Solar Hot Water Installation

SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS MOUNTING STRATEGIES Date: 11/22/2010 Well, welcome everyone. Good afternoon, welcome to the SunMaxx Solar webinar series. I’m going to spend the next half an hour talking about various mounting strategies and hopefully some of the information is relevant to what you’re trying to accomplish. As always the chat window is open and I encourage you to send some questions my way and I’ll try my best to answer them as they appear. So, without further ado some of you may be familiar with our webinar series. Each week we try to talk about something different and relative and updated. This particular week I’m going to talk about successful mounting strategies. Some of you may have seen a similar webinar a month or so ago and it’s similar, but with a few updates. Okay, so I’m going to get right into it. I’ve got a lot of different things to talk about in terms of mounting and every application is a little bit different. There are, you know, flat roofs, flush roof, tilt mount, ridge mount, steep slopes, shallow slopes can mount directly to the rafters on the rail systems. And neither option is better. It’s just everyone has a little bit different preferences. So, I’m going to try to present to you what SunMaxx has done to help make your job easier and give you the flexibility to install these collectors as you see fit. Okay. So, first of all let me talk for a moment about the new mounting hardware for the TitanPower Plus collector, our engineers have been hard at work and have come up with a very simple and obviously meets and exceeds code in terms of wind and strength requirements. And also, it’s extremely adaptable, very easy to install. I recently installed a system on my own home using the new mounting hardware for the TitanPower Plus and I was extremely happy with how easy it was to put together. Okay. Now, in terms of a single row of collectors versus two collectors or one collector, or multiple banks, the TitanPower Plus hardware gets assembled either a rail mount or without the rail and then the back legs mount directly to the roof. As you see in this picture, this is a photograph of the installation I did at my house. And I used the rail approach. I mounted the rails directly to the purlins off of some roof hooks, which I’ll show you in just a moment. Once the system was… Once the connect system was installed, the collectors simply sit on the rail system. And mounting the actual collectors took me and two of my friends only about 20 minutes to get all the collectors up on the roof and in place. So, once all the ground work is done in terms of mounting to the roof and setting the rails in place, putting the collectors is actually the easiest part, okay. It all starts with this roof hook and flashing. Whether you decide to go directly at point of penetration where you mount the feet directly to the roof or you use the rail, this is the first step. There are several different products out there that accomplish the same thing. Our roof hooks are adaptable for either point of penetration as in mounting the collectors directly to the roof or to the rail. The metal flashing clips sits underneath a shingle by about four inches, so, four inches of it needs to be underneath the row of shingles just above. And then we use these self threading screws to drill directly into the rafter. So, you’re not affixed to a particular rafter placement or position of your collectors, the roof hooks not to the rafters. Once you install a rail then you can slide the collectors to the left or to the right and make it symmetrical. So, these roof hooks have a very high sheer strength and they are aluminum. Now, once you install the flashing there’s absolutely no concern whatsoever for a roof leaking. In a system that I installed, I’ll go back one slide; you can tell I have a metal roof, okay. Well, what I did was use a small piece of butyl underneath the roof hook between the roof hook and the metal. And then I put a piece of butyl self adhesive butyl, on top of the roof hook. So I flashed on top of the metal and I am 100% confident for the life of this system that I will never have any roof leaks as bulk of my roofing skills, right. I know that using this roof hook with flashing will guarantee that there’s not going to be any leakage in my system. Okay. One of the next steps is the connection rail. Now, the rails are threaded to accept these Allen bolts. Okay, see the Allen bolt, those thread directly into the rail. So, once I install the rail anywhere along the roof hooks, and I have to space the roof hooks out four feet center on center. Okay, so I don’t want to put the roof hooks any more than four feet apart. The strength of the rail allows for displacement weight over four feet, but no more. Okay. So, the Allen bolts will thread directly into the rail as seen in the clip on the left. And on the right is the clip that attaches the collector to the rail. Okay, so the photo on the left is attaching the rail to the roof hook and the photo on the right is the clip that helps you attach the collector to the rail. Both of them use the self threaded Allen bolts that will thread directly into the rail, which makes it very easy and quick to install. Okay. It is a metric Allen and if memory serves me it’s nine millimeters. However, a small Allen wrench comes with your system. So, if you don’t have the Allen wrench you will have one included and shipped out to you in a little baggie. Okay. Now, in terms of creating back legs for these, there’s two pieces. Basically, one is the vertical support leg, which is made of the same rail or extrusion as the rail. So, some simple “L” brackets will connect the vertical rail to the horizontal rail and then the back leg. Now, in my case, I went with, what you see here is the hardware for a flat roof or a flat mounting install. In other words you’re either mounting them on the ground or in a flat roof. Okay, so I went with a flat roof, although my roof was not flat, I simply cut the back legs. Alright, so some simple trigonometry, which your sales rep can help you with or it’s also in our technical manual. Based on the roof pitch you will cut the back legs to achieve the desired angle, okay and then, obviously the “L” bracket on the bottom of the back leg will just slide up in the extrusion and mount directly to the rail. Okay, for long banks and collectors you have to union rails together. Okay, so there’s two rails that you’re going to use. One is the extrusion rail that mounts directly to the roof hooks, on the left. And those rail unions, along with their Allen bolts, will thread directly into the rail creating nice tight union between two rails, displacing the weight, hopefully. And on the right a “T” profile rail. Now, I’ll show you later on what a “T” profile does. That is basically the seat for the collectors. So, the “T” profile will mount to the rail and then the collectors will sit in the “T” profile and there’s small bolts that will thread into those slots that you see on the “T” profile gives at its strength. Here’s an up close picture of the “L” brackets that mount directly to the rail. Okay. So, what you’re seeing here is the vertical rail that the collectors lay onto. The “L” brackets then will mount directly to the horizontal rail that you’ve attached to the roof hook. Okay and this is all using the same Allen bolts. There’s a couple that are a different lengths, but they’re all labeled appropriately in your packaging. On the picture on the right you also see a clip. Now, that tension clip is going to accept the “T” profile. So, it makes it very adaptable by being able to adjust the back legs and front legs, to the left or to the right on the rail means they don’t necessarily need to measure exactly the length of my rail ‘cause I have flexibility laterally and as well as flexibility vertically in terms of distance because those little clips will slide up or down the rail, depending where you want your collector to be mounted. So, it makes it extremely versatile and adaptable, but also there’s a lot of wiggle room in terms of making exact penetrations into the roof. It’s not critical. There’s a lot of room for errors so to speak. We don’t particularly encourage error, but we do encourage efficiency. And this allows you to mount your collectors, err, mount your roof hooks in places where, you know, you’re going to get the tightest connection and then you have flexibility in terms of where your collectors mount relative to the roof hook. Alright, in this picture what you see is a TitanPower Plus flush mount. Now, you notice there’s two roof hooks on the bottom and two roof hooks on the top. So, that’s consistent with the recommendations that we make in terms of the number of roof hooks it is required per flat plate collector. Okay. Your sales rep will be sure to design your mounting system depending on what your considerations are. So, all that you need to know is will you put one or two collectors in series. And do you want flush mount or tilt mount? Once our sales rep has that information they’ll make sure that you have all the correct components included. Now, we do recommend that the roof hooks are placed in the middle of each adjoining collector. Okay, so whether you have two collectors or one collector it’s still going to require a total of four roof penetrations. So, four roof hooks, four flashings. Now, this is showing the tilt mount hardware. Okay, now the tilt mount would require three points of penetration as opposed to the flush mount. Flush mount tends to be less expensive because there are less components required. It’s also much easier to install. And I would like to make this recommendation now because it’s appropriate that if you have a roof that’s within 20 to 30 degrees pitch of what is the recommended, that the flat plate and the evacuated tube collectors will still perform within about five percent of their expected performance. So, when considering whether to do a flush mount as in this picture here, versus a tilt mount off the roof the to be added benefit to achieving that proper angle is really quite minimal. So, it’s important to consider obviously performance, but equally important, and in some cases even more important, it is to consider aesthetics, okay. So, I highly encourage you to consider flush mounting your collectors whenever