Pier Advice

[Demon Barber]

Hi All, I have some leftover 9" soil pipe would this be suitable as a mould for a pier,eg concrete and studding or is it to large?

Would i find the scope fouling said pier because of girth,or am i better off going down the small bore metal tube route?

Hate to waste materials,this will be a starting point for my obs build,an 10x8ft extension to my exsisting 16x10`shed,

Cheers

Mike

[Gina]

Should be fine IMO. I checked the clearance of my mount and scope and found I could have up to 10" diameter. A different scope and mount might be different, of course.

[Demon Barber]

Thanks for that Gina, it will be to mount refractors on an HEQ5PRO head to start with,

Cheers

Mike

[Digz]

Check out my thread here: http://stargazerslounge.com/diy-astronomer/142447-wip-pier-design.html

There should be a link to an interesting article on pier design and widths which will give you some good background reading.

As Gina said, 9" should be a good size diameter for a pier.

[Demon Barber]

Thanks Digz only just seen your reply,pier looks good. i will check it out tomorrow

Mike

[Digz]

No worries.

The CN article makes for pretty interesting reading if you can get your head around it. What I did find though is that for the height I want my pier the diameter was quite thick (bear in mind these are based on steel piers therefore I would expect some reduction for a solid concrete one). Having said that I then had a look at other piers other people had made and did a search on the net to find other information. All that combined lead me to design a pier design which is approximately 8" in dia.