Today I got going right after we got back fro TKD class. I got the wires cut for on j box and quickly realized it was really pointless to continue without the fittings I ordered fro Mouser. The water tight strain reliefs for the ground wire and optimizer wires. Fortunately, I was able to get in touch with our mailman and met him on his route. Upon opening the package, I found the ground strain reliefs were 3/8 thread and neither type had moisture seals. I headed to Lowe’s. I found the threaded bushings I needed to increase the size to 3/4, but no o-rings :(. To Home Depot. With fittings, bushings and o-rings now in-hand, I returned home 2 hours later. The difference was that now I truly had everything and the j-boxes went together fast.
Above: Ground strain relief with reducer bushing, o-ring and nut. I didn’t need the nut after all and had to take them all off.
The optimizer strain relief with o-ring and nut. Also ended up taking off the nut. Oh well.
5 sets ready to go up on the roof.
First j-box done! Notice the ground wire has a mid-strip. This is actually the second sub array from the end. It just happened to be the first I finished. The nice thing about the power optimizer is that they reduce the voltage down to 1 Volt each under no load. That means this sub-array only had 3 volts, so I can handle the bare wire. Made things a lot easier.
PV cables entering the j-box.
I finished both sub-arrays on the first floor and the j-box that joined them together before going up the wall to the second story.
Pulled the wire up to the last j-box and ran out of black! Not sure how that happened as I still had enough green wire to reach the ground and I bought the same amount. Well at least it reached the j-box with enough to tie into the PV cables.
After running out of cable, I headed down to the ground to open up the wall for the connection from the cutoff switch to the main panel. Lots of hammering.