possible. Flush mounting is going to be easier to install. It’s going to require less components and the performance sacrifices are going to be minimal. To be sure your sales rep will be happy to run a report at the various angles that you’re looking to make your installation. Okay, so again, if you have a roof pitch that is within 20 to 30 degrees of what the optimum pitch should be for your collectors you may consider just simply doing a flush mount rather than tilt mount, for three reasons, aesthetics, cost and installation time, which obviously, saves money as well. Okay, here’s another picture of the tilt mount using a rail system. Okay, now with the rail you accomplish obviously, weight disbursement, but more importantly you’re not fixed to rafter location relative to where your collectors are. And so, often, the back legs of collectors do not line up perfectly with the rafters. So, by using the rail system you can mount your roof hooks wherever your rafters are and then move your collectors laterally depending on where you’d like to see them sit on your roof, whether it’s aesthetics or performance, you have lateral movement on the rail whereas you would not have lateral movement with point of penetration mounting that is the back legs mounted directly to the roof. There are some exceptions to that, which I’ll cover in a minute, but generally you want to mount to the rafters. Okay, now here’s a tilt mount without using the rail. So, as I mentioned these points of penetration really should be at the location of the rafter. Okay, if you don’t find a rafter then we’re going to have to have access to these points of penetration underneath the roof. And we’re going to have to use toggle bolt or we’re going to have to use a spanner between the rafters, something that secures this entire collector bank to the roofing system rather than just the decking. This is even more important with flat plate collectors than with evacuated tubes, that you have your collector system mounted to the roof rather than mounted to the decking. And when I say roof, I’m talking about the structural components, that is the rafters or the trusses. Okay, so with flat plates you have a considerable amount of lift, a consistent and considerable amount of lift, on this roof system, especially if your collectors obviously, are facing to the south or in the southeast that means the back of your collectors would be facing to the southwest or the northwest where a lot of the prevailing winds come from. So, it’s important that you secure your collector system to the structural members of the roof and not just the decking. Okay, this is accomplished using a rail versus point of penetration. Okay, now in terms of roof penetrations, obviously you want to make sure that you don’t have to go back, and when you use a flashing materials such as the one shown here, this is PV quick mount that we used to use and I think it’s a very good product, you’re going to ensure that there is no roof leaking. When you do use these penetrations such as roof hook from SunMaxx or a quick mount PV, those ballasts, so to speak, should not exceed more than 48 inches apart. Okay, so if you have the wrong run, say of 10, 12, 20 feet or more, you’re going to have to use multiple rails. And I did show some connections that can be made to union the rails together to maintain a consistent strength. It’s also recommended that you pre-drill holes into your rafters, ¼ inch holes. In terms of rafter screws, we recommend that you use a three inch high sheer strength screw and that it be self threading, right, or that you pre-drill the hole. In terms of mounting these ballasts to purlins, for example, if the purlin is just an inch and a half material on its side then a three inch screw may not give you the support that you need. So, you know, you have that inch on the top of the screw where there’s no threads at all. So, you want to make sure that you know what you’re going to be screwing into and that the majority of your threads on the screw are holding the material that you are tying into. Okay, so if you do order the roof hooks from SunMaxx, you will get three inch screws, which is going to be suitable for rafter mounts, but if you did mount to purlins, for example, like I did, I had to replace my three inch screws, I went with shorter inch and ¾ screws to be sure my threads are mounted to my purlin. Now, there’s several different ways to mount to a roof. Five of which I mentioned here. This spanner method is where you have access to the rafters and below then you create a spanner between the rafters that you can mount your penetrations directly to the spanner. And this sort of serves the same purpose as mounting with a rail. It gives you horizontal flexibility to move back and forth and you’re not fixed to the location of your rafters. Another one is a lag bolt using flashing. Okay, the lag bolt, like I mentioned, should be at least three inches that’s going to all you to bolt directly to your rafters. Toggle bolts work. They are a little bit more cumbersome to work with and it works well if you have access to the roof below. The toggle bolt should be pretty big with a washer. Some guys are using a piece of plywood as a washer, so they’re using a four inch disk of plywood that acts as the washer for the toggle bolt and I do recommend that as well. “J” bolts have been used quite often in mounting to roofs. And basically, if you’re going to use a “J” bolt, you are fixed to the location of the rafter and you also need to have access to the rafter itself so that you know exactly where to drill and the “J” can then hook on to the bottom of the rafter. A pitch pan is one of the older methods that’s still being in use. Basically, you mount your lag bolt in through a pan that has a hole in the bottom that’s going to be filled with tar. So, it basically prevents any water penetration. Okay, mounting to rafters as you see here, the “J” bolt and the lag bolt detailed, “J” bolts are being used for, consistently for, but like I said, if you’re fixed to the location of the rafter, if you’re going to use a “J” bolt. As with the lag bolt, although with a lag bolt you can also mount in the case of metal loops, you can mount to the purlins if the purlins are made of a material that’s at least 2 x 4 inches. Okay. Using evacuated tubes, our hardware is universal, which is very important for those of you who are doing both tubes and flat plates. The hardware is interchangeable for either style collector. Okay, and as I mentioned, no matter what you should not exceed more than 48 inches between your standoffs. Okay, now flat plate flush mount, I think is probably the most aesthetically appealing system. Not to mention, as I said before, it’s the least expensive. It’s simplest to install, but in the end it looks very, very good. So, this roof being only at about a 35 degree slope would normally be situated at a 55 degree pitch for heating and I do remember running a report at 35 degrees versus 55 degrees and this client is sacrificing only about 7% of the total system outcome, total system output year round too, but mounting it flush rather than having it tilt mount. So, if you did a double bank of collectors, such as the one here with the tilt mount, there’d be a fairly extensive system supporting those collectors off of the roof and gaining only about 7% total output. Okay, so it is a very important consideration to make and understand what losses you’re going to incur if you go the flush mount versus tilt mount. Here’s an example of mounting the “T” profile directly to the roof. And I’ll show you a photo in just a minute of how the “T” profiles mount to the collectors, but those little clips that you see there, those tension clips, can be mounted either to a hanger bolt as you see in that photo or the tension clips can be mounted directly to the rail. Okay, so all of our components, as I said, are interchangeable and adaptable for just about any roof style. Okay the “T” profile, when used with the hanger bolt, is going to mount directly to the “T” profile and then your “T” profile, as you can see here, mounts directly to the collector. You see the bolt being inserted through the slot of the “T” profile and that connects directly to the stainless steel frame of the collectors. So, there’s no other components required once the “T” profile is installed on the roof. It makes for a very simple installation especially for flush mounting. Okay, and this is what the final product looks like when you use a “T” profile connected directly to the collector and then the “T” profiles connected to the clip, which is connected to a hanger bolt, which is bolted directly into a rafter with a piece of flashing, okay. And that is a done deal, guaranteed not to leak for the life of the system. Now, there’s several different strategies I want to go over now just in terms of using your vacuum heat pipes and increasing your performance. Underneath the collectors with a highly reflective roof surface, you can boost performance of these collectors and I’ve seen actual performance numbers increase anywhere from 20 to 30 percent, depending on the type of reflective surface. So, when you’re installing the evacuated tube system, which I know that a lot of you are, it’s very important that you increase the reflectivity behind those collectors. Now, this is something you can suggest to the homeowner or that you can include as part of the system installation, but nevertheless you can guarantee that your system will perform better for the life of the system by increasing the reflectivity behind the vacuum heat pipes. And I would also point out that there’s a highly reflective roof coating that Sherwin Williams makes for $35.00 a gallon that can be painted directly on metal or asphalt shingles. So, I highly recommend looking at increased reflectivity. In terms of some different types of mounting there’s, you know, ridge mount as with the one that you see on the right. This client, his house was facing 90 degrees in the wrong direction, so he decided to do a ridge mount. I would caution you that making this system mounted perpendicular to the plane of the house does really destruct the aesthetic appeal, if that’s consideration. And the added benefit in terms of performance from 90 degrees off of ideal may only be in the neighborhood of 20 to 25 percent increase performance. Okay, so