Astrokev

Productive morning today.

I braved the freezing cold to potter in the observatory. I finally inserted the soffit vents in the warm room roof, after first of all super-gluing insect mesh to the inside face since I considered the gaps between the concentric plastic rings a little too large.

Next up, I attached the EPDM "seal" to the south side of the rolling roof as previously described. In the pics below, I've added another quick sketch to show how this will work (sorry if this is obvious, as I guess it's not rocket science). It seems to work OK. The only gaps I now have are at the ends of the rails. I've decided to leave these open for the moment and see how it goes. If these gaps do allow rain/snow to blow in, then I'll revisit it and could install brush-seals to try and help reduce the gap.

After this, my hands were frozen so I called it a morning and came in to warm up.

Back in the house, pleased to see that the turnbuckles I ordered had arrived. I went for nice shiny stainless steel. Just ordered eye-bolts and will install them as soon as the bolts arrive.

Also just ordered a window for the warm-room. Got a bit bogged down trawling Ebay so went local and following a recommendation from a family member in a related trade, managed to pick one up for £12 from a place a mile down the road. Well pleased with that.

Apart from the above, the next job is to get some thin ply and block-off the gaps above the rolling roof crossbeams - perhaps when the temp warms up a bit!

EDIT - I made an error in the diagram below. The "north wall" should say "south wall" - and in my attempt to correct my error, I've unintentionally posted the corrected picture in a new post. Oops. I really must learn how to use this forum ?

In my last post I mentioned the gaps between the roof rafters where they rest on the roof cross beams. Thought I'd just share a few pictures to show what I meant. The gaps are nestled quite high under the roof overhangs, so may not be subject to rain blowing in, but I think I'll cover them with thin ply none the less, just to be sure. If nothing more, covering these will help stop insects getting in, although I realise trying to keep bugs out completely is almost impossible. Even if I cover the roof gaps, there're still small gaps around the rails etc. which I'll probably leave open to allow some level of ventilation.

In the second image, the thin bright line is the gap between the wall and the roof cross beam on the south side. I've thought of a simple design to seal this which I'll share when I get round to making it.

Here are the pics of the finished barge boards as promised.

Today was playing-with-grandson day, but I managed to find an hour this morning to attach the EPDM strip to the rolling roof. This forms a seal with the fixed warm-room roof as it closes and should prevent wind blowing rain under the north edge of the rolling roof, since the roof cross beam does not form an effective seal on it's own. The way this works is probably obvious but, as I'm at a loose end tonight, I've drawn a quick sketch to show the design in case I've not explained this well. It's tricky to take pictures of this in the fully closed position! As far as I can see, both roof's are now finished; on the outside at least. I'm still considering whether to put thin ply shuttering between the roof rafters on the inside of the roof where they rest on, and are attached to, the cross beams. I don't think rain can enter here, but the gaps do provide a means for bugs to get into the scope room, so shuttering will reduce this risk. On the upside, the gaps provide good ventilation, so I still need to decide whether to do this or not. If I do, it can be done from the inside so I'm now not dependant on good weather  

Productive hour this afternoon. Put up all the barge boards and gave them a couple of coats of paint. 

I then measured up and cut the EPDM to go along the north side of the rolling roof to form a seal with the warm room roof when it's closed. Ran out of light so didn't manage to attach it, so this is my next job. 

I'll post a couple of pics tomorrow. 

45 minutes ago, mountainmadman said:

Love the photo of the paint drying! That's made my morning! ?

Seriously though, congratulations on an impressive build!

Haha. Thanks!

Bit of a mixed day today. Busy doing other things this morning (but can't remember what exactly). Eventually made it outside mid afternoon. The plan was to paint the barge boards and then fix a length of EPDM along the inside face of the rolling roof north side. The hope is that this will form an effective barrier to stop wind blowing under the roof and into the scope room when the ROR is closed.

So, painting the barge boards went to plan (only the inside face, I'll paint the outer faces once they're up). Then I rolled back the roof to get access to the north side so I could attach some EPDM. This is when things went off-piste, and I was greeted with a loud crunch and the roof came to an abrupt halt.

Inspection soon revealed the problem. The guttering I'd installed a few days ago was sticking out too far at both ends (see picture a couple of posts above). The wrap-around sides of the roof clearly didn't like this! Why I didn't test this after installing the guttering escapes me - what's that phrase about measuring twice and cutting once? With hindsight it was blindingly obvious. Fortunately, no great damage was done, but it took me the rest of the daylight hours to remove, modify the re-attach the guttering. This time I tested it and can report that the roof rolls back all the way without problem. Phew.

By this time it was too dark to play with the EPDM so that was the end of the observatory build for today. So, instead of a nice pic of the new wind seal on the roof, here's another pic of some paint drying...

2 hours ago, JamesF said:

I did take my shoes off and walk up and down on it a bit though

 

I know how that feels - Great!

Cut the barge boards but then started raining so packed up again. Oh well, there's always tomorrow. 

As hoped, after doing some unexpected proof-reading of some of my daughters uni essays and the like (which needed to be handed in by 2PM today!), although brain-dead I managed to get the last of the guttering and down-pipes fitted. Hooray, another tick off the never ending list!

Next job is to cut and fit barge boards on the east and west edges of the ROR. Hopefully over the weekend if the weather holds up.

A not very exciting photo of more gutter brackets (just to show that I did do something today!), drying on the dining table after giving them a coat of paint just now.

Tomorrow, I'll attach these to the north edge of the warm room roof and put up the last length of guttering

Yes I think roof flexure would certainly help. Accuracy when working with timber is difficult to preserve since it's such a dynamic material, subject to change with time. 

2 hours ago, LeeRich said:

More wheels makes for a smoother glide ?

In theory maybe. In practice there are probably only 2 or 3 per side actually in contact with the rail. 

Wow, you turn your back for a minute and your thread gets swamped with replies and feedback!

During my design phase I did briefly consider putting the wheels on the bottom but ruled this out - can't remember exactly why. Thinking about it again, I still prefer the wheels on top approach (not just because that's what I ended up doing). Apart from the cleaning and water ingress issues, the rail on the top would have to "engage" with each new wheel it encounters as it's rolled off. Probably not a major challenge but maybe a small risk of the rail not mating with the wheel correctly which potentially could be problematic. 

I cant remember seeing any builds using this approach on the forum, which may tell us something. Agree with other comments though that there are many ways of building a ROR. There's no right or wrong; minor design variations to combat the various risks usually mean the end result is a success. It's also fantastic to see people use different approaches. 

8 hours ago, Rusted said:

Amazing! 

But I still think I would have put the rails on top and had the wheels pointing "upwards." 

?

Interesting idea

5 hours ago, JamesF said:

"last outside job".  Wow

James

That's not including minor landscape work to tidy things up - chipping, a path to the door, a stone step.... (but they don't count ?). I'm sure to have forgotten something though!

Oh, and digging a trench for electrics. 

Actually, it seems I've got loads to do still ?

Strange bright thing in the sky today. Googled it and it turns out it was the sun. Well there's a thing.

Finished off the guttering on the south side of the ROR. As many folks have done, I made-up a hopper attached to the main structure, with a down-pipe flowing into this from the ROR. The clearance between the downpipe and hopper is about 1mm. Haven't tried it out yet to make sure it doesn't overflow, but hopefully will work OK.

Also reinstated the short guttering and cladding pieces around the rails on the north side of the ROR. The sealant I used to finish off the "dams" was butyl rubber guttering sealant which is as sticky as heck, but has made a good job of sealing the dams. I also went round other exposed edges on the rails where the EPDM ends and sealed the edges inside the obsy.

EDIT - Forgot - I also put clear sealant along the top edges of the drip bars above and below the door.

Before packing up, I went out to my second home and bought guttering for the north side of the warm room - the last edge I need to install guttering on. I also still need to put up barge boards, which will be the last outside job on the building.

Not much work done today - other routine chores took priority. 

That said, I did manage to get the ROR guttering up.... and then took it down again so I could take the brackets off for painting. These are looking pretty on my dining table at the moment!

I realised this afternoon that the single downpipe I bought isn't quite long enough, which is annoying. I'll have to get another one tomorrow to finish the job. 

21 hours ago, JamesF said:

As a brief aside, one of the things on my list of "possible future projects" is to design a replacement alt/az mounting for the EQ6 with a sane alt adjuster.  I don't think it would have to be very complicated -- mostly just a few bolts and three or four bits of aluminium sheet cut by someone like Lasermaster.  That's for another time though

James

Look forward to seeing that project James! ?

The more recent EQ6 models have improved altitude adjustment as far as I recall. 

That adapter looks really smart. A question though - the clearance between the south altitude knob and the adapter looks very small. Will this make it difficult to adjust?

That said, the quality of the bolts looks far superior to those on the Skywatcher EQ6 that I have. The altitude bolts on mine are absolutely hopeless. I've bought the "upgraded" bolts but these are not much better  . In fact they're so bad that I may consider upgrading my mount at some point.

Pleased you have power now up and running. This is something I wish I'd done early on in my build. As it is I think I'll be running off an extension cable for quite a while yet.

I was lucky in getting the EPDM glued down in the last decent warmish spell before the rot set in. Having said that, today has been quite mild. Hopefully this will continue so you can finish the rubber work soonest.

I love the brewery by the way

Looking great James. 

Good luck for tomorrow. 

Well, I thought I had a completely clear day today, with plans for lots of observatory action. But...

I'm taking my daughter back to Cornwall tomorrow, so really needed to plan a bit for that. Being on the other side of the planet it always seems to be a bit of an expedition. And then I thought I really ought to put the Christmas decorations away. So, that took me most of the morning. All in all I finally got out in the garden at 2PM ?. I hate working in fading light. 

Anyway, I put sealant on the water barrier/dam things, and then started to make brackets for some more guttering. No pics taken, mainly because there was nothing worth taking pics of, but work will resume on Monday now. Still a few exterior jobs to finish but getting closer to being able to spend all my time inside ?

Bloomin' freezing this afternoon, but braved the elements in the short time I had available to make another "dam" on the east rail. Just need to give both dams a coat of sealant to make sure they're water tight. 

Weather and real-life permitting, hoping to get some more guttering up tomorrow. Well that's the plan anyway. 

6 hours ago, Gina said:

It's all the little jobs that take the time!

So I'm finding !

Don't know how I missed your last few posts. You've made some great progress and it's looking excellent. 

The vertical cladding is not something you see very often and looks good. 

Your comment about water tracking back along the rails was interesting. Sounds similar to the problem I've had. It's a fundamental flaw with the ROR design, although there are ways of combatting it, as you describe. I've made small "dams" , to use your terminology, using EPDM which will serve the same function as your silicon sealant, although I haven't tested them out in anger yet.