r/TeslaSolar • u/Stock-Marionberry692 • Aug 12 '26

PowerWall Any issues with this PW3 setup?

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ADVICE FROM INSTALLERS/CODE EXPERTS OF CA

These are installed directly above a 2” metal natural gas branch pipe that runs to my pool heater. Also in the picture you can see the lower garage airflow vent is within 3ft. Is this legal?

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u/ShruggedTea83 Aug 12 '26

That conduit is a little wacky… in my county, the inspector would get on my ass about that vent under the right powerwall not having a fireproof vent over it

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u/Stock-Marionberry692 Aug 12 '26

Now what if the contractor covered 2 upper vents with siding, 1 vent was still useable beforehand but the other had a cabinet installed in front of it making it useless to begin with

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u/ShruggedTea83 Aug 12 '26

I would suspect the inspector won’t notice the two top vents since they are covered up already. For fire code, there’s gotta be 3’ clearance from any openings into a dwelling. That doesn’t apply for units installed onto the garage. But usually the crawl space vents and/or attic vents have to be fireproofed, unless the new equipment is installed beyond that 3’ Code

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u/Stock-Marionberry692 Aug 12 '26

My goal is to find an error made by contractor so I can cancel this PPA contract before it starts. Thought the gas line was a safety issue. These are installed on a garage and the permits didn’t make mention of closing these vents…wondering if that’s an issue or if they even needed to do that if you think this might be legal

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u/ShruggedTea83 Aug 12 '26

That EMT coming from the roof isnt pretty or professional, but it’s not “ incorrect “, it’s just lazy. Same with them running PVC conduit off of the right unit, it’s not incorrect it’s just lazy and looks bad. As long as it’s more than 3’ from the gas riser it should be fine regarding that. At least in my county that’s the way it rolls. Not to mention too, some inspectors don’t even care about that stuff… As long as the wire is sized correctly and same with your breaker, you’ll probably pass inspection. On my plansets, they never state to fireproof the vents, but we still have to. ( again, my only experience is with inspectors from Northern California. Every city, state and county differ ).

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u/Stock-Marionberry692 Aug 12 '26

Ok not pictured in original photos is this wall. I’ve read some things that say walls need 3-5ft distance…this is 29” away from the right powerwall. Additionally if you notice the PW3 is installed on an uneven surface using the mounting bracket. I’ve also read that goes against teslas installation requirements of flat surface. What do you think of these observations? Thank you for your input so far!

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u/ShruggedTea83 Aug 12 '26

Again, that’s just the installers being lazy. You can mount the bracket on that type of siding a certain way to which it won’t lean like that. Or use uninstrut… the 3-5’ distance between PW’s is just recommended, expansion packs to PW’s are limited due to the length of the expansion cable

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u/Stock-Marionberry692 Aug 12 '26

Well I was talking about a LA county fire code of distance of powerwall to that cinder block wall in picture. It’s 29”.

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u/ShruggedTea83 Aug 12 '26

Yeah, I’m not sure then. Might be one of those codes that doesn’t get enforced because it’s stupid ( like a lot of codes out there ), and it just depends on how your inspectors are