you have to consider, very carefully, before you mount to a ridge, is it worth it. And check with your SunMaxx rep. Ask them to do a report at the various azimuth angles and then you’ll know exactly what value you’re going to sacrifice by mounting it along the same slope as the house. Moveable rays are not recommended, but they are possible. The reason they’re not recommended is because you have piping then instead of forming electrons you’re forming pressurized fluid, which tends to try to escape. And so the more often you move your array the more likely you’re going to have some leakage. And knowing that your sacrifices in performance are not nearly those sacrifices that you’ll see in PV systems, it’s not recommended that you design a moveable system. Okay, now in terms of ground mounting, a lot of systems, a lot of guys who really like the ground mount because they’re easily accessible, they’re easy to clean, any maintenance problems and they’re also not subject to the particular angle of inclination and orientation of the house. They can be put offsite somewhere. We usually recommend that these systems not be installed more than 150 feet away from the house because once you exceed 150 feet you begin to experience a tremendous amount pressure drop, which means bigger pump and perhaps bigger piping and bigger piping is going to mean more losses. Okay, so a general rule about the ground mounting is that you not put these mounts more than 150 feet from the house. Now, ground mounts can be pretty difficult, but in cases where it’s the only option it is certainly not impossible to put a collector just about anywhere you want. In this particular system that was recently commissioned near Cooperstown, New York, the installer chose to use a cleared approach to the collectors. So rather than having them manifold to manifold to manifold, with brass unions, they are union together, but with flexible ConnectMax piping. Okay, so small sections are used to join one collector to the next. There’s a little bit more added cost for installation, obviously digging the holes and pouring the concrete, but the homeowner had a nice suitable location on a hillside, and you can pretty much guarantee that they are at the proper orientation and proper inclination. Okay, so ground mounting on flat ground and also underneath ground is very doable. It just needs to be well thought out. Mounting collectors on a flat roof is important to know that the evacuated tubes have very little wind load. And if you notice the picture here on the left these collectors are mounted just through these concrete blocks that are setting on the roof and in the picture on the right these evacuator tube collectors are used for shading for a carport. So, flat roof mounting is very easily done and often does not even have to penetrate the roof in order to accomplish that. Here’s another example of ridge mounting where the back legs of the collectors are straddling the ridge, still facing the same direction as the house. So, we’re not perpendicular to the ridge, but we are ridge mounting it by straddling the ridge. Okay, another flat roof install one important thing I’d like to point out in terms of flat roof install, particularly in the northern climates, is snow and we recommend that you bring your collector feet off of the roof by at least 12 inches in areas that are prone to snow loads. This will keep your collectors out of the snow, obviously. Allow for movement underneath the collectors, but it’ll act as a snow fence because often, if they’re connected directly to the roof, with no movement underneath, then you’re going to see the collectors work as sort of a snow fence. And there’ll be big piles of snow that trap behind the collectors. So, bring them up at least 12 inches. Here’s another example where the owner had used the white roofing to increase performance of the collectors. Pole mounts, in the case of, on the right hand side, this single pole mount is actually functioning as a pass through for the supply and return piping as well as the support structure for the collector itself. So, this install was able to get away with a single point of penetration using a steel pole to which he passed a supply and return. The one on the left with the core reflectors, this particular homeowner did not want his collectors on the roof at all. So, the installer was able to accommodate by doing a pole. Obviously, it’s going to raise the cost up considerably. Using concrete standoffs is also recommended particularly for evacuated tubes, ground mounts. This entire collector field is not mounted to the ground at all. They are simply bolted to these concrete standoffs that act as concrete shoes, for example. And the wind load being less than what the collector weighs, by adding these blocks and bringing them up off the ground, these are off the ground 18 inches as opposed to a foot. So, they’ve exceeded what we recommended, but they’re insuring that there will be no snow buildup on the bottom of the feet. In terms of reducing your summertime production, successful mounting can accomplish that, for example with the one on the left, you see the roof that the collectors are sitting on is acting as a shade for the bottom row reflectors in the summertime. So, he’s got four collectors total, only two of which are really operational in the summer, and then as the sun drops in the sky the bottom row becomes functional, or façade mounts, like these “U” pipes. Flat plates and evacuated tubes, if you do evacuated tube façade mount it’s got to be direct flow or a “U” type collector. Okay, flat plate collectors can be façade mounted and these are typically used for heating systems where you’re producing excess energy or more energy in the winter and then the production actually drops in the summertime with a perfect 90 degree slope. Overheating in situations where you have access to the collectors, they can be covered up, in a ground mounts not very accessible on the roof, but by having a steep angle, just like the façade mount you can also reduce your production. Drain back systems need to be mounted at ¼ inch tilt per foot whether it’s a sloped roof like the one you see on the right, or a flat roof as in on the left, all the manifolds need to be mounted at the ¼ inch of slope per foot. Now, ballast systems for collectors can be concrete like this or, pardon me, or they can be a wood ballast and if you do a concrete ballast then you use the hanger bolt. Those hanger bolts that you saw previously that spread directly into the rafter can also be put into concrete and then use the machine threaded to bolt the collector feet together. And then again, there’s your clip with your “T” profile and the collector mounts directly to the “T” profile. Now, here’s a couple of pictures showing the point of penetration with it over the shed. And then with the green roof this client chose to use the rail system. Okay, the considerations you have to make again are what type of wind load would your collectors be under. Okay, with evacuated tubes you can get away with mounting your collectors to the roof decking with some washers and big washers underneath. So, you’re basically connecting your collectors to the plywood that is then connected to the rafters. Not recommended for flat plates however, because of the wind load. The rail system just makes installation a little bit easier because you’re not fixed to the rafter location you can mount your rails and then mount your collectors and then slide them down as you see fit. Okay, a couple of important things I’d just like to bring up in terms of mounting strategy considerations. The ConnectMaxx hardware is universal. And so it’s universal in the sense that it mounts to flat plates as well as pitched roof, sloped roof, ridge mount, façade mount, cantilever, rail system versus not rail system. There’s virtually no roof that this ConnectorMaxx hardware cannot be incorporated. And so it’s very important that you locate your sales rep and understand what you’re trying to accomplish and they will include the most appropriate ConnectMaxx hardware for whatever it is that you’re trying to accomplish. And it’s all put together with a single Allen wrench, which is included as well. I’m more than happy to respond to anybody’s questions that you have. And I encourage you to join us again next week. Okay Dave, one second I’ll answer that, one moment. So, again, feel free to email me if you have any particular questions check our solarwebinars.com for archives of all the webinars. I think we’re up to, actually I don’t even know, 16, 17, 18 webinars at this point. So, we’re giving quite a lot of information to you guys as quickly as possible. If you have any suggestions for webinar topics that you’d like to see I am definitely interested in doing that as today I’m doing another schedule for the third quarter of 11, so please do take advantage of that. Send me emails with your questions and I’ll be happy to respond. Now, in terms of wind load, before we close, the wind load for flat plate collectors, the hardware is rated for 110 mph winds. Okay, so we have passed and rated our hardware at 110 mph winds. It’s apparently in testing right now for 160 mph winds. According to the mathematics that we’ve used it will pass the 160 mph test, but we don’t have that official stamp of approval yet. But, we do have a rating at 110 mph winds for both flat plate and evacuator tube. As you know evacuator tubes suffer from much less wind load than flat plates and require less material to connect to the roof. However, since our ConnectMaxx hardware is universal we’re using both flat plate and evacuated tubes for this hardware, they are, in the case of evacuated tubes, the hardware is probably well exceeds what’s required in order to hold it down in, you know, hurricane force winds. Okay, well there you have it. I’m going to officially end the webinar. Don, I went with flat plates on my house because of a radiant floor where I needed extremely low temperature heat load and it is also a question of aesthetes in terms of my house design. And so that’s a very good question and it’s not an easy answer. I went back and forth with flat plates versus evacuated tubes and it really just came down to what is most applicable for my particular application. Okay, thank you all take care and have a great Monday and I wish you the best of all available sunshine. Take care.

SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS MOUNTING STRATEGIES Date: 10/04/2010 I’d like to welcome you again to another edition of our SunMaxx Solar Hot Water Solutions webinar series. Today we’re going to be talking about mounting strategies for both flat plates and evacuated tube collectors using some of the best practices that we’ve seen. And I’d also like to introduce our new set of mounting hardware solutions that I think you’ll find very effective in both structurally, but also cost. Can anyone confirm for me please that they can hear me? Okay good. Alright, so as always you have a chat box and I welcome you to type in any questions that you have since it’s a small group with us today. I can very easily respond to your questions, try to do it immediately. So, without further ado we have just a half an hour and I try to be punctual. The new mounting hardware that is included with our collectors is really its custom designed for each job. We designed it so that it was universal. Okay, so as you can see the same hardware used at a very large job that was recently installed in hardware with 150 flat plates, uses the same hardware in a slightly different configuration. So, what we have to offer you is a customized solution based on a universal set of materials, hardware. Alright, as you can see in the picture, the rails that were used in a harder job run from the top of the collector down to the bottom of the collectors and with smaller residential jobs, as you see in the picture photo on the right, that the rail is used horizontally, okay. So let me go through each of these components piece by piece. It really begins with our roof penetrations; this roof hook system that we’ve developed. I think you’ll find there are similar products available, but at a much higher cost. So a couple of things I’d like to point out about this roof hook with flashing is that you don’t need to pre-drill any holes that the screws, the lag screws that are included are self tapping or self drilling screws. So, once you’re able to find the rafter, then all you’ve got to do is center your roof hook over the rafter and drill those two lag screws and those are high sheer strength lag screws, directly into the rafter itself. We don’t recommend that you need any other waterproofing sealant. Some installers prefer to use tar or rubber with every penetration, but this is designed so you don’t need that extra barrier, okay. So, you see a flashing that’s going to slip…your gridlines represent your shingle patterns, the flashing will slip up underneath the shingle on top of your roof hook and bolts. So, the strength that comes with this system like this, I believe it can support 400 pounds of uplift and 400 pounds of down pressure as well as 120 mph winds and 180 pounds of sheer strength. So, it’s an extremely strong roofing strategy. Now, from this main roof hook we’re gong to attach a rail. The rail, as you can see in two different depictions here, is threaded. So, you notice the Allen bolt gets threaded directly into the rod. So, what you’re seeing in the picture on your left is that roof hook gets bolted directly into the side of the rail, okay. And that can be mounted anywhere along the rail. We recommend that you don’t space those roof hooks more than 48 inches apart, okay. So, you’re not limited to the location of your rafters, really, if they’re not perfectly two or 16 inch on center, you can mount your roof hooks anywhere along that rail. And then all you need is an Allen screw and you can connect the bolt directly to the rail. On the picture to the right is the clip that’s going to be fastened to the rail to mount, eventually, to your collector, okay. So, with the titan power plus collectors you have a threaded well that will accept your Allen bolt in that slot on the top of that clip, okay. So again, it gives you a lot of flexibility in lateral movement of your collectors and you can be symmetrical. You can line it up perfectly in the center of the roof if you like. You can move it to the left or to the right. Now, these rails come in five, seven and eight foot lengths, okay, and all of which we have in stock ready to ship. So, I would recommend that you converse with your sales rep. Your sales rep has a software that’s going to design the components required to accomplish what it is that you’re trying to do in terms of your mounting. Now, should you need to put several rails together, we do sell two different style rail. The one on the left is the newer rail that has the threaded channel. And that union has four, all the bolts are included, it has four Allen bolts that will thread directly into the rail. And then on the right the “T” profile, this is a rendering of the “T” rail, there’s a simple clip that will secure with ridges and pinch down and fasten the two rails together, okay. So again, regardless of your placement, we recommend that you don’t space the roof hooks more than 48 inches apart. Now for back legged frames, for if you’re going to do a tilt mount or on a flat roof, you’re going to connect the rail to the back leg using these simple clips, now again, with the stainless steel Allen bolts, will thread directly into the collector frame. Now, in terms of the feet for… Why I get a “no” from you is you’re having trouble hearing, I presume? Maybe you can work that out, try to refresh. Now, the feet will again, mount anywhere along the back leg. So depending on, if I go backwards for a minute, depending on the length of the back leg required, all you have to do is cut the back leg to your designed length and the foot of that rail can move up the back leg to the desired, so that you can set the desired angle, okay. So as you notice, there are the threaded receptacle always goes on the outside to accept that bolt and then you install this stopper that will allow your collector to sit right in place and fasten at the bottom of the frame, okay. Now, for flush mounts, what you see here are a total of four roof hooks with their associated flashing, and you see how the rail connects to the roof hook with the clip that I showed you before and then the collectors mount to the rail with the collector clip. Now, that collector clip has got to only be spaced the appropriate distance to meet the threaded well to accept the Allen bolt, okay. The only consideration you have to make when setting your roof hooks is the height of the collector, okay, not necessarily the distance between. So, you set your roof hooks at 48 inches and you have your height, which should be pre-determined. Okay, can anyone else hear me? There appears to be a little difficulty, so if you wouldn’t mind just confirming if someone can still hear me. It never fails there always a bit of technical difficulty when trying to pull this off, but I think we should be all set. Okay, thanks Dennis. Alright, well, okay well, in terms of quality of audio I can make some adjustments after the fact, but now we’ll just have to run with it. So, for the flush mount you’re going two rails. You get two rails and four roof hooks with the flashing and then you mount the rails directly to the collector. It makes it very nice, clean look. These rails are aluminum all the other hardware, the bolts are stainless steel, so there shouldn’t be any corrosion issues. The collectors, as you might remember, are also stainless steel framed so you have stainless steel mounting directly to the stainless steel. The space underneath the collectors is about only two to 2 ½ inches between the bottom of the collector and the roof. The space between the collectors is going to be about 1.5 inches, okay. So you do get, with a flush mount flat plates, you get a real nice clean look, almost like a skylight. Now, in terms of a flat roof mount, like I showed you before, you’re going to have these feet in place of the rail. Now, there’s two ways to use the back rail. One would be using the back rail for your feet now unfortunately the location of these feet, as they move down toward the roof, do not align themselves perfectly with the rafters. So, if you would like to have that added precaution, where your collector leg is mounted to a rail rather than the roof, you’re going to use, obviously, this rail again, with a four foot roof hook spacing and then you can move your rail laterally. You can also mount these directly to the roof with other methods, for instance, and I’ll talk about them in a minute, a spanner method. So, whereas you know, you can find your outside legs can certainly mount directly to a rafter, but then the other two legs will have to be mounted to the roof decking with a toggle bolt, with a block between the rafters or with a spanner rod that’s going to connect right up through your roof hook, okay. So, in this case you have six roof penetrations as opposed to four roof penetrations. So, going back to the rail we’ve got the same square footage of collector, but we’re using only two roof penetrations for the bottom rail and only two roof penetrations for the top. And should you decide to not use a rail you would save yourself a bit of money, probably less than $50.00 savings because you’re going to have to buy two additional roof hooks, but now you have six roof penetrations, okay. So, you really want to try to minimize the number of roof penetrations. In the end it’s going to pay for itself. Okay, now there are several different ways to penetrate the roof, all of which should include a flashing. And the flashings can be made for asphalt shingles as well as cedar shake shingles, or ceramic tile shingles. Unfortunately, there’s no real good flashing for metal roof, but in the case of metal roofs, we use a rubber washer similar to the way the fasteners connect the roof to the rafters. The fasteners are designed to withstand the weather using the rubber washer on the top. So, we can recommend that same. When you use this type of system, where you have a flashing, you’ve got to be sure that your flashing extends up into the shingles at least four inches, okay. So, the only recommendation is that you choose your movement, your vertical movement, the location of your point of penetration, should allow for four inches of penetration up underneath the row of shingles above it, okay. Okay, now there’s five general methods that are tried and true for connecting directly to the roof, right. These