I got tired of manually moving two panels every hour or so day in day out.
Pick them up, turn whatever it is they're leaning up against, reposition them, check for alignment with the sun/each other, repeat at least once every hour.
Gets old. Quick.
Anybody who's done it knows exactly what I'm talking about.
So I bought a portable 4 foot plastic table from Lowes to lean them up against, which took care of one problem; the alignment with each other.
Still had them sliding around when I tried to track them, and in some respects, it actually made things more difficult.
Did this for the past month or so.
Then I remembered that I had a not so old compressor that I bought from Sears a couple years ago. The thing took a crap 3 months after I bought it, and I never seemed to have the time to get back to make them pay warranty style.
Shiny side is, it was 'quick-disconnect' style mounted to a cart for wheeling it around and making life easier for the user. What a concept.
What did I come up with? This:
WOW what a difference that makes. Now all it takes is quite literally a flick of the wrist to bump it a few degrees to the west!
At first I worried about stability, because of the relatively narrow base on it, but believe it or not, it takes a rather significant amount of force (from wind etc) on it to make it go squirrelly.
All the hardware was there too. To get the brackets that the panels are sandwiched between, I simply took the leg assembly off of the bottom of the table and used the two hinge mounts that were already part of the table!
Currently, they are not held in by much more than friction and gravity, but this is because I don't have time to finish it today (for one), and also because I need to work out how I want to do it with a little more reverence.
In the position shown, they are set up for winter. Summer is just as easy; lay it down on the handle side and the angle changes to a more skyward position.
It took all of a half hour to lay it out and piece it together, and it is saving me a LOT of frustration!
Total cost to build, about 30 bucks if you have the compressor stand already hanging around. I used UV rated zip ties to give some insurance, and the top is held in by a 4 inch hose clamp, just to make sure everything stays put.
Steve
