Telescope storage

[jdg600]

I'm now the proud owner of a Skywatcher Skyliner 200p Dobsonian and, who knows, I may even get the opportunity to use it one day if the clouds ever clear. In the meantime however, I'm wondering what would be the best way to store this scope as its rather large and my better half has begun to call our home "the observatory".

Ideally I would like to store the scope in our garage as it would be out of the way there and would require less cooldown time. However the garage gets very damp in wet weather so I'm worried that the metal fixtures may rust and the wooden mount may warp in the damp conditions. Also the garage is home to many spiders and I'm worried that some of these may decide to take up residence in the OTA.

I was thinking of maybe building some kind of storage cabinet within the garage and heating it with a low voltage bulb to help keep it dry inside but I'm not sure if this would work.

I would be really interested to hear any views on this idea or of any other storage solutions people have come up with.

John

[bcfcciderhead]

Heating would be good.

This is what i keep mt OTA in, the little white thing in the bottom is a silicon gel bag

http://stargazerslounge.com/diy-astronomer/159555-scope-storage-box.html

[jdg600]

I really like that storage box. Think I might try and do something similar with my OTA.

John

[hemihaggis]

So where about do you stay ?

[DrRobin]

Hi,

I bought a pine blanket box from Newark Furniture, they made it to a custom size to fit my 250 flex tube for about £130. Not cheap, but it looks like a piece of furniture and is approved by the wife. I keep it in our summerhouse, which is dry and mostly bug free. The blanket box evens out the temperature change so the scope is usually already cooled down when I want to use it.

I am going to start a new thread about my compact, pack away observatory in the next couple of days, will post a link on here.