Texas garage corner solar setup

[nodoze]

In the corner of my Texas garage I have two 200 amp breaker panels and I am thinking of putting on the wall next to them a Sol-Ark 12K, 2 critical loads panels, gutters, & related components (cutoff switches, etc) and on the ground under the Sol-Ark a 6 rack for EG4 batteries (solar panels will be on my south facing roofs).

This is the 2nd winter in a row where temperatures are in the teens (and I think last year we were in the single digits) and in the summers it regularly breaks 100 degrees and the garage gets really cold and hot...

With the above in mind I am thinking it may be wise to enclose the corner of my garage and install an combined air conditioner / heat pump to condition the enclosure which I envision would end up being something like this (& heavily insulated):

Currently the wall that has my main breaker panels and wall next to it are both brick on the outside and sheetrock on the inside though I don't really know if those 2 walls are well insulated.

In wall preparation before putting in the equipment I had the following questions:

Q1): Should we put up cement backerboard (CBB) on the wall where the equipment will go?

Q2): If cement backerboard (CBB) is recommended, is HardiBacker with HydroDefense the best for this use case of is some other brand recommended?

Q3): If CBB is recommended, would it be advisable to put something that accepts screws better than CBB (like plywood) on the wall first before putting in the CBB?

Q4): If putting up CBB is recommended, should I remove the sheetrock first or just put the CBB (& maybe plywood) over the sheetrock?

Q5: Considering I likely will come back and enclose and condition (cool/heat) the space, would it make sense to put something like Reflectix over the CBB and if yes what R-value would be recommended?

Note that if I do end up enclosing and conditioning the space I may also move one or more servers from our home offices into there.

 

[WYtreasure]

In the corner of my Texas garage I have two 200 amp breaker panels and I am thinking of putting on the wall next to them a Sol-Ark 12K, 2 critical loads panels, gutters, & related components (cutoff switches, etc) and on the ground under the Sol-Ark a 6 rack for EG4 batteries (solar panels will be on my south facing roofs).

This is the 2nd winter in a row where temperatures are in the teens (and I think last year we were in the single digits) and in the summers it regularly breaks 100 degrees and the garage gets really cold and hot...

With the above in mind I am thinking it may be wise to enclose the corner of my garage and install an combined air conditioner / heat pump to condition the enclosure which I envision would end up being something like this (& heavily insulated):

Currently the wall that has my main breaker panels and wall next to it are both brick on the outside and sheetrock on the inside though I don't really know if those 2 walls are well insulated.

In wall preparation before putting in the equipment I had the following questions:

Q1): Should we put up cement backerboard (CBB) on the wall where the equipment will go?

Q2): If cement backerboard (CBB) is recommended, is HardiBacker with HydroDefense the best for this use case of is some other brand recommended?

Q3): If CBB is recommended, would it be advisable to put something that accepts screws better than CBB (like plywood) on the wall first before putting in the CBB?

Q4): If putting up CBB is recommended, should I remove the sheetrock first or just put the CBB (& maybe plywood) over the sheetrock?

Q5: Considering I likely will come back and enclose and condition (cool/heat) the space, would it make sense to put something like Reflectix over the CBB and if yes what R-value would be recommended?

Note that if I do end up enclosing and conditioning the space I may also move one or more servers from our home offices into there.

Are you finished or still looking for input?

 

[nodoze]

Are you finished or still looking for input?

Thanks for checking.

Yes it would be great to still get input.

 

[WYtreasure]

In wall preparation before putting in the equipment I had the following questions:

Q1): Should we put up cement backerboard (CBB) on the wall where the equipment will go?

CBB is good, dusty but good. Many drop ceiling panels are "Class A" fire rated. Lightweight and easy to cut. Giant washers or metal plates can help prevent smashing when you mount to them.

Q2): If cement backerboard (CBB) is recommended, is HardiBacker with HydroDefense the best for this use case of is some other brand recommended?

Q3): If CBB is recommended, would it be advisable to put something that accepts screws better than CBB (like plywood) on the wall first before putting in the CBB?

I would use plywood behind CBB or ceiling panels for holding power. Good question.

Q4): If putting up CBB is recommended, should I remove the sheetrock first or just put the CBB (& maybe plywood) over the sheetrock?

Your call. How long of CBB mounting screws do you want to buy to penetrate the studs by an inch?

Q5: Considering I likely will come back and enclose and condition (cool/heat) the space, would it make sense to put something like Reflectix over the CBB and if yes what R-value would be recommended?

Note that if I do end up enclosing and conditioning the space I may also move one or more servers from our home offices into there.

