When I bought the service panel for the studio, I thought I was going to mount it inside. It isn’t weatherproof. For various reasons, I ended up mounting it on the outside wall. We also mounted the inverter there, and it is also not weatherproof (rather a surprise to me). I really wanted to move things along, so I didn’t wait for a new service panel nor did I go through the gyrations to put it all indoors. The equipment is all under a generous overhang and will stay dry through anything short of a hurricane.
We’re in hurricane country.
So I’ve been building an enclosure around the equipment, complete with a little metal roof that matches the studio and the house. (Yes, I know it isn’t square in this picture; it squared up as I built the rest of the enclosure).
I struggled for a long time with how to build a cabinet that would still allow access to the equipment. The front of the cabinet ended up being 48 inches, and in my experience doors that size never work very well. After stewing for a couple of weeks, I decided to just put in little access hatches for the breaker box and the inverter controls,
That should handle all our access needs except in the extreme case where re-wiring is necessary. In those cases — which I hope to never see — we just need to remove six screws and the whole front panel will come off.
Tomorrow, I’ll bolt on the panel and our solar equipment should be snug and dry.
—2p