Mounting Panels on Wooden Pallets

Inspired by this video:


I received some 235W panels for very cheap from a coworker who purchased a pallet of them from SanTan (had extras he needed to get rid of) and I wanted to mount them for as little cost as possible just to get something up and going. I was able to get (basically) unlimited pallets for free from a neighboring business which is good because I needed four pallets per panel (three pallets to make the triangle shape and an additional pallet for the base to raise it up high enough so the panel didn't touch the ground). In DavidPoz's video, he aligns the pallet structures and then uses metal bars to mount the panels. Instead, I used Z brackets to mount the panels directly to the wood on the front-facing pallet (in the photos, the second from the left is not mounted to the pallet yet, but I have since done that). I don't believe the angle is anywhere near optimal for where I live in southern USA, but for a total cost of $17.99 for a 16-pack of Z brackets (enough for four panels) and about $10 for a box of 4" deck screws to hold everything together, I can't complain. So far over the last few months it has held up to very strong winds and plenty of rain. I can't imagine the pallets will last nearly as long as a "proper" DIY wood mount made out of normal pressure treated 2x4s, but I can just get more pallets for free in the future if I need to rebuild one or two anyways. The Z brackets I purchased are not rated for panels as large as mine, but I will keep a close eye on it to see if any brackets start to bend or feel loose.

I think if the Z brackets look good after a few more months I am going to get two more pallets per panel to stack them up a little higher so the bottom of the panels aren't so close to the ground. I am also planning on putting thick landscape fabric under the panels with a very thin layer of mulch to prevent grass/weeds from growing up through the pallets and behind the panels.

Well shit.

Wish I hadn't gotten rid of those pallets...

sunshine_eggo said:

Well shit.

Wish I hadn't gotten rid of those pallets...

Click to expand...

What I did, is call around to local businesses that seemed like they would get stuff shipped in on pallets and asked if they had any pallets they were looking to get rid of. Paint shops, HVAC shops, Electrical shops, etc are good places to check. Big box stores like Home Depot or Lowes are not great places to ask because they typically have contracts with their delivery people to return the pallets after delivery since they get 100s-1000s of pallets per month and it's way too much to throw away or stack up behind the building. However smaller stores of the type I mentioned above often don't have those types of contracts since the lower volume of pallets they get don't make such contracts worth it, so they end up stacking up their pallets outside the back of the building or storing them inside somewhere. But they are usually keen to get rid of them as it's not like they can re-use them for much as they aren't shipping stuff back out on them, just taking in deliveries of heavy items on them.

I'm going to build some more soon as I have a few more panels to mount, so once I do I can post a guide on how I do it. It's pretty simple anyways just like in DavidPoz's video, just remove two boards per pallet so each of the three pallets can interconnect with each other when put in a triangle shape, then just screw everything together with deck screws. It results in an extremely sturdy structure (as long as each pallet is the same size, they come in different standard sizes - I used 40" x 48") and knocking it about quite forcefully results in almost no movement once everything is screwed together as it is screwed together at six points per pallet.