Here's our line of adjustable solar mount kits. It comes in 1-panel, 2-panel, and 4-panel and
right here we have our two panel kit you're only going to need an adjustable wrench or a set of
open-ended combination wrenches and then the rest of the tools the island wrench is included in the
kit so let's start going in here and checking out what's inside so all of the various components are
included in here for our two panel mount kit we have our left and right tilt brackets these
are made out of 304 stainless steel so we have our two plant brackets also made out of 100% stainless
steel the bigger parts are our solar panel rails our two panel kit comes with four of these rails
we have two versions of the two panel kit one comes with the complete rails that are the full
length and the other one comes with the rails that are split that need to be joined together
we also have our very detailed user manual in order to set these kits up
you can see it's four pages of detailed instructions walking you through the entire
setup whilst be showing you how to set that up today as well these two pieces are called
our extension rails these mount all of our pull brackets and hold the solar panel rails
in place these are extruded aluminum rails with anodized coating for our long life you
call these guys our rail inserts if we have the split rail design then these rail inserts go in
the end of the rails very easily here until they stop chew on each side and then the two rails can
join together into one long rail and finally we have our pull brackets these attach to the end of
the pole and we'll show you how those go together a little bit later and then our parts kits parts
kits come with all these various components you need including the clamps for the solar panels
and all the nuts and screws that you're going to need for the installation these are 100% stainless
steel very high quality they're not going to rust over time and they're going to last years
out in the elements so next we're going to run through the basic installation and show you how
to set up your tilt mount kit so our kids come with everything you need besides the pool so our
two-inch kit needs a two inch pole that's inside diameter it's a two-inch steel schedule 40 and
then our four panel kit that's going to need a 4 inch pole you want to put them down on the ground
with a little concrete around 18 inches at least I like to go at least 24 inches to make sure if
there's high wind loads that it's not going to pull out of the ground if the soil gets soft
and rain or there's any other high loads trying to pull that out once we have that in place here
we're going to start with our pole bracket and our pole clamps and so these fit together one
inside the other they can be a little tight to get going but they will fit and sometimes just need a
little tap in order to get the holes to line up so once those are together we're going to start
with our 5/16 inch bolt and from the inside to the outside I'm going to place that bolt head
there and then we have our flange nut our 5/16 of an inch flange nut and we're going to attach that
inside to outside do that with both of these holes this is the two panel mount it's very similar for
the four panel mount except at the end instead of only mounting two panels you're gonna be mounting
four panels but all the steps are basically the same just with slightly larger brackets and
slightly larger nuts and bolts but if you follow along with this one it's basically the exact same
installation so we've done that once let's take our next bracket okay so we have our two brackets
together we our pole bracket along with our pole clamp which is going to fit on the top right here
and you see it has a ledge so it's gonna sit on that pole and if we balance it we can let it stay
there we're gonna take our long quarter-inch bolts and we're going to feed them through
so started there
another one on the backside here right now everything's gonna go
together finger tight and then once it's on there we're going to tighten it all up
as we tighten these up we want to look at how much thread is sticky on the other side
and just make sure we had end up with the same amount of thread on either side to make sure
it's a nice square and everything's aligned so that is looking pretty good right there
at this point we can decide where we're gonna want our solar panels lined up it's going to
tilt this way along these plates eventually we're going to get these tilt brackets on and
you'll be able to tilt along this plane so we want this point right here facing true south
and so we can use the app on our phone line it up here and get this side facing true South it
doesn't matter which side faces we just want and make sure one of these faces to south and
then we can put on our other brackets in any directions to either go point that layer point
this way okay so right here this is true South and we will tighten up these bolts so where the
crescent wrench comes in play so making sure we um all align and tighten these pretty well
okay so we have nice and tight on there we want to tie them enough that we start to see
this bracket just start to deflect a little bit it's going to give us a nice clamping force you
see at this point we can no longer twist it that aluminum grabs on to that steel pipe and
it's not going to go anywhere same with lifting up it's on there good so now we can remove our
flange nuts and we're going to attach our tilt brackets we have our left and our right tilt
bracket at the top there's a right angle Bend we blunt the bends facing outward and there's
a pole on the top that goes through one of our 5/16 inch bolts and you can see on the
other side it's able to rotate that's what gives us the ability to tilt this so I'll
put these on here and then again use our flange nut in order to tighten them down
sometimes it can be a little tricky in order to get this Italian without the nut on the
back side spinning but if you finger tying it down and kind of pull on it while you tie it
and it'll grab into that aluminum and later on when you tie in with a wrench you won't have
any problems right now we're just going to do finger tight and I'm going to go in an upward
horizontal position okay so next we're going to need our extension rails we have our pull
clamp assembly done the extension rails sit on the top here just like that and for these it
doesn't matter whether you put them facing inward or outward whatever your preference is I put them
outward so it's a little easier to get to the bolts with the wrench but it does not matter
which which way you put them again we're going to use five sixteenth inch bolts and associated nuts
and attach these
this point we can go ahead and tighten these up fully tight
anole to leave these finger tight we're not going to be adjusting these later
okay so now we have our extension rails on there like I said before this is all very similar for
the four panel mount the only difference are the brackets are thicker and larger
but it all goes together basically the exact same so next thing you start working on with
our panel rails this is the split rail design this is applicable for most of the two panels
and all of the four panels there are a few of the two panels that have one continuous rail
where you won't have to join them together if you have that you can just skip this step
and so we just simply slide the rail inserts into the end of these two pair and then we can slide
the two rails together and create one long rail so it's by design when you're putting them together
you're going to end up with about an eighth inch gap and then we just want to close up that gap one
