What kind of studs/rafters in roof for solar

Thanks for all the help everyone. I did have wood studs. Thank god for stud finder. It worked great.

Hi,

Here are some pictures of my solar system. By mounting the solar panels onto the roof mounts, and having them screwed into the roof, you can tilt them for maintenance or tilt them to get about 15% more power if you will be camping more than a week in one location. I used 6" long aluminum 2X2 angle from Home Depot.

I drilled 3 each 3/16" holes for #10 screws into the roof and 1 hole 5/16" for a 1/4" bolt into the solar panel bracket or frame. I think I only hit one of the steel roof supports, though I know where all of them are going due to taking a factory tour before buying my 1997 motorhome. I was not even going to try finding the studs, it is really not required.

Below is some pictures I posted a couple years ago. It is my roof while I was making some repairs to it. You can see the brackets, and that the screws are mounted under the panels, out of the rain. For my satellite dish, I placed it over a 12 X 4" air duct. When it did leak some rain water, it came straight into the RV through the air duct, damaged nothing and told me about the leak right away.

The "Bigfoot" solar mounts claim to not need any type of screws into the roof (but I have them screwed down anyway). By using 4" X 6" of rubber roof sealant, the manufacture claims that a 80 watt solar panel can be held down to a RV roof without any screws at all. However my thought is the panel mount might be held to the rubber roof, what is holding the rubber to the RV? So I put in screws anyway. Nothing broke or flew off at 70 MPH over some 45,000 miles of RV use and many years.

I have rubber roof sealant below all of the solar mounts, and now above them as well. This will prevent any rain from leaking around them, and is very effective.

Fred.

Golden_HVAC wrote:

rickthescot wrote:
Sounds like a great idea. I guess asking for pictures again is not going to persuade you though. We are visual creatures and I don't think 1000 words will accomplish what one image will. You can do it, just one pic.

More pictures that I took a few days ago to post pictures of my solar panels, and their mounts. Some pictures are really close up pictures of the solar panel mounts, and give a clear picture of howrough the surface is.

Golden_HVAC wrote:
Hi,

This is my front pair of panels. 120 watt mounted on a curved roof, 102" wide.



This is the mount it is held on with three rivets into the frame, and then the bottom half is 6" long aluminum, with nutsert in the upper piece, bolt you can not see from the outside edge pointing inward.









This picture shows the bigfoot panel mount sold by RvSolarElectric for $35 a set back in 1994. I wonder what they cost today?


This picture shows the panels tilted while I was working on the roof.

Fred.

On Cardinals wood was standard and aluminum was optional. Your could be either. But my guess they will be wood.

You could drill a small diameter hole where you wish to locate a mount. That should tell you if they are metal or wood. My rafters were wood but I used #12 sheet metal screws to attach the mounts so I would have been using the same fasteners in either case.