Not many weeks have gone by in the past year that we have missed a Friday From the Farm blog, but last Friday was one. We were so excited to give an update on the craziness over the last several months with the solar panels, but it did not come in until late Friday morning. So, that is why the blog never went out.
We hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend and was able to enjoy the 85-degree weather.
So, over the last few months, a lot has changed with the solar panels, which are still stacked in the garage (check out the Intro to Solar blog if you haven’t read it yet). After multiple locations and design revisions with PGE, we received our PGE approval about a month ago. Originally, they were going to be placed on the shop and new lean-to that was built behind the shop. However, after going back and forth with Clackamas County, we learned that it would not be possible. The shop was built back in the ’70s but apparently was never permitted and is too close to the property line. Therefore, we abandoned that idea. It’s unfortunate because we mounted the inverters in the shop and painfully dug a 70’-long X 18”-deep ditch between the house and the shop. This created all sorts of issues with all sorts of obstacles in the way and is still open after over 5 months.
When we first submitted a plot plan that required all structures to be shown, we drew the house, shop, barn, garden shed, animal shelter (previously permitted and built as ag-exempt), garden shed and three chicken coops. Keep in mind that applying for permits is very tedious and requires a lot of time and patience. Then, the County asked us to do this for every individual structure, something that would later be retracted and then be accidently mostly implemented by the County after all. All of this was happening via email since the County Building Department is closed, County employees are working from home, and they won’t use their personal phones for their jobs.
With new information about the shop, we now had to create a new plan. This was to put the solar panels on the south side of the barn. Compared to the shop, installing solar panels on the barn is absolutely absurd, but we are dealing with Clackamas County. After looking into that more, we discovered the barn roofing was installed without plywood backing, so to install the solar on the barn we will tear off the south side of the roof, put down plywood and tar paper, then reinstall the sheet metal roofing. The 18’-6” X 48’ roof alone is not large enough for the number of solar panels we have, so we are now going to build onto the barn. We have designed numerous ways to accomplish this and finally settled on a modified approach this week. Greg put the final design together, did his material take-off, purchased materials and is re-building the barn roof with the addition now.
Before we could move forward in putting the panels on the barn, we had to get the barn legally recorded as an agriculture building, which then makes permitting much easier for the solar. That is what we were waiting for last week. But, before we would get the building labeled ag exempt, we had to prove to the county that the barn and future addition to on the barn was not on top of our septic system. Like the garage, it is so old (1970’s), and the County does not have records that show us even having a septic system. Although our plot plan showed the approximate location of the septic system, and the location of the septic had nothing to do with putting solar panels on the roofs of existing buildings, we were required to spend thousands of dollars tearing up the back yard with an excavator and uncovering the system.
We had a certified contractor come out and document where the tank is and its size, where the pump is, where the piping is, and then uncover all five leach field boxes. It took two days, but they found all five drain lines exactly where we told the County they were (in the back yard and not under the barn). Our drainage field is so large, we have never even had to use the lower 3 out of 5 boxes/lines.
Another hurdle we had was with so many agricultural exempt building applications (existing barn, existing shop, existing garden shed and three new small backyard chicken coops), the Molalla Fire Chief needed to get involved to see if additional access roads needed to be built for fire-fighting activities. Greg was able to talk with the Chief and extinguish this issue.
Anyways, permitting is done, and we are now moving forward with construction and eventually solar panel system installation. If anybody has read to the end of this saga, feel free to reach out to Greg and offer him your condolences for his pain and suffering to date. Then offer to come out and help him! 😊 He needs all the help he can get!
Recent Comments