For those of you installing the louvered roof motor on your modern powered pergola, we have some tips for you. Read this post and watch the video for help installing the motor on your lovered roof.
How to Mount the Motor to the Beam and Pivot Bar
1. The first thing to check is that your pivot bar is fully retracted. What I like to do to test that out is to take my battery from my Dewalt tools—you can use whatever kind of tools you have—and I’ll attach the leads to make sure that the pivot bar is fully retracted. If you don’t have it fully retracted and it’s extended a little bit and you set everything in place when you go to close it, the motor is going to keep trying to close the pivot bar even though the system or louvers are closed and it will break your pivot bar or your bracket. The motor is very strong and it’s going to win against those components.
2. Once I’ve made sure that the pivot bar is fully retracted, the next thing I’ll do is use either my bracket or screwdriver or something and put it through the end of the pivot bar. I like to extend the pivot bar by about two turns or so. On the bottom of the push rod of the pivot bar, there’s some threading space that gives you a little bit of fine adjustment on the length of the rod. Don’t loosen it up too much because you can actually pull the rod out. I give it about two turns to provide me with a little room to adjust after I’m done.
3. Next, put the triangle bracket and attach it to the pivot bar. Put the three screws into the pivot bar. Then take the U bracket, attach it to the motor, and set that on top of the beam. Don’t fasten this to the beam yet. What I like to do is set it on top of the beam loose. Take a sharpie or whatever you want to mark the back side of the U bracket on the beam. Then remove the U bracket and take the motor off of the frame to get it out of the way. Put the U bracket back on the beam and screw it in place. What I like to do is move the U bracket back about a 16th to an 8th of an inch from where I had made the mark with the sharpie. Personally, I like to give those louvers a little bit of tension when they close. Moving it back a little bit does that.
4. After placing the two screws in the U bracket, attach the motor to the U bracket to check the fit and test it out. If it’s too loose or too tight, that’s what the fine adjustment is for. You can get a screwdriver or something else in there to turn it either to extend it or to retract it and fine-tune that tension. And that’s all you have to do to install your motorized pergola system.
If you have any questions or if you need help installing the motor to your powered pergola, please give us a call.