have been in practice for quite some time. A spanner method with a threaded rod, this allows you to locate your points of penetration, regardless of location of the rafter. Okay, so the only draw back is you have to have access to the rafters, so for method number one, using a spanner will allow you to locate your point of penetration anywhere on the roof, but you have to have access to those rafters and you can simply put a block between the rafters and then drill up from the bottom, through the roof. That’s going to be your point of penetration. And rather than using a lag bolt you’ll use a threaded rod, okay. Now, in terms of a lag bolt with flashing, I’ve already spoke about that, but you do need to find the rafter, the exact location of the rafter because you’re going to want to split the rafter. Bosch makes a very nice rafter binder and I believe the cost is somewhere around $200.00, but that’s going to give you a very nice image with the exact locations of the rafters so that you can split and so you don’t jeopardize the integrity of the rafter. Another one is the “J” bolt. “J” bolt does the same as a lag bolt would do it’s just that the “J” bolt is to the side of the rafter rather than in the center of the rafter. Now, you still need to use a rafter finder or you can have access to the rafters and drill up from the bottom. Now, in terms of using this on a metal roof, these will all work on a metal roof, and metal roof manufacturers now recommend that you do not drill through the ridges, rather that you drill through the valleys of the middle roof and you use a rubber neoprene washer between the metal roof and your metal washer on the lag bolt. Okay, so you can in fact, use these with metal roofs, but as I mentioned, it’s very difficult to flash unless you build your roof around those. So, rather than using flashing, you’ll use a rubber washer that comes with our lag bolts, okay. So we sell separate lag bolts, they’re about 10 inches long, and they have the lag threads, wood threads, on the bottom with a double nut on the top separated by a rubber washer. So, you can fasten them directly down through the valley of your metal roofing as you would your fasteners. Greg that’s a great question. I’m not positive that the Bosch rafter finder works on metal roofs. I would have to guess that it would, although I cannot confirm that. Okay, now moving on to give you an idea of the “J” bolt detail, the “J” bolt, like I said, you have to locate your points of penetration directly next to the rafter and you have to be able to find the rafter. You’re going to drill from the bottom up through the roof rather than drilling from the top. This allows you to insert your “J” bolt up from the bottom and in the “J”. Part of that bolt will connect it with the rafter, okay. Now, when it comes to mounting the vacuum tubes to the roof, just like the flat plates, they don’t align themselves perfectly with the rafters. The points of penetration should really align themselves with the rafters. So, in this case its better that you use the rail system, okay. The rail will allow you to mount directly to the rafter and then if you see this photograph here, the feet of the evacuated tube collector, which are included, alright, so with a vacuum tube collector, you get the entire collector frame, some of which you may not need, but the details from the rail down will be the same for flat plates and evacuated tubes. The only difference is the connection between the vacuum tube collector and the rail will be accomplished by the feet of the collector, whereas the connection between a flat plate and the rail will be accomplished by a separate clip that comes with your mounting hardware, okay. Now, flat plate flush mounts are probably the most aesthetically appealing. And for those of you who have been through our level one training, you do recognize and you should remember that the performance losses from a decreased angle, are really quite minimal, okay. And so it’s hard to be exact without using a specific example, but for example, we have a roof pitch here that appears to be about 30 degrees. So, these collectors are mounted at 30. Knowing the location, presumably in Upstate New York, just I recognize this install in Syracuse, the angle, the optimum angle for this installation would be 42. So, they’ve lost 12 degrees in their angle by mounting them flush. What does 12 degrees do to the loss in performance? It turns out that they should have expected loss and performance of less than 6%, okay. And so what is the payback on that 6% in terms of aesthetics and also ease of installation? Flush mounts are much easier to install and they look much nicer, okay. So, please remember that many of your future jobs will be referral based, and most referrals, whether we like it or not, will be based on the aesthetic appeal, not only internally of the piping and tank and pump station arrangement, but also on the aesthetic appeal of the mounting, even more so because people will see those a lot more readily than they’ll see the internal guts of the system. So, please do consult with your sales rep or if you have specific questions you can email me regarding your losses and from, you know, a 30degree angle versus a 42 degree angle, would have a significant difference on aesthetic appeal. Okay, now in terms of mounting “T” profiles to the roof, the “T” profile is another option for using the rail system. This is a more cost effective approach, but the strength of these rails and versatility of the rails are less. So, SunMaxx has decided to go with a much more universal and versatile system, but we do still offer this “T” profile as they’re very cost effective solution for flush mount systems, okay. And what you see here is a photo of our hanger bolts that are mounted directly into a rafter with a piece of flashing and you see the black rubber gasket. Okay, the “T” profile is going to mount directly to the collector. You see the bolt being inserted into the manifold, err, I’m sorry, into the collector frame. This piece that you see on the roof here, it would be the top. And then for the bottom rail the orientation would be the opposite. So, most of the weight of that collector would mount on the bottom rail. Using the hanger bolt you can see a nice clean look. The rubber washer that you see here, in the case of a metal roof, would sit directly on that metal flashing or directly on the roof, okay. And these little clips secure the “T” rail to the hanger bolt. So, the amount of installation time required for this new system and the difference between the “T” rail is minimal. Both the roof hooks and the hanger bolt option is going to take you, honestly less than two minutes per penetration. Okay, so once you find the rafters, the penetration is securing the roof hook or the hanger bolt is less than two minutes. So, it’s quite easy to do. I want to point out a couple of variations in collector mounting, especially for the vacuum tubes; you can see a high degree of reflectivity is going to increase the performance upwards of ten to fifteen percent. And I’ve even seen collectors that are performing 20% more than what we would anticipate because of that reflectivity, okay. With a flush mount system reflectivity is very easy. You can simply paint the roof. One thing that we discourage is by adding too much behind the collector on a tilt mount because you’ll increase the wind load. Okay, SunMaxx has decided that the value in reflectivity, by including a reflective surface on the collector itself, reflectivity does decrease dramatically. And so you’re better by increasing the reflectivity of the roof rather than increasing the reflectivity by adding a structure to the collector because you do add a significant amount of wind load. Sherwin Williams, for example, makes a highly reflective roof paint that is sold at $30.00 a gallon and you can simply paint your roof as this photo on the top portrays here. With those three collector in series the roof has been updated to become highly reflective. Another consideration is mounting these collectors miscellaneous in moveable array, although in theory, may provide an added benefit by decreasing the production in the summer and increasing it in the winter, which is what you’d like to see for systems. It takes a very, very special design and in some cases may not be worth the cost because as you know, angle of inclination there’s a high degree, about a 30 degree window before you begin to suffer any serious losses. When mounting this system on a ridge, as you see here, will increase the performance because if the house if oriented from north to south with the ridge line, then your options, other than doing it on a ridge would be to face the collectors to the east or facing the collectors to the west. And again, if the house is oriented magnetically north and south, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be that far off when you compensate for the magnetic declamation. So, you might not lose as much as you think by mounting them to the east or to the west. Richard, we don’t have a solution for ridge mount systems. A lot of it is going to be custom design. Now, I can tell you this, the hardware that is included with both the flat plates and the vacuum tubes, is universal and fully adjustable. So, with the additional purchase of a few extra rails and clips they can all be interconnected so that you can custom design a ridge mount. I will probably not recommend the ridge mount for flat plate collectors due to the significant wind load that would be involved there, okay. This is some examples of ground mount systems. Alright, the hardware that is included with the vacuum heat pipes, can be fully adjustable for ridge mount for ground mount. So, you notice the back legs are used to cantilever the bottom off. Okay, again, there’s very little wind load. So the frame that’s used to hold these collectors up really just needs to be designed to support the weight, okay. And the weight is only about 7 pounds per square foot, 5 pounds per square foot for flat plates. Flat roof installs with vacuum tubes are very easy to do. In this case we have very low wind load. So, these collectors are simply mounted or ballasted onto the roof with concrete pads, little concrete pavers to be exact and tapcons that are screwed. So, there’s no roof penetration. So, this is a gravel roof