good afternoon youtube this is my garden shed here and i have the two amorphous solar
panels that i initially set up on an angle there those are the harbor freight panels
and then right in here i've got my two old 60 watt 12 volt panels i have those two wired in series
and they're wired in parallel with the amorphous panels just to give a little more power because on
some days the amorphous panels 30 watts worth just doesn't have enough to keep the batteries charged
they have these two panels they used to just sit on top of the roof and i had a couple of bricks
under them on the top to sort of tip them up a little bit i think the the wind must buffet the
roof a little bit and also the panels they never blew off but they would gradually work their way
down and then i'd have to push them up maybe once a year push them back up towards the top of the
roof pitch so what i did to fix that was i had a couple of pieces of this unistrut here this is the
low profile unistrut that i used to have on my solar panel rack so i replaced that and i have
these two five foot pieces that are just long enough to span off the roof down here and then
they go up over the top of the roof i just put a couple of screws in through the back of the panel
there's some slotted holes drilled some holes in the unistrut and just held the panels down with
those two screws on each panel and then the panels are joined together but what i need is something
to keep this unistrut from moving around so what i did first i started with a piece of cardboard
and cut out this template and the idea is this will fit up inside of the overhang of the roof
and then fit up into the unistrut there it just goes right up there
there's a about a two inch deep recess up there and what that does is it keeps
the unistrut from moving down it also can't move up because i've got the thing pushing here it
can't lift it can't go up and it can't come down so i'm hoping that'll just lock these in place
the other thing that gives me is it gives me a little bit of air circulation underneath
that's why i had the bricks under there so i had the panels off the roof but with the unistrut
it gives me that same air circulation plus i can also get a leaf blower up there and blow
out any leaves after they fall down here to show you how those go here just have one hole here
like that and you can see now that thing isn't moving anywhere
but the nice thing here is i haven't put any penetrations into the roof
so the unistrut is just sitting up there with the weight of the panels holding it down and then
these two brackets now are holding the unistrut down to the roof and then it's hooked underneath
so you can see there just have the panels up there because i think this roof when it heats up and
cools down the the panels kind of buckle up and down they sort of move around and yeah hopefully
i'll be able to get my leaf blower under there and blow out under the panels i was all clean a
couple of days ago when i first put the panels up here but now it's full of leaves again and
then i also had a piece of one inch pvc conduit so i shoved my solar panel wires through there
have these two panels and i'm just basically storing them here if i need them for something
else they're here otherwise they're actually keeping the shed batteries charged actually
these were the two original panels i started with from the harbor freight greenhouse cooling fan kit
and then i picked up these two panels when i did my solar atticfan system because these two panels
weren't quite enough for the attic fans and then i added these two and now they're powering the
shed fans so they're still using the same harbor freight fan controller but now they're on the shed
yeah i just wanted to give you that quick update on the shed
it's still running the fans kick on if it warms up enough and it's keeping my garden sprayer
and jump start pack charged these panels here don't get a lot of light maybe from oh probably
11 in the morning until about three in the afternoon so i only get maybe four hours here
but with 120 watts of output they kind of help top off the batteries because these two panels
just don't have quite enough power in them so these panels are rated at 30 and i don't ever
see much over 20 watts from them so i don't know if that's because they're old or because the wires
are pretty thin gauge or what these solar panels power the ventilation fans just to show you here
on this end of the shed right up here is ventilation right at the peak of the roof
there's like little openings along this piece here where the wall and the the roof structure join i
believe there's vents along there there is air inlet on this side i didn't add any air inlet and
then i've got the two fans on the other side that are blowing air out so it basically comes in here
and then blows out the other side normally here in the afternoon we get a wind that comes this way
and blows onto this side of the shed so there's the pressure of the wind on this side and then
the fans are exhausting out that side so that keeps the natural flow of the air going
and then here's the bands one on each side and they're running today there's air coming out
haven't had any problem with them they are still working you know in the winter it kind of keeps
the moisture out of the shed you kind of build up the overnight humid air and then during the day if
there's enough sun to warm it up inside like today it kicks on the fans and then they run until the
shed cools down if you can hear those running but they're still going that's all on solar power yeah
since i've changed out the charge controller and added the extra panels i haven't had any problem
with the batteries running low as a first year when i just had the amorphous panels up there
you could get the right combination of like hot weather and cloudy and it would
run the batteries really low the last years even when we had the heavy smoke from the forest fires
that would have been a condition that caused problems because the smoke blocked out a lot of
the sunlight but it was hot there was no problem with these they kept the battery on float charge
even through the heavy smoke and all i had to do was come out and hose off the panels here they got
a little bit dirty with all that smoke and ash and whatnot but other than that yeah the shed's
been working fine so finally got a chance to test the solar panels make sure the new mount works
and last night we had a really high wind storm it was probably 30 40 mile an hour winds and the wind
direction was coming in like that direction pretty much head on to the panels and they did not move
a bit anyway just wanted to give you a real world update on the brackets they seem to work
there was just some scrap wood to make them and a couple of leftover pieces of unistrut
makes a pretty nice little mount if you want to mount panels on one of these plastic garden sheds
that's a pretty easy way to do it i think that's going to work so anyway if you have
any questions about that post up in the comment section below and as always thanks for watching