Is Reflectix as fireproof as CBB or some other Class A product?

 

[onokai]

Stick the MR cool smallest mini split in there for low draw 110V cool and heat. I have the small one and a larger one all bought at supplyhouse .com. There are cheap and work well easy to install.
You will like it enough that you will install more of them. I hid the line sets inside new construction so its clean outside and inside. Look at them on You tube
batterys last longer running cool and not frozen as well-This small unit sips electric which you solar will feed easy

 

[nodoze]

CBB is good, dusty but good. Many drop ceiling panels are "Class A" fire rated. Lightweight and easy to cut. Giant washers or metal plates can help prevent smashing when you mount to them.

I would use plywood behind CBB or ceiling panels for holding power. Good question.

Your call. How long of CBB mounting screws do you want to buy to penetrate the studs by an inch?

Is Reflectix as fireproof as CBB or some other Class A product?

Thanks for all the inputs. The reason for looking at Reflectix was to help with the insulation if I added active cooling/heating but agreed I would not want it to significantly increase the fire spreading chances. From the research I did I don't know if it is quite as fireproof as CBB but I believe it is Class A/Class1 :

Reflectix® has a Class A/Class 1 Fire Rating on the Reflective/Woven Fabric/Reflective Radiant Barrier meeting all fire and smoke safety requirements of federal, state and local building codes. (Satisfies UL 723, NFPA 255 and UBC 42-1.)

Note this if from the following URL:

Performance Information | Reflectix, Inc.

Specific Topics What is an R-value? Why are Air Spaces required (in every application)? What is Reflectivity? What is Emissivity? How does Emissivity provide benefit in a Radiant Barrier? Air Space Requirements (Per User / Per Application) (Click on the pdf below to find the Air Space...

www.reflectixinc.com

 

[WYtreasure]

Thanks for the info and link.

 

[onokai]

you could just pack the stud bays with fiberglass or mineral wool and use 3/4 sheetrock-mud and tape as well for fire

 

[Bluedog225]

Just stumbled across this. Curious if you have made progress. Im thinking of something similar. For the heat as well.

 

[nodoze]

Just stumbled across this. Curious if you have made progress. Im thinking of something similar. For the heat as well.

Progress-wise we first cleared that garage corner by taking down shelving & taking down mounted bike racks, mounted Fibre Optic termination point for the house (that was currently not in use as we temporarily switched to Cable Modem), & rerouted garage door opener wires/etc... We also mounted an enclosure near both 200A panels & put in some https://iotawatt.com/ devices to monitor and do audits of our current usage. In addition to the iotawatts we also added some YoLink Smart Wireless Temperature & Humidity Sensors to monitor the actual humidity & temperatures in the garage and also outdoors & indoors in multiple places.

The above gave us a large blank stretch of wall cleared down to the sheetrock & we then marked where the studs were & screwed in Cement Backer Board (CBB) on top of that.

We did not open up the sheet rock in the whole area and assess how well insulated it is behind the sheet rock. At this point I am debating on whether I want to do more there... Thankfully since the CBB is just screwed in we could remove it and do more (maybe add insulation & make the full wall all plywood before putting the CBB back up).

We got the above done before the worst of this heat & have since then been monitoring/measuring actual usages & actual temperatures. This will help us understand the actual full range of temperatures that the equipment will have to withstand (unless we put up walls and add AC & heat.

 

[copec]

Stick the MR cool smallest mini split in there for low draw 110V cool and heat. I have the small one and a larger one all bought at supplyhouse .com. There are cheap and work well easy to install.
You will like it enough that you will install more of them. I hid the line sets inside new construction so its clean outside and inside. Look at them on You tube
batterys last longer running cool and not frozen as well-This small unit sips electric which you solar will feed eas

A 240 volt unit would spread the load over each leg output of his inverters.

 

[onokai]

The Mr cools come in 5 sizes the smallest one is 110V all the rest are 240

 

[usphisics]

How hot and cold was your garage ? Just curious to know if my is

 

[nodoze]

How hot and cold was your garage ? Just curious to know if my is

Our current house is in North Texas and we have ranged from approx -2 to 112 outside the lowest I have seen inside is around 20 degrees & the hottest around 100. The corner of my garage where the electrical panels is right by the garage door which currently is not insulated & is basically just a thin metal door & I don't think the walls are very well insulated... Since we are looking at moving I haven't focused on this much lately but my garage can get close to outside temps when I have to leave the door open for any real period of time & otherwise it seems to lag behind outside temperature changes by a few hours until gets within 10-30 degrees of outside after some period of lag.