and basically the collectors are setting on the gravel roof with no penetrations at all. In the case… You have a little bit of shading. So, collectors can be used on apartment garages for shading. Richard, all of our mounting hardware is up to U.S. building code standards. So they are suitable for engineer stamps. Every piece that we use in our system has ratings that exceed required values. So, you could very easily get the engineered stamp with the hardware that’s included. Okay, and here’s another example of ridge mount rather than mounting it transverse along the ridge, it’s mounted parallel with the ridge, but the back legs are on the north face of the ridge and the front legs are on the south face of the ridge. Okay, this allows you to get a steep angle and disperse the weight of collector back on to both sides of the ridge. Again, you can do this effectively with vacuum heat pipes because of their low wind load. Okay, another example flat roof installs we do recommend that you bring the collectors up off the roof a minimum of one foot. No, I really don’t have anything at this point for awning mounts, although if Richard, if you email me I can give you a couple of examples. Okay, so we recommend that you bring your collectors up off the roof a minimum of 12 inches to get them out of the snow if you’re in snowy climates. And if you’re not in snowy climates then congratulations to you, although you probably do miss, or you would miss the snow, I think I would for all of its drawbacks. Okay, you can always increase performance easily with vacuum tubes as I mentioned by increasing the reflectivity and also by allowing any of that diffused radiation to strike the collectors on the back. Pole mounts are also a very good solution and… Okay, good thanks Richard. Pole mounts in some cases might be cost prohibitive. The photo on the left probably cost a considerable amount of money to get that south facing slope whereas if they had mounted on the east or the west they might not have lost as much as they think. In this case the collector, that single collector unit, is supported by a pole that houses the supply and the return. Concrete standoffs can be used on ground mount or roof mount. The picture on the left shows the concrete standoff being used on a gravel roof. And this is the Wallkill Prison job that has recently been completed, which is 18 inches up off the ground. Okay, and these are glued together. And then you fasten the feet or fasten to the concrete directly. I’d also like to point out summertime production can be decreased by mounting vacuum direct flow vertically, which gives you a lot of wintertime gain and then the photo with this installation where the gentleman built a roof so that both his rows of collectors are getting the wintertime gain, but the bottom row loses the summertime production because of the high angle of the sun. Ground mounts are easy to work with. If you decide to go with a ground mount you will have an easier time at washing your collectors, maintaining your collectors and also covering your collectors should you experience overheating system. Okay, drain backs to remind you, need to be mounted at a ¼ inch a tilt per foot. Both are flat plate titan power plus. And our vacuum tubes are suitable for drain back. Okay, in this case we have a rail mount using hanger bolts and the threaded rods; the double nut system is just used to create that angle on both the front and the back. Okay, to wrap it up a couple of important considerations that I want you to remember, that the universal mounting hardware is designed for any type of roof, not just any type of roof, but you can use them with any of our collectors, flush mount, tilt mount, flat roof mount, ground mount, ridge mount. It’s designed to be very customizable. And when you do decide to place an order with your sales rep be sure you know how you’d like to mount these collectors so they can very easily customize your mounting solution. Also, to remind you that our hardware does meet all the U.S. building codes, so you will be able to get engineered stamps with the use of our system. And not to preach to the choir, ‘cause I’m sure you know this, but it’s very important that you make every precaution to be sure there’s not going to be any water penetrations on your roof, okay. Your system will speak for itself and in performance and so will the lack of phone calls for service speak at your ability to install a system. So, please do make precautions that you don’t get a phone call during a rainy storm in the middle of the night. And also, know your local building codes. Your sales rep can forward to you our technical data sheets for all of our collectors that will include the information that might be required. Some building codes do require a very significant amount of detail for every single component and some don’t. So, you have to look at your own building codes. Okay, now, with that I’d like to thank you for joining us for this short discussion on mounting strategies. I welcome you to continue to join us. Hopefully you were able to pick up on some information. Stay tuned for next weeks solar webinar series and give us feedback, if you have any. I wish you all a great day and I thank you for your attention.

SUNMAXX SOLAR HOT WATER SOLUTIONS SOLAR HOT WATER MOUNTING STRATEGIES Date: 06/28/2010 Okay, well, I'd like to welcome you all to another of our SunMaxx Solar webinar series. Today we're gonna be talking about mounting strategies. Gotta short half hour PowerPoint planned, and I'd like to go over several techniques of how mounting various collectors-- thermal connectors to different types of roofs. For the rest of you who have been with us before, you can type a question in the little chat box and I'll try to respond to it right away. For those questions that are beyond me, we also have Kirsten Thorp, our solar hot water coordinator, she might be able to help you as well. So please feel free to type in any questions, and I'll either answer them directly and immediately or we can follow up after the webinar, okay. So what I'd like to first talk about are just a couple of options of connecting the collectors to the roof. How we fasten those to the rafters, or to the decking itself. But additionally, I'm gonna go over some different mounting techniques in terms of placement on the roof and how to make full advantage of the roof in terms of orientation and everything. Fastening to the roof has been pretty well established with these five most common and proven methods. The spanner with threaded rod, log bolt, toggle bolt, J-bolt and then the picture here shows a pitch fan. A pitch fan is one of the older methods. Basically you need to find a rafter and drop a lag bolt in. Lag bolts need to be at least 2 inches into a rafter regardless of the size of the rafter. We gotta go at least 2 inches and the lag bolt itself should be bigger than a 1/4 inch. So 3/8 is the most commonly used lag bolt, or for this particular method. So again, we gotta sink it in at least 2 inches, and the lag bolt outa be quarter inch, or 3/8 inch is even better. The spanner with a threaded rod, in method number one, we have to find the rafter. This only works if you have access to the rafter. And you put a spanner between the rafters. You can either cut the spanner to be the exact dimension from inside to inside and fasten those in between the rafters. Or the spanner could be placed outside the rafter, and basically spans several rafters. Using the spanner method, you can find any location on the roof where you wanna put your feet or your-- or your channel, and that location is determined by aesthetics or functionality, and that determined by location of the rafter. So the one benefit of using the spanner is it allows you to locate your points of fastening, regardless of location or the rafter. Okay, a lot of times, especially on small roofs you have some aesthetic appeal that you have to consider, and by mounting them to the rafters, it may be asymmetrical or. . . A lag bolt with flashing is probably one of the simplest methods and I'll show you a couple of pictures of that, again, but number two, you've gotta find the rafter. So if you have trouble finding the rafter then it can be relatively tricky because if your lag bolt is-- or if you're missing part of the rafter, then you can jeopardize the integrity of the rafter itself, so you really--if you use method number two, you've gotta be sure that you found the rafter, and that you know where the center of the rafter is. Toggle bolt is another one that has been used quite often. The only drawback to a toggle bolt is that you have to drill a sizable hole. And by drilling a larger hole, it usually means you've gotta some roof boots, or flashing, larger flashing to cover up that hole. However, like method number one, method number three allows you versatility. You can move anywhere you want on the roof. So you can really accommodate the aesthetic appeal with number three, because your not tied down to the location of the rafters. Another one, the J- bolt is pretty commonly used. In this case you've got to be able to find the rafter and access it from below. Okay, the J-bolt, just as the name would suggest, hooks around the bottom of the rafter. And so, the machine thread part sticks out of the roof, and allows you to mount right to the top of the J-bolt. And you're basically connecting it right to the roof structure without puncturing the rafter itself. So a lot of guys like that because it doesn't reduce the integrity of the roof -- of the rafter, but it does secure it to the rafter. And, obviously number five, the pitch fan, it's a lag bolt, but the pitch fan is a way to prevent any leaking through the pitch fan. And you fill that up with pitch and then you don't get any leaking through there, and that sort of serves the same purpose as other methods that use the neoprene washer. Okay, so just to show you, this picture of this J-bolt, you can see down here the J-bolt will wrap around the rafter and then you connect your threads and your standoff to the top of the roof. This one, like I mentioned before, minimum of 2 inch depth of the lag bolt into the rafter. Okay, so typically rafters are larger than 2x6 but a 2x6 means that we are gonna be sinking our lag bolt down half way through the rafter at least, okay. And again, the thickness of lag bolts