How much does a basic obsy cost?

[emadmoussa]

Imad, yes mine is Bizibilder's old obs. My total cost, including slab, collection, build and pier was circa 450 - and worth every penny

typed on my mobile with Tapatalk

That's doable!! I guess my budget including the AZ EQ6 and pier is up to £2000...so It's possible to squeeze myself a bit. Do you have any photos, Jake?!

[emadmoussa]

http://www.pulsarobservatories.com/

These are ready made.If you have got the

cash to spare,this is the way to go.

Steve.

This is the ideal observatory if - like you say - you have the cash. But in a residential area I would mostly go for a non-assuming observatory - shed like. Even though I'm likely to move into a low-crime rate neighbourhood,  but it's still important to take precautions

[SnakeyJ]

That's doable!! I guess my budget including the AZ EQ6 and pier is up to £2000...so It's possible to squeeze myself a bit. Do you have any photos, Jake?!

I've got a whole load in my gallery and a build thread here - http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/192304-snakeyjs-obsy-build-thread/?hl=%2Bstump#entry2012193

This is a standard screw fix steel shed, strengthened with timber frames and altered for roll of roof - Although I had to collect and dismantle this, the time saved in engineering my own solution more than compensated for this.    If you check out Bizibilder (Roger) 's original build thread and photos from his blog you will soon see he is a very competent engineer!   His more recent build is thread is also well worth a read through!

No doubts it is great fun to design and build your own observatory, but if you really costed your own time and all the materials I think a more realistic figure for all of us would be £ 2K+.    Then the cost of the Pulsar Dome or Ian King Roll off does not seem at all expensive.

[emadmoussa]

I've got a whole load in my gallery and a build thread here - http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/192304-snakeyjs-obsy-build-thread/?hl=%2Bstump#entry2012193

This is a standard screw fix steel shed, strengthened with timber frames and altered for roll of roof - Although I had to collect and dismantle this, the time saved in engineering my own solution more than compensated for this.    If you check out Bizibilder (Roger) 's original build thread and photos from his blog you will soon see he is a very competent engineer!   His more recent build is thread is also well worth a read through!

No doubts it is great fun to design and build your own observatory, but if you really costed your own time and all the materials I think a more realistic figure for all of us would be £ 2K+.    Then the cost of the Pulsar Dome or Ian King Roll off does not seem at all expensive.

Wonderful - thank you!!! I'll certainly use it as a reference. 

[ollypenrice]

The cheapest and smallest is the fully rolling sentry box design. It is best to have a pier, not a tripod, for these. Singlin made a great job of his on the DIY observatories board.

You just buy a small upright garden tool shed with fully opening front doors. It needs to be big enough to cover the scope and open sufficiently to roll past it with the doors open.

You build the shed as per its instructions with one exception, viz;

You take a piece of waterproof flooring cut to the size of the shed's footprint. You cut a slot out of it to allow it to roll around the pier. You screw some hardware shop wheels on the underside and let these run in rails on the floor.

And then you build up the shed on this rolling base. If you insulate it and make a flap-down table you have a little warm room. Or you can add a PC pod to one side if you prefer.

This will cost the price of the shed plus no more than £100. DIY skills are at the level of slicing bread.

Olly

[adamsp123]

I use a 6X4 ft roll off shed.....£300 all in.

[emadmoussa]

I was thinking considering my budget my other option is an upgrade bigger aperture Dob with a small shed to house it. Just roll scope out and in. Not sure how practical this idea is. Any thoughts?

[Kbramley]

I have just bought a small 3' x 4' shed for £230 delivered, T&G and pressure treated, I have bought a set of 4 braked castors for £20 off ebay and plan to make the whole shed moveable (similar to Olly's thread above). For the pier I have a 8" fibre glass tube I'm filling with concrete and using a 97 VW Golf  rear brake disc (£13 off ebay new) as the pier head adaptor (the hole in the middle is exactly the right size for an EQ6 head). This with a few threaded rods and bolts will hopefully get me a fully operational Obsy and pier for approx £300. Just hoping that the shed on the castors is easy to move and also stable in high winds. All items delivered, just need some time to build now

HTH

Keith

[ollypenrice]

I was thinking considering my budget my other option is an upgrade bigger aperture Dob with a small shed to house it. Just roll scope out and in. Not sure how practical this idea is. Any thoughts?

Perfectly viable idea. Or...

Why roll the Dob? Why not roll the shed? Our 20 inch, at the end of the night, is laid down, not to the horizontal but fairly close. (It has a classic sling-supported mirror so horizontal probably isn't a good idea.)

And then a long, low shed rolls over it. You could have a sentry box upright design as well, of course. However, for a rolling shed like this to go round a Dob rather than just a pier you'd probably want a steel lower chassis. This would cost peanuts. Any small garage will do it if you don't weld or have a friend who does.

I thnk RobH has an upright sentry box (fixed) for his Dob.

Olly

[emadmoussa]

Perfectly viable idea. Or...

Why roll the Dob? Why not roll the shed? Our 20 inch, at the end of the night, is laid down, not to the horizontal but fairly close. (It has a classic sling-supported mirror so horizontal probably isn't a good idea.)

And then a long, low shed rolls over it. You could have a sentry box upright design as well, of course. However, for a rolling shed like this to go round a Dob rather than just a pier you'd probably want a steel lower chassis. This would cost peanuts. Any small garage will do it if you don't weld or have a friend who does.

I