From Dave Strenski’s lips to you ears eyes:

All –

We continue to make progress on the Ypsilanti City Hall Solar Project. We had a small delay locating and renting an aerial lift that was tall enough to reach the top of the back wall of City Hall. The wall is 50 feet hight and we’re working between the 42 to 45 foot area. The lift from Delux Rental does the job but we are at the limits of it’s reach.

The original plan was to spend one day install the panels. Unfortunately, working from a lift has greatly slow our progress. The lift can only reach about 1/3 of the building before we have to bring it back down and reposition the lift to the left or right. We’re also having trouble with a
few of the anchors and need to re-epoxy new ones when they don’t hold. Choosing the Hilti HY150 Max anchors and sinking them 10 inches into the wall was a good decision. When they hold, they are really solid.

At the end of the first day, October 5th, we only had the center section of the rack installed. We came back on October 29 and was able to get most of the rack up, but still have not finished. The second day was cut short with a mix-up with the rental company and the lift. Instead of getting it at 8:00am, we got it at 11:30am.

HERE are some pictures of the installation.

One more good day should finish the installtion of the panels. Many thanks to Gary Turner, Abel Thompson, Carl, Vince, Joe Schultz, John Shuler, Steve Pierce and others for help with the installation.

If you haven’t seen the energy graphs from the Ypsilanti Food Coop, you can see them HERE.

Once we have the panels online, we will have similar graphs for City Hall. Many thanks to EMU student Nik Estep and his professor William Sverdlik for making the SolarYpsi.org website so great.

As always, thanks for your support.

Strenski