should be 1/4 inch or bigger, 3/8 is better. The quarter inch lag bolt is a little bit on the small side but its okay if you don't have much wind load as with the evacuated tube installations. Okay, I wanted to point out in this particular install, the installer used quick mount PV, this is a flashing, with a lag bolt off of a standoff block. Now this particular installer required the location of the rafter so there's Bosch. Bosch makes really nice rafter finder. I've used it several occasions, and really can't come up with a better solution to finding the rafters. There's all sorts of techniques of using your hammer and listening for vibrations and even stud finders looking for nails, but nothing better-- nothing short of a rafter finder would make me confident that I've actually not only located a rafter, but finding the center of the rafter. So Bosch, I'm not sure of the price, its a couple hundred dollars, but probably money well spent, just in the confidence that you found the center of the rafter. When you use these quick mount type of roof penetrations, you can tie in the SunMaxx rail which is an extruded aluminum allows you to mount the feet right to that lag bolt and then the collectors can slide to the left or to the right anywhere they want, so your-- although the rail is mounted directly to the rafter and your fixed to the rafter point, the collectors themselves can slide horizontally and then if you have some ends, you can cut these ends off to allow them to look better, I suppose. Another important point that I should make is that these standoffs really shouldn't be more than 48 inches apart, using most manufactures rails systems. Rails are really designed to have at least a 48 inch pressure point and not to exceed that. So that becomes pretty easy. You can--the rafters are generally spaced out, 16 inches on center, so you shouldn't have too much trouble finding 48 inches where you can mount these standoffs. All right, now, to point out a couple of different flush mount flat plate installs, this particular one up in Syracuse is one of our most recent that this installer used the TitanPower plus, and a couple of things I wanna point out with this, is there's very little space between the roof and the collector itself. Actually an inch and a half of space, so it doesn't allow for much debris build up. Certainly some of the other collectors will allow for debris and even a home and a habitat for pigeons and whatnot, so there's very little space between the roof and the bottom of the collector, and in this case you really don't see the mounting hardware at all. And I'll show you that with the picture, what this hardware system looks like, and the space in between, these collectors are actually mounted to one another sitting on the same rail system, and the fittings allow them to have just about an inch and a half space between one collector and the next one in the same series. So these systems are mounted using our lag bolt which you see here, which is sunk into the rafter, and in this case we went in 4 inches. So we pre-drilled a quarter inch hole, and on the top of our lag bolts is a hex nut which allows us to tie right into our drill, and we can sink that in, it's got a neoprene washer, so you see a little neoprene washer there, and in this case we cut out a small piece of flashing and we slipped it up underneath the previous, this row of shingles, 4 inches. So we go up 4 inches and sunk our hangar bolt in place with the clips. Now these clips are gonna tie directly into this upside down or inverted T rail, okay. The T rail is gonna be the rail that the flat plates sit on, your gonna see here in the next picture. Okay, so here's our large hangar bolt. The hangar bolt can drop down, the distance here is 4 inches, so we try to get in and take in as much as this 4 inches as possible, and if we can go in even further with this remaining space, then we do. And then the clip is double nutted, so we can change the height of our collectors very easily with this double nut on the clip. We decided we wanted to bring it down as close as possible, so that's what we did. And then once we sink it down with our hex nut, we can basically cut it off, okay. Now these slots. You see the slots on this rail. They're gonna accept this bolt that's being pulled out of this collector right now. The collector itself is the frame. So it's very easy to mount our rails to the collector, there's no additional hardware. So basically your hangar bolts, the T-profile and the collector. Okay, the collector comes with these bolts already embedded into a dry well. So there's a dry threaded socket in the bottom and top of the collectors. Okay, another picture, a close up of the finished product; you see the bolt that's connected directly to the connector itself, in that slot. And our clip is fastened and this T profile has 2 edges, one edge has small serrations that correspond to serrations on the clip. So as we tighten down this hangar bolt, this clip will compress and the friction won't allow it to move horizontally, side by side, and the serrations along with the compression, don't allow it to move vertically, okay. Using a simple little quick connect adapter on this flexible stainless steel line set, the fittings are already built into the collector and all we have to do is screw it in nice and tight with a double nut, and we are ready to go. The TitanPower also has this little drip edge, this chrome drip edge that comes off the bottom, so as you look--let's go back to this slide here-- these little, this what is silver drip edge along the bottom allows the water to move down off the collector and then extend the drip down onto the roof without being inverted, because just under this drip edge is a little air release port. And it allows for the removal of condensation and humidity in the air, any high pressure steam that might build up from the latent moisture will be forced out of that port. This drip edge allows that to happen. In fact, I can speak to it personally; I just had a flat plate that we installed for training on Friday. It was tipped upside down all weekend getting moisture, and then once we installed it, with the drip edge down, over the course of the day, the moisture just--you could feel a light stream of air forcing its way out through that port. Okay, now, a couple things I just wanna-- a couple things I'd like to point out, different strategies, one is the ability to increase the reflectivity. When you use evacuated tubes, you really try to consider ways to increase performance, and one of the best ways is be increasing the reflectivity. And this installation up near Boston, the installer included a white roofing material behind the collectors, and this did increase his performance by 11%. So we know for a fact that this system is over performing our original calculations and that the factor is this reflectivity. And this particular, over here on the left hand side, you see four collectors there, two of which have the tubes in already, and the front row does not have the tubes. But being installed on this highly reflective tin roof, this particular install is gonna see upwards of 20% increase in performance, based on some preliminary data done by Pete Schinara at SunDog, they put some reflective surface and nothing real reflective, it doesn't take a highly reflective and moderately reflective. One other thing I wanna point out about reflectivity is the more reflective it is at the beginning, the less reflective it is at the end. In other words, the reflectivity curve is very sharp for surfaces that have a lot of reflectivity. They tend to lose that dramatically. So even something like a tin roof will maintain the same reflectivity for 5, 10 15 years without decreasing too much. So increasing reflectivity is one . . . Another, in this picture, is just a couple different miscellaneous mounts. The installer here used flexible line set. And, he wanted to change his inclination angle. The inclination angle is the angle of the incline of the collectors, okay. So he put his collectors on a swivel, so that twice a year he comes out with a little hand crank, and I know you can't see it, but he'll crank hand crank down, and it will tilt these collectors back to maximize summertime production and tilt these forward to maximize winter production. Although this isn't going to be suitable for the normal installs, it will definitely increase his performance, however, it is questionable whether it will increase the performance relative to the value and cost of this type of installation. One benefit to the evacuated tubes is they have a high degree of variation in their incline and orientation that allows it to maintain 90-95% of what they normally would expect. All right so he's just going to be able change his inclination angle. With this one he won't be changing his orientation angle. On this ridge mount, the hardware that came with this set of collectors was added to by a couple of struts off of the roof. It keeps them level all the way across, so the hardware was adaptable for use like this, and it might be recommended that you put something on your roof. It's not as aesthetically appealing as one might like. In the middle of town, you might not want to go this way, knowing that-- even flat plates have a high degree of variation if we were to mount these on a western slope, then we probably would decrease efficiency only by 15% that can be compensated by adding 15% more collectors and get the same results, or the same is true if we were to mount these collectors on the east. Nevertheless, it is relatively easy to do something like this, but it may not be overall aesthetically appealing for most people. I just want to remind you that if anybody has any questions, please do feel free to type away. I like to be responsive to anybodies-- I have a certain slide show that I'd like to show you, but if you have any questions, now is a really good time to do that. A lot of people go with the ground mounts. And one purpose is they find it much easier to maintain. These collectors can be washed off very easy, sprayed down. They can be even given a sponge bath if they wanted to keep them nice and shiny, although most collectors are pretty effective at self-cleaning in some good rains, but if you live in areas that don't receive a lot of raining, or rainy days then you might need to