Ballast and attachment plans
Sheets that show the block count at every base and every attachment location, with dead load, uplift, snow and wind load maps, ready for plan check and the installer.
Commercial rooftop solar
Ballast and attachment design for commercial rooftop arrays.
Whole-roof ballast and attachment plans, stamped calculations and roof attachment design, from the site criteria down through the roof to the building. Ballasted, hybrid or fully attached. Fast turnaround, and layout revisions rerun quickly.
What you get
Every base, every attachment, checked.
One package covers the array from wind, seismic, snow and dead load to the roof deck it sits on.
Stamped calculations
Wind, seismic, snow and dead load for the whole array, sliding and overturning for every sub-array, and the roof pressure limit checked on every sub-array.
Roof attachments
Attachments into steel deck, concrete or wood, through the roof insulation, with the fasteners, plates and capacities for the roof you have.
Roof and building check
The added weight and the attachment forces taken into the roof framing and the building, so the load path is complete.
Layout changes
When the layout moves, the design reruns quickly, and attachment points that still work stay where they are.
Site criteria
Wind, seismic, snow and ground values for the address, from our national structural design criteria report tool.
Why APEX
Speed, and anchors that stay put.
Speed
Fast turnaround, while the busiest solar engineers are quoting a month for calculations.
Anchors that stay put
When the layout changes, the attachments do not all move, so you can iterate on the layout for free.
Rack to foundation
Racking, attachments and the building in one set, from one engineer.
Built for your product
Sets that follow the manufacturer's own sheets, tables and legend, so your people recognize them on sight.
Systems we design
Four racking systems, equal footing.
Whichever of these you install, you will find the tables and terms you already know from the manufacturer. Our added checks follow, in our format.
PanelClaw
- clawFR
- clawFR plus
IronRidge
- BX
Unirac
- RM10 EVO
- RM DT
- EcoFoot2+
Sollega
- FastRack 510
Rails, Too.
APEX Engineering designs rail spans, the cantilever past the last clamp and rail splices for any rail system, on pitched or flat roofs.
How it is held down
Ballasted, hybrid or fully attached.
Ballasted
Blocks only, within the roof pressure limit, when the roof can carry the weight and the wind allows it.
Hybrid
Ballast plus attachments where the wind needs them, so the roof carries less weight and fewer holes go through the membrane.
Fully attached
Attachments at the bases with little or no ballast, for light roofs and high wind or seismic sites.
Examples
What the package looks like.
PanelClaw clawFR plus, hybrid, 1,961 modules
IronRidge BX, fully ballasted
Examples from recent APEX jobs, shown small, with client names, addresses and seals blurred. Tap any page to open it larger.
Send us the project.
Send the roof plan, the module and racking choice and the address. We return the ballast and attachment plan and stamped calculations.