Utility Yard Expansion is about this Architect expanding his utility yard and fence for a solar power system with large Tesla batteries and generator.
Completed photo is above.
The Architect doubled the size of the previous utility yard to make room for the new solar equipment.
The progress steps that led to that final arrangement are below:
Make some space and build a fence. Sounds easy, right?
Well, when you’re making space for a whole-house Solar Photovoltaic Electrical Power Generation Facility, it’s more complex. That’s what Duke Energy calls this.
And when that is going on an award-winning architecturally designed custom house in the mountains, even more so.
For instance: those huge Tesla batteries need some space and solid support from the exterior side garage wall for the Unistrut mounting hardware. And there are NEC electrical access space requirements.
And wildlife: it so happens that this utility yard is where the family has an oversize special trash can for the weekly trash pickup. Because bears may come around and bat the trash can around trying to open it.
So the fence needs to act as a bear barricade. In terms of height and strength, although if any sizeable bear really wanted to get into almost anything and was determined enough, it probably could. So, the design approach was to mainly make it inconvenient for the bears and difficult to squeeze between the rails of the fence.
In this regard, the Architect added a horizontal brace to the top of the fence along the middle, to reinforce the sway that would have been there otherwise. That stiffened the fence a great deal. Also, the Architect mixed and installed a bag of Sakrete ready mix concrete in a 5 gallon bucket and dumped that around the exposed base of the new corner post. In combination with the new 2×10 PT top rails, that worked well to stabilize that new corner.
New truss-brace (above). Aesthetic is in keeping with Industrial Mountain House concept of this project.
Also, the Architect added some solar lighting to this fence, because there is a nice cobblestone and brick walkway beside it. Below, you can see this detail:
Kind of looks like a contemporary art sculpture that might be called a Bird-Light-Brace. Frank Lloyd Wright created some similar (but much more detailed) sculptures for his Chicago Midway Gardens project (1913-14).
This fence/utility yard expansion is part of an on-going series of improvements to this house, making it more sustainable, energy efficient and aesthetically pleasing. You can see the bottom “russett” color 2×12 board at the bottom of the fence that is just starting to enter the space over the face of the dark gray concrete block foundation wall. That will continue with a total of 4 bands of russett 2x12s that will wrap around the foundation wall, improving the appearance of that.