Chiko

TLDR: Big, heavy, 12 kW of solar power for your parking spot. If you don't have a lot of other space for solar panels, this thing is awesome! Ordering & Delivery: I ordered from Signature Solar. Delivery is through a third-party freight company and my issue is they could not find a driver willing to deliver to my house because of the road and overhead power lines. I ended up renting a 26' box truck and picking it up at a local freight terminal. Them loading it up with a forklift was easy. Me unloading it by hand was serious work. Holy catfish these parts are heavy! The Chiko carport doesn't come with anchor bolts. It specs out 1" diameter, F 1554 Grade 36 or better, 24" long anchor bolts to be sunk into the concrete footers. Four per footer, six footers for the Maximo, so 24 bolts and accompanying nuts and washers. This isn't something you're going to want to buy from your local Home Depot, as they want $50 per bolt. Yeah, that's $1,200 (plus tax) for anchor bolts. Anchor Bolt Express has them for between $20.55 and $22.66 each, which brings it down to about $550, or less than half of HD. Plus shipping. These things are 6.5 pounds each, so that's $200 in shipping via UPS Ground. $733 in bolts, baby! Woo hoo! Permitting & Inspection: Chiko (thru Signature Solar) told me they don't have the plans for WV, try using the CA plans that they sent me. Two problems: the foundation requirements for California look like they're designed to not only resist heavy wind, by an attack by Godzilla. That's a LOT of concrete. (4' 6" x 5' x 12" spread base, with a 2' x 18" post riser) -- all with rebar and buried 2' down. Or, 18" pillars buried 5' deep with 12" further exposed above grade. Or a pair of 2' x 2' x 20' grade beams with 24" x 18" diameter post risers. (See attached file.) 2nd problem is my AHJ said "no" to the CA packet. I've engaged a local professional engineer who is reviewing the package and going to give me a WV stamp. Independent of my asking, she reached out and said the foundations were excessive and she's redoing the calculations to get them down to half-Godzilla size. The package cost me $750 to get this done. [The Godzilla calcs are for the seismic rating of earthquake hometown CA and I'm in WV.] Construction: 186 cu ft of concrete for the Chiko Maximo 2-car. That's 31 cu ft per each of 6 spread footing. At about $5.50 per cu ft plus delivery charge, it is about $1,300 delivered. Plus rebar, forms, etc. Say $2,000 if you do all the labor. It's $3,200+ if you just buy the bags of concrete through somewhere like Home Depot, again including rebar, forms, and renting a mixer and you do all the labor. I have a contractor that will do all the concrete work, including forms, rebar, etc. for $3,000. None of that includes excavation. I was uncomfortable doing the concrete foundations myself so hired this part out. 3-4 grown adults were able to put this together "by hand" over 2 days using some scaffolding and ladders to reach up top to tighten things down. Another day to place all the solar panels. I used 18 large format panels in a 3x6 pattern instead of 24 residential size in a 4x6. Either work, so it is more important to match your string sizes to your inverter than physical layout. Follow Chiko's guidelines on panel sizes. The rubber gaskets that came with the carport were supposed to go between the panels to make it waterproof. They didn't work at all for me so I ended up waterproofing by using aluminum duct tape to cover all the gaps from up top. The unit has only a 5% tilt, so you're really not optimal, but I've hit 95% rated wattage on a good, sunny day. That tilt also means snow does not shed without some help. A long-handled window squeegee works for not super-heavy accumulation. Unger 12-18' telescoping aluminum pole window cleaning kit can be found at a Big Box hardware store and works for me (with a ladder). Conclusion: If you don't have a lot of other space to put panels, the Chiko pergola/carport is awesome. I have it wired up in two strings of 9 panels, using 2 MPPTs on my GridBoss 21 and it produces like a champ! It has drawn a lot of positive comments from neighbors and locals, especially from people who really don't want to put panels on the roof of their house because of aesthetics. This they like. My Youtube construction playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1amoAbKUIVRlYC0JCaScdJFY4FSOM3lK

chill633 Verified owner · Oct 18, 2026