Autumn is when a great many households finally commit to the solar quote they have been sitting on since spring, and installers across the region spend September collecting kit for jobs booked before the weather turns. Panels are long, flat, heavy for their thickness and considerably more fragile than they appear. Arranging van hire in Warrington is the straightforward part of the day. Collecting solar panels safely is entirely about how they lie and how they are held.
Panels Break In Ways You Cannot See
A photovoltaic panel is a sheet of glass laminated over a grid of brittle cells in an aluminium frame. The frame makes it feel robust and the glass makes it look robust, and neither impression is quite right. The cells inside can crack from flexing, from point pressure and from vibration without the glass showing a mark at all, and a panel with cracked cells will pass a visual inspection, get installed on a roof and then quietly underperform for the rest of its life. That is the risk worth designing the journey around, and it is why panels should never be carried flat and unsupported by two people at either end, never stacked with anything hard between them and never allowed to move about in a load area. The damage that matters is the damage nobody can see on the day.
Load Length Decides Everything Else
Panels are the length they are, and the question is simply whether the load area takes them in one piece lying flat. An extra long wheelbase van gives a load length of four and a third metres, which takes domestic panels lying completely flat on the floor with room to strap them and room to get past. Lying flat is what you want, because a panel resting at an angle on two corners is taking exactly the kind of flex that cracks cells. Where a job also involves mounting rails, which are long and thin, the same length works in your favour again. What does not work is a short load area and a diagonal, and neither does standing panels on edge unless they are in a purpose-made frame that supports them properly.
Batteries Are A Different Problem
Home battery storage units are dense, heavy for their size and contain lithium cells, which puts them in a different category from the panels entirely. Keep them upright and in their original packaging where possible, keep terminals protected and never let anything metal rest across them. Batteries do not like being dropped, do not like heat and should not be stacked under anything. It is worth checking the manufacturer’s transport guidance and, where the unit is being moved in connection with a business, whether any dangerous goods requirements apply to what you are carrying, because the answer varies with the chemistry and the size of the unit and it is not a question to guess at.
Loading And Padding A Panel Stack
Lay panels flat on the floor, glass upwards, with something soft and continuous underneath rather than resting on ridges or loose items. Put padding between every panel rather than every few, since the frames are what hold the stack apart and any grit between two panels becomes a pressure point. Keep the stack low. Strap across the stack with a batten under the strap so the ratchet pressure spreads along the frame rather than crushing one edge, and never run a strap diagonally across the glass. Rails, brackets, fixings and tools go beside the stack or in the cab, never on top of it. Our advice on how to load a hire van safely covers the securing principles behind all of this.
Collecting From A Distributor
Solar distributors work in pallets and full pallets are heavy, so establish before you arrive whether they will forklift a pallet onto the vehicle or whether panels are being handed over individually. A palletised load is easier and safer provided the vehicle can take the weight and the pallet can be unloaded at the other end, which frequently it cannot at a domestic address. Ask about panel count against the order, check frames and corners as they are handed over, and photograph the load before you set off. Installers working out towards Runcorn van hire and Northwich van hire often collect for two or three jobs at once, which makes the load order worth planning.
Timing The Collection Around The Install
Collect close to the installation date rather than as soon as the order lands. Panels stored badly in a garage for a fortnight, leaned against a wall where somebody will lean something else on them, are at more risk than panels that spend an hour in a van. We are open Monday to Saturday from 8am to 4pm and closed on Sunday, so a Monday install means a Saturday collection. Where an installer is running jobs across a week, one longer hire is more practical than repeating the trip, and short and long term hire are both available with no deposit required on most vehicles. Booking at least two weeks ahead brings a ten per cent advance booking discount on selected vehicles.
Taking Packaging And Old Panels Away
An install generates a surprising amount of waste and most of it cannot go in a household bin. Panels arrive in substantial cardboard and timber packaging, there are offcuts of rail and cable, and on a replacement job there are the old panels themselves. Solar panels are electrical waste and have their own disposal route, so they belong with a distributor take-back scheme or a licensed recycler rather than a skip, and waste from installation work carried out as a business is trade waste with its own duty of care. Plan the return leg with that in mind rather than leaving a stack of packaging in a customer’s garden, which is the detail householders remember and mention in reviews. Keeping the vehicle for the day rather than returning it as soon as the panels are unloaded usually makes the clearance possible in the same visit.
Tell us the panel length and how many you are collecting, and we will make sure they travel flat rather than at an angle. Call the depot on 01925 396 222 before you collect from the distributor.