of the easiest ways is just to bump it downward on a table or on to the ground and that gap will
close right up without any issues so now we have one long rail and we'll do the same thing a second
time for the other rail so again there's divots here that are gonna stop this internal rail from
sliding all the way down and then we just top them together and once they're tough together
they're pretty solid but you can get my part if you need to but they're not gonna go anywhere
so if two long rails now this is the most tricky part of the installation
and it's not that hard to do it just take your time and get your parts laid out in
order to make it slightly easier so we're gonna take our 5/16 inch nuts and bolts
and what we're gonna do here is going to take one of them for now we're gonna slide it down
in here inside this rail towards the center and you're gonna see how to line right up as
we place it on our extension rails depending on what slot we use most likely you can use
the most the furthest outside slot and then carefully take our other bolt and we're going
to slide it right down here lift up and get it down in that slot in the extension rail
from here we just want to Center it so roughly Center you leave it right there that's just fine
if you want you can offset it by about a quarter inch and I'll explain that why later so once we
have the rail on there then this is the hardest part is without being able to hold the head on
the backside of that bolt we need to get this nut on and so what I like to do is against this edge
of the slot just kind of pull it tight there and that's going to put some pressure on the
threads of that bolt and it's going to allow me to that's easier screw that hex nut on there so again
on the edge of this slot down below we're gonna put some pressure on it it's going to hold that
bolt in place see that bolts not moving it's not spinning and then I can much easier very carefully
tighten up that nut later on once we get a little tension on that bolt it's
going to dig into the aluminum on the backside which is what it's designed to
do that's going to hold that bolt head in place in order to really tie in this
rail up so for now this is looking pretty good I will tighten these up
so this sides nice and tight I'm going to move to the other side
get the other rail on here and then I'm gonna show you how to mount the panels
so with the panel rails attached you can really see how the designs coming together and you can
see how it's gonna tilt like so and so the next part you have two options I like to do
it horizontal you can also do it more vertical if you're having trouble reaching anything or
you feel more comfortable installing like this but for this step I do like to go horizontal
especially with one person it makes it much easier in order to do this mounting yourself right here I
do tighten this bolt up a little bit more than finger-tight both sides just cuz I'm doing by
myself I don't want any movement on it so back here we have our RPS 100-watt monocrystalline
solar panels and this is what we're going to be mounting to the rail today this kit will work
with basically any type of solar panels this is a 30 millimeter thick frame some of the frames
of 35 millimeters thick we have adjustment kits in order to make those work if you have a different
size panel just come talk to us we're the ship it out to you for free or for our nominal cost we'll
get out that conversion kit to you if you have different sized panels so the one person I'd like
to start in the backside here because I know the rail can't tilt this way and so with any pressure
on that I know I'm not going to cause it to fall and I my solar panel drop to the ground so with
one person it's pretty easy just to lift the panel up and get it up on the rail and then we just want
to get it centered on the rail make sure we have the same amount sticking on both sides and then
we'll start the clamping process half way through I said I wanted to offset this seam about 1/4 inch
to 1/2 inch towards the front of it and the reason why is when we're tightening up these panels with
our clamps I don't want my bolt head right on that seam I want it offset a little bit so now I can
put my solar panels right in the center of this mount get a nice center of gravity so it's easy
to adjust later and yet not have what's called the t hammer and nut end up right on that so very
simply we have two different types of brackets for mounting we have what's called a mid clamp and
we also have our end clamp these go on in between solar panels and these go on the end of the solar
panels we also have what's called a t hammer nut and what this can do is it can drop into the rail
from above it's going to rotate 90 degrees and then lock in place and so we'll start with our end
clamps here two of them we can start them about a thread or two and both of these are gonna go
on the end over here then clamps are very easy if you just want to slide them in then you don't have
to worry about dropping them down and rotating on 90 degrees but you can also do that at one clamp
and our other clamp
comes with five millimeter wrench so you don't have to have one and
will simply tighten these up usually that tight nice and easy if you have to he may
have to lift them up slightly in order to get that t hammer nut to lock in the rail
okay one sides done don't be shy about tying these up you can put quite a bit of torque on
them in order to get that clamping really well okay we have our second solar panel here before
we get to the mid clamp we're going to get this one mounted we're just going to set it up on top
lining it up with the frame and we're going to take our mid clamp here we're going to
start at one one-and-a-half threads just so it's on there this one's a little trickier
we're going to drop it down into the rail as we tighten it's gonna rotate 90 degrees and
it's going to lock into that rail and then it's going to allow us to fully tighten it
this can take a couple tries take your time don't be in a rush while working with this
one so there we drop it down into the rail and then we slowly tighten and sometimes
we need to lift up slightly as we tie it in in order to get it to lock and I can
feel it they're just locked in place and now I can tighten it the rest of the way
like to leave it off kind of finger tight for now until I do the other clamp
on this side pin will go down
you can feel it lock in place and then tie in it and their second big
clamp done so do our final two n clamps these you can drop them down or you can
just insert them in the end of the rail since it's so close and then tighten them
during the install we had them all fairly tight I'm gonna go back and
just do a quick tightening of all the nuts don't be afraid to tighten them real well
these need to survive high wind loads and kind of clamp that panel in place
okay so there we have it we have our two panels mounted and at this point we can adjust the angle
by loosening up the bottom bolts and picking whatever angle we want I like to use a phone
app with the angle indicator I can pick the exact angle I need for this time of year
once we get to the angle we want then we can simply go back and tie it in our flange nuts
whose time I'm gonna tighten the bottom and I'm gonna tie in the top flange nuts
so there we have our two panel mount if you have any other questions during setup we're
always available in order to help answer them and make sure you're going to get your panels
securely mounted in a timely fashion we also visit us at RPS solar pumps comm if you're
looking for these mounts if you're looking for solar panels or if you're looking at well pumps