marininn, In adding my last post I reviewed the thread and in particular, your post where you showed how you mounted your tempered glass panels. As I understand it, you applied the tape to the angle iron underneath the panel, fastening it down before adding the panels over the angles and bolting them in place?
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And, would you have done anything differently now that you have hindsight and the wisdom it brings?
- Jack
Hindsight: I think the long aluminum angle iron taped on front to back only with VHB and using self-tapping screws to hold the solar frames in is the best. It is not really necessary to have the angle under the panel (does look cleaner), I think it is fine either way, and when you screw the panel on you can make the gap wherever you attach it. BUT since hILo has a sloping roof then angle iron on the front and back, not the sides, allows the water to run down and not get trapped by the angle iron, and this keeps the highway air out too.
The one with the aluminum angle iron worked very nice. I used VHB tape, not double sided eterna bond tape. I think the VHB is a stronger bond. I have used Eternabond to tape down the flatter flexible panels and it does seem to lift a little at the edges of the panel, but have not lifted to the edges of the tape.
I used caulk really just to keep water from flowing in at highway speeds and making a gunky mess under the panel. I would think airflow would be minuscule that close to the roof, but yes, would keep it from blowing off.
I left it open on the downslope side and back so water can drain out and to ventilate it.
My first one, maybe the one you refer to with the angle iron, I ran a long threaded rod all the way to the other side, this is a great and secure way to mount it (I used double nuts to lock tight) but a big pain to put back in if you have to remove it to line up the holes on both sides wile you push through a threaded rod. The next project I just used self-tapping screws into the angle iron, seemed to work fine.
Yet another project I used aluminum square tubes (on the HILO) as I was out of angle iron, and feeling cheap. I drilled a big hole on one side so the cordless drill bit could fit through and the other hole just big enough for the screw threads. Same effect as the angle iron.
The HILO had a more corrugated roof, not flat, so made it more challenging. I doubled up in the low spots and had just a single layer in the high spots. The high spots are probably doing most of the sticky work as the low spots the two layers were barely enough to fill the gap.
There was a bit of curve on HILO left to right where I could have placed the mounts into the channel, so had to go front to back over the corrugations.
I also used a much shorter aluminum piece, where the other camper got a full length angle iron, the HILO just got about 5 inches worth of these 1 inch aluminum square tubes on the 4 corners.
btw, I have had 5 RVs, and did solar on 4 and the first had a little 15 watt thing that hardly counts, but kept the batteries from discharge in winter.
I did several cross country trips in HILO, probably 25,000 miles with the HILO solar. No issues at all. Well, take that back. Originally I had a flexible panel that got damaged somehow (they are not covered with glass so susceptible to falling sticks), and replaced that with the glass panel. I can't remember how deep into the 25,000 mile year this took place.
Then I sold it. 4 RVs in 4 years. I will try to keep my current one more than a year…
In summary, VHB tape seems to work magic. Clean the surface well.
Hope this helps.
I have a truck camper now. I did so much work (some fixes, some modifications( on the HILO that all i could see when I was camping is all the work, lots of work, so being #4 of a line of RVs I worked on I was happy to sell it.
