test fit to make sure that with the with the rails the way
that we've got them that we can adjust them if this was the roof obviously it's not the roof
it's the floor of the boat but it gives us an idea as to whether we can get our hands underneath the
solar panel. With the rails positioned here which is using the pre-drilled holes that
come with the panel or if I need to drill holes myself in the frame to attach them at the edge.
After the tests I decided to move the feet to the second hole at the end of the rail so that they
wouldn't get in the way when we need to tilt the panels. There's different ways that you can attach
the adjustable feet to your solar panel mounting bracket i'm just going to put washers on and then
attach it with a nylon threaded nut on the top to hold it in place. You can put another nut in
there which gives you a different height which is good if your roof is more curved than ours
the big part of the job of installing solar is attaching the panels to the roof of the narrow
boat solar panels are quite heavy and very awkward to maneuver in the wind. When it came to attaching
the panels we didn't want to be moving the actual panels around a lot so I made a simple jig out of
a bit of wood to make sure that we were able to attach everything accurately the first time.
I think this is really important especially as we were going to be making holes in our roof
and dealing with highly adhesive sticker flex to get everything lined up I used the measuring tape
to measure the distance that I wanted between the mushroom vent and the solar panel rail,
I also used the tape to measure the distance from the handrail on the side of the narrowboat to make
sure that the panels were centered. After a lot of measuring it's time to get on with the drilling. We
chose to attach the panels using an m8 screw so i used a 6.8 millimeter titanium coated drill bit on
a very low speed to drill the hole i did make sure i had a spare just in case but i didn't need it
the tap wrench came with an m8 tapper but it was a terrible tool to use as the wrench was so small
luckily there were two of us to tap the four holes.
I've put a link in the description to the tool that I bought and also a link to the tool that
I wish I'd bought. With the holes done it was time for us to get the sikaflex out. To minimize the
mess we put some masking tape around where the feet were going to go and then filled each foot
with lots and lots of glue. Marking the position of the feet also meant that when we needed to
actually put the rail down in its position it was really easy to get everything lined up
as we drilled a hole in the roof I wanted to make sure that there was a waterproof connection
so I used a bit of butyl tape for this I wrapped a bit around the head of the screw
and also put some between the rail and the roof.
With the rails attached to the roof it was time
for us to slot the solar panels into their final resting place.
We actually thought this bit would be really tricky due to the weight and the
size of the panels but it was actually really easy, I think that this was 100 percent
thanks to all the planning and measuring we did before making any holes.
When it came to getting the solar panels out of the boat we may have made things a little
bit harder for ourselves by choosing to do the installation at this mooring on the Gloucester
and Sharpness canal where the land is level with the roof of the boat, however, we actually made
the deliberate decision to moor at this spot. The thought being that this mooring would enable us to
simply slide the panels onto the roof rather than have to lift them whilst balancing on the gunnel.
As you can see here this process worked really well for us
bar a few little tweaks that we had to make to get everything to slide into
position.
yep
take it all the way
With the panels securely resting on the roof on their rails I slid down onto the
gunnel and Annamarie went onto the roof to move them into their final position.
All that's left to finish this part of the installation is to bolt the rails together and
yes before you say it is a little bit fiddly but i think it's worth it to be able to tilt the panels.
With the panels firmly attached to the roof the last thing left to do
is to connect the wires together.
When connecting the cables to your batteries make sure that the positive and negative cables
are in the mppt charge controller before you go near your batteries i then connected the pv
positive and negative cables before going outside to make the final connection
which was linking the solar panels together. The first thing that you need to do when you're
connecting everything together is to connect the mppt charge controller to your battery bank which
i've just done- it was horrible Alice supervised the whole time and only stood on me once!
Now all the cables are connected to the charge controller it's time to actually hook up the
solar panels all i've got to do here is connect the mc4 connectors i've decided to run my cables
through a mushroom vent instead of through a roof gland because i didn't want to make additional
holes in my roof and i'm going to protect it using this bit of rubber fuel hose so that there's no
rubbing between the wires and the mushroom vents. I'm going to connect my panels in series today
because from research that's going to be the best option for us so then everything's done.
Before I go I just wanted to share with you two additional things- the first one is that
I left the flexi panel install as is so the old panel and the new panels are running on separate
mpp charge controllers it was something that was asked a lot in the last video and the second one
is that there is a fuse in line between the mppt charge controller and the battery bank
just to clear it just in case there's any questions about that. Thanks for watching today
hope you found this video entertaining and a little bit useful so you can see how kind of easy
it is to do a job like installing solar panels on your roof if you found this video helpful
please do give us a like share it with a friend and subscribe so you don't miss out when I go
into more detail about how this solar panel setup has changed our lives and do a little comparison
with how much power is generated from the flexi panel. Thanks for watching bye.