WilsonM

I too recently purchased a Pulsar Dome (2.2m) and I have to say at £3,500 its very expensive for a few fibre glass panels. On collection Pulsar had not even bothered to put bubble wrap around the panels which were totally unprotected. No matter how much care was taken wedging and tapeing bits of cardboard to prevent damage, by the time we got it home there were substantial scratches. Prior to assembly the fibre glass was cracked on one of the thin sections around the rollers, with holes for roller plates being miles out on some panels. In fact one of the side panels had no holes drilled in it at all! Astonishingly some of the rollers looked second hand and appeared to have run marks and chips missing from their surface. On assembly we found the panels were not only thin but of poor quality with the seams not aligning correctly. If the outside aligned, the critical inside region where the rollers locate was not aligned and no amount of adjustment corrected for this. On the Pulsar video advertisement the door is shown to have a high quality locking system at top and bottom of the door. The one supplied to me however has only a poor quality central lock which latches directly onto the thin fibre glass door frame (not a metal latch plate). I am certain that if I give it a good tug it will open smashing the frame in the process. The assembly instructions are large but mostly pertaining to other products Pulsar would like to sell, they lack clarity and in some areas are incorrect. This starts with the 'technical support' phone number on the front page which tells you to ring another number which goes through a load of useless information before telling you you have to leave a message and after all this the mailbox is full! I made four calls before I got through to Pulsar and when I did I was left with the impression the recipient was on site and didn't really want to speak to his client. However he did confirm the manual was wrong but they hadn't bothered to correct it as they were too busy! So my expensive dome is now assembled and I'm not too happy with it and will need to take remedial action of my own to make it do what it should do ...So would I buy another, NO! ...If I had to do this again I would make a shed, cubed in shape with a circular cut out in the flat roof and purchase a new spherical septic tank for about £500 which cut in half would be ideal for a dome, I would run this on skateboard wheels. I would cut an opening and make a cover from plastic fascia sections or similar. I did not buy an expensive Pulsar pier but made my own from a 1.8m long 14" diameter black corrugated plastic drainage pipe concreted into the base. I then fitted it with a blue plastic water pipe as a conduit for cables and filled it with concrete. The result is an excellent rock solid pier for £29 + 2.5 barrow loads of concrete. Pulsar recommend their soft rubber mat for the floor but I have found B&Q sell a similar interlocking soft mat for £9 a box. As I recall, a box is sufficient for a 4' x 6' area (from memory) so a couple of boxes is probably all I need. Such a system could probably be fabricated for not much more than £1,000, be less hassle and a considerable saving. So if anyone is considering an observatory, I hope you will find this both interesting and helpful.