Electrical equipment mounting board

[Phil1]

At the left side of this photo:

View attachment 31604

you can see the board my pool's electrical equipment is mounted to. I am contemplating replacing the AquaLink RS box and the old-style AquaPure (whose cover is warped enough to let rain in) with the PureLink unit (basically this puts the AquaLink and AquaPure into one box the size of the AquaLink except an inch thicker).

The board doesn't seem to be in very good shape. I'm not sure really what kind of board it is... it's splitting so bad it looks like several separate boards in the photo, but it's not (seeing as how the board attaches to the two vertical metal channels using just two bolts per channel). I'm thinking I might want to replace the board, since I'd have about half the equipment removed temporarily anyway.

What do people usually use for this purpose? And does this board have a name (electrical backboard)? Wood isn't usually a great idea here because there's lots of termites. I'd want to continue to use the two metal channels for support, not wanting to put anything new into the ground around all those pipes and electrical conduits!

 

[Charlie_R]

At ~$35 a sheet (here, at least) some 3/4" pressure treated plywood will be your best bet. Termites hate that stuff, and it is rated for damp locations, usually. Should last you 20 years.

 

[ps0303]

You could also use cement board. Same stuff they use on bathroom walls, not the green drywall.

 

[dtlight]

I would ditch the wood entirely and go with shallow unistrut, like the board is mounted to. I consider unistrut 'erector set for adults.'

 

[Phil1]

dtlight, interesting idea... it'd take some weight off the existing struts (that PureLink unit is heavy!). But that metal box at the far left of the photo, for example, is a transformer for the landscape lighting (which is controlled by the AquaLink), and it mounts on three screws that aren't quite driven all the way into the wood (it sets down on the screws using "keyhole" slots). How do you mount something like that to a unistrut?

 

[Phil1]

I checked into putting the equipment directly onto the existing vertical Unistruts ("Superstrut" at Home Depot and Lowes) and additional horizontal struts, but it's very problematic. None of the equipment will simply bolt directly to a strut; each item would need some sort of extra hardware. Plus, neither Home Depot nor Lowes stocks much in the way of strut accessories, and it's all expensive (for example, at least $1 per nut, whereas a non-strut nut is just a few cents).

The reviews of pressure-treated plywood at Home Depot were overwhelmingly negative, with many complaints of it coming apart very quickly.

I found some Trex that's ~11 inches wide, so if I bolt two runs of that across the existing vertical struts that should give me a board about the size of the existing board. I used Trex as fascia, and (unpainted) it's holding up well so far in the harsh sunlight and salty near-ocean air, and I assume the termites won't eat it. I got a deal on a 12-foot board that was damaged at one end (which I won't need), so it's much cheaper than either pressure-treated plywood or using Superstrut directly.

 

[Killer95Stang]

Good idea on the trex... That is a very good application for that.