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Prepping unfinished garage wall before install
- Thread starter Cyber_Dav
- Start date
My garage walls are unfinished, just bare studs.
I'm seeking suggestions on what I should do to prepare it for the solar install with powerwalls. Should I put up drywall, or plywood, or just leave it alone?
Thanks
Up to you. We had drywall but you could see the tape and it was beat-up. We had some drywall replaced and all of the seams re-mudded and the area retextured. Then we painted it with a variant of the gray Tesla uses in their showrooms. Came out really nice. We figured doing anything on the wall behind the PowerWall in the future was going to be really hard. So we bit the bullet and did this the weekend before the PW install.
CrazyRabbit
Active Member
i would prewire and hang drywall. read the install manual (it says inwall wire needs to be next size up).
My garage walls are unfinished, just bare studs.
I'm seeking suggestions on what I should do to prepare it for the solar install with powerwalls. Should I put up drywall, or plywood, or just leave it alone?
Thanks
As said, up to you.... but with that being said, it seems to me that when you get powerwalls installed (especially on the inside of a garage), you start wanting the rest of the garage to look nice too. People start doing things like cleaning up cable runs, etc. They really are a nice looking product on their own, and with some work can look fantastic in a garage, like industrial art.
With an unfinished garage, you could have them installed in the garage on the studs but it would likely be hard to drywall around them should you decide to do so later. If it were me, and I was even thinking about finishing the garage, I would likely do what @CrazyRabbit says and find specs for appropriate conduit, have the conduit put in the walls then finish them for a nice clean look after install.
Personally I think finished and painted drywall is the way to go (with extra paint held for any touchups) but it's a personal choice either way. It's probably harder to plan for what to put in the walls pre-installation of your system without having someone from Tesla come out and discuss with you how and where everything will be mounted or placed. So requesting a site visit for layout purposes might be the way to go initially before drywalling. Things can get more complicated layout wise if you have irrigation, NEMA 14-50 or HPWC for charging a car and any other equipment that will be inside your garage and needs to be worked into the design (that's where our delay is now on one wall as things need to get moved to fit everything, otherwise we'd be done). At this point you might also contemplate adding other electrical outlets or an ethernet run to where your Gateway2 will be placed. Some fire jurisdictions are requiring hardwired heat detectors that are tied into a monitoring system in your house. Some places are limiting PWs in the garage or requiring bollars placed inside if the car could hit into the PWs. Lots of things to consider. At least right now you have a clean slate and that's to your advantage if you plan carefully.
I wanted our nice PWs, GW2 and inverter (all white) to sit on the same wall so had the wall pre-painted a nice Gray, kind of like what someone else here did. Does look sharp. We didn't have the opposite wall area painted where other equipment is going as we anticipated current equipment being relocated and patching of the drywall necessitated. Realize now we should have had that wall painted too before they came out as there's no way once things are mounted you'll get a nice clean look. Would have been much easier to touch up where needed. Live and learn. Good luck with your job and good that you are thinking ahead about this.
I couldn’t bring myself to commit to a red wall but here’s the gray painted wall we went with for the white equipment to be on. May keep it as just an accent wall and paint everything else white to keep it light and clean looking.
This was Kelly-Moore Pebble Beach (KM5817) BTW.
I wanted our nice PWs, GW2 and inverter (all white) to sit on the same wall so had the wall pre-painted a nice Gray, kind of like what someone else here did. Does look sharp. We didn't have the opposite wall area painted where other equipment is going as we anticipated current equipment being relocated and patching of the drywall necessitated. Realize now we should have had that wall painted too before they came out as there's no way once things are mounted you'll get a nice clean look. Would have been much easier to touch up where needed. Live and learn. Good luck with your job and good that you are thinking ahead about this.
I couldn’t bring myself to commit to a red wall but here’s the gray painted wall we went with for the white equipment to be on. May keep it as just an accent wall and paint everything else white to keep it light and clean looking.
This was Kelly-Moore Pebble Beach (KM5817) BTW.
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Dukeybootie
Member
After all the electrical hardware was installed, I got this itch as well. Ended up getting the drywall patched and repainted, then decided to add 4 flush ceiling LED lights as well...just because =)
powerwalls can be cabled from side or rear. i'd go out the rear into drywall for a cleaner look. i placed my pw's in the back right corner of garage parking bays with tesla logo facing forward. if i could do it over, i'd turn them sideways so logo faces to the left & the cool glowing green lights would face the parking bays
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