In the past couple of weeks we have been preparing to set up our solar panels.  As previously mentioned, this involved clearing away the topsoil in preparation to make a gravel pad with the 16 tons of gravel we got delivered.

With some help, we managed to successfully clear out all the topsoil, and I spent a couple of days shoveling gravel into the wheelbarrow and pouring it in the hole we dug to create  level base for the concrete ballast blocks.  In the end we probably used about 12 tons of the gravel we ordered, the rest we will use for various things (creating pathways and such).

Heather and I spent a little time measuring and marking out where the blocks had to go, and before we started moving the blocks into place the gravel pad looked like this:

Through word of mouth we found a guy with  backhoe who said he could help us move the blocks.  He showed up last Friday afternoon and we got the blocks moved in no time at all.  We might have spent and hour and a half at it in total, and it sure feels good to get that done!

Soon we will start assembling the racking for the panels atop these concrete blocks and then we will be able to wire them up to the solar charge controllers.  Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed the photos!