I'm breaking down and moving my solar panels. The aluminum commercial home owner racking to metal roof mounting system. It always felt kind of loose, wobbly, cheap feeling but I paid for it and it wasn't fuckin cheap. Well that wobbly loose feeling was more than feeling. So far a third of my horizontal rack rail couplers were barely tightened down or never tightened down. A third of the right angle roof to rack connectors were loose, seized and never got tightened down. 3/4 of the roof pedestals were installed poorly IMO. The roof mounts where installed 1 to 2 feet up underneath the panels in some places so the panels were hanging off the racking with no support. If I pulled up on the racking with my boot it moved more than what I thought it should move. But wtf do I know. It lasted 5 years installed with zero fucks given. Solar install version 2 I'll run the roof mounts right up to the edge of the end panels and I've carefully measured everything out to put a roof mount as close as possible to where the panels meet. It will be rock solid. Probably not as solid as the unistrut racking but a lot better. A seized up stainless steel nut on ss bolt that never was able to get tightened down. A third of these were loose, either on the vertical or horizontal joint. A nice deep imprint from the racking coupler vs no imprint. No imprint means it was loose or never tight. Never even fuckin tightened down. This time going to hand tighten everything with a torque wrench, leave it sitting for a few days let it all temperature cycle several times and then hit them all again with the torque wrench.
If you want something done right, do it yourself, or at least withhold payment until you can check for yourself.
Always check other people's work, and it's good to check your own work too. After 5-years of exposure to the elements (heat, cold, wind, etc.) everything should have been checked alooong time ago. Might want to give everything an annual once over.
That's the shit of it. It was all covered up by the solar panels. I'm not discovering it till now because breaking it down to move it.