service them once a year, and wash them down. Well if it's on the roof, it makes it a little bit more difficult. The one on the left here shows the back leg of the SunMaxx 30 that was basically rotated 90 degrees. This back leg used to be mounted here, as it is with this top one, and the triangle bracket that fits in this extruded aluminum, was basically slid down to the bottom of the rail and turned backwards so now the back leg is used to help support this cantilever off of this frame. In this particular case, the client used our existing extruded aluminum, but built a concrete embedded pipe, basically a piping design, used black pipe and painted it silver. Here's another picture of looks like a ground mount, but in fact it's on top of a commercial roof with a rubber membrane underneath some gravel. Now I do want to point out that this install did not require the roofing company to re-warranty the roof, there were no bonding issues, in fact this was inspected and certified by the code enforcer simply due to the lack of wind load on these evacuated tubes. So if you have a situation where you've looked at the performance and they're similar, you've looked at the aesthetics and their similar, you've looked at the cost, but now you have a wind load issue, there is an advantage in evacuated tubes in that this install is basically mounted right on these blocks. The blocks are setting on the stone and then the feet of the collectors are fastened to the blocks themselves. So we have 10 SunMaxx 30's here in series totaling, just themselves totaling 2500 pounds connected directly to one another through the piping, so there really wouldn't be substantial-- yeah, I actually just got a question from Anthony, this is non-penetrating. That's right, it's sitting on top of the roof, and the pipes actually run down the side of the building six stories into the basement. So this was a very simple install. You can do this with flat plates as well, but the curbs or the concrete blocks that would be required are more significant in weight. This particular install is a carport, so collectors can often be used to provide shading. This in on top of a parking garage, the top story of a parking garage with a carport that was already in place to provide shading and then these-- the additional collectors provide even more shading to the carport. Some clients like to use the ridge, and get to the top of the ridge as much as possible and support the back legs on the opposite side of the ridge. Now this can be either flat plates or evacuated tubes, it doesn't matter, but it makes very good use of the available roof space. Because if you look at the amount of roof that this particular install required, in terms of gross area, it's much less than it would if we were to move these collectors down, and take the back legs down a bit. By straddling the roof, you consume less roof real estate, which is fairly important especially when it comes to larger systems or in Combo systems. A combo system where you have PV and thermal and as many of you probably know the PV collectors would take up more roof real estate relative to their solar gain and energy saved than thermal. So by doing it this way, that ration becomes even more apparent. That the thermal collectors are taking up much less roof space relative to the solar input. Here's some flat roof installs. One thing that I'd like to point out about this is the shading. All right, so this installer took some-- this was up in Massachusetts. This particular one on the right, this installer used some large pre-manufactured floor joists. And he set those up so they are 18 inches off the roof and the spacing is such that during the Winter solstice, the angle of the sun will not cast a shadow on the second row. Okay, so for latitudes that are between 40 and 43, that spacing is 12 and a half feet from front to front. Latitudes of 38 to-- 37 to 40 that space is about 11 and half feet and latitudes of 35 to 38, the distance is just about 10 and 1/3 (10,3 feet) that is the distance from the front of one collector to the front of the next collector to prevent shading. Now this installer on the left used the same rule of thumb in terms of shading, but he took his second row and mounted it up at a higher elevation than the first row, which allowed him to take up less roof real estate. Okay, another way to consider installations is how you can increase the performance from the back. I showed you a couple of the reflective surfaces, but additionally, this white is gonna shine. Any of these light, the non-shadow portion of this roof, that's gonna cast light back up to the back side of the collector. It's real apparent on this photo. You see this beam of light that's being reflected down onto these collectors? That's what you'd normally see from the front of a collector. Yet, we are looking at it from the back of the collector. So it becomes very clear that a roof that has a highly reflective or even mildly reflective white membrane is going to be able to increase the performance of the collectors, estimates are from 11 to 20%, okay. Here is a couple of pole mount strategies. This installer in Las Vegas used a black pole which he mounted directly to the rafters itself as a supply and return so his supply and return piping went down through this black pole that he insulated and the pole is also supporting the collector, so that was a very interesting installation technique and I thought I'd share that one with you. Another one where, you saw the picture previously of mounting on the ridge, well this installer-- this client did not want his collectors mounted to the roof, so the installer mounted some poles, upon which he secured these collectors. I just had a question about reflective backing, and we actually have a couple of prototypes that we've worked on and they include parabolic reflectors, flat sheet reflectors, we also have just a reflective surface that can be taped on, or stuck on an existing material. But in terms of including it with our collectors, we do not include the reflective surface with our collectors primarily because the increase of wind load and the increase in cost. And if we look at the existing roof, there is many ways that we can use the roof as the reflective surface for much, much less cost. And a perfect example is Shewin-Williams. Sherwin Williams makes a real nice highly reflective roof paint, I believe it's 35 dollars a gallon, and can be painted on asphalt shingles, increasing your solar performance by 11-20 % so additionally so for 35 dollar gallon of paint, we can get what amounts to performance of a whole another collector or 30 tubes. Okay, just to show you again that another ground mount situation with concrete standoffs, this is the job at Wacol prison. This pre tube installation, and they took these concrete blocks, this entire pad was poured just for the collectors. These concrete pavers were glued together using concrete adhesive and then the feet of each of the collectors was mounted to these concrete standoffs. Okay, and this has been well, this was engineered by OGS engineers, and is expected to be stable for 20 plus years, all right. This is a close up of the picture I showed you that was actually on the roof, we just used these 6 inch, 6x6x12 concrete pavers with blue tapcons right into the concrete paver. Here is an example of how we can reduce summertime performance using the mounting strategies. One is to mount them on the right here, vertically, and this eave is going to shade the collectors in the summertime. This installation is right outside the window here, I'm actually looking at it through the window right over there, and our tubes on a hot summer day right now are about 85-90 degrees, and in the middle of the winter, in January on a summer day they are upwards of 130. So even though we are getting more insolation now, we are able to decrease our performance. Why do you want to decrease performance? Well this is just for heating, so we really don't want to produce excess BTUs and we are able to accomplish that by vertical mounting. Now remember, vertical mounts are only suitable for U-pipes, or flat plates; not suitable for evacuated tube heat pipes. Another strategy was this fake roof that this installer built, where he's got two collectors on top of the roof, and two collectors below the roof and as you can see in the winter time, both--all four collectors have full access to the solar radiation, and in the summertime as the sun goes higher, this bottom row production decreases dramatically. And he balances out his production with his consumption. Very smart method there. Here is another way of overheating protection. One is to obviously cover your collectors on a ground mount situation, not real accessible for most, but I thought I'd point out that this client is having good luck obviously with reducing his production in the summer time for heating system by covering them up. And in this case we have stood these up at such a steep angle, the maximum angle these tubes can be place at is 75 degrees. And that's pretty consistent even with the flat plates, they can go vertical although you wouldn't want to mount a vertical flat plate on top of a roof like this just because the amount of mounting protection it would need from lift and up force, and the evacuated tubes you can increase the incline angle, and it decreases the summertime production because there is virtually no wind load there. All right, I like to keep on schedule. I actually went two minutes over. This was just a 30 minute little webinar. I really do appreciate all of you joining us and I hope it helps with your understanding of solar thermal. Checkout our website solarwebinars.com for upcoming schedule. We are going to be doing this every Monday for as long as we can. I'll stay online here for just a few minutes if anybody has any questions, otherwise I hope to see you next week and you can access any of the past webinars that have been recorded without any technical difficulty, or if I forgot to record them their not gonna be there. But so far I'm 2 for 2 in the last 2 of recording. Any questions? Okay, well I will say thanks again, and hope you guys have a great solar week, and keep getting the word out because it won't be long - solar thermal is going to be right there at the top in terms of the industry and market potential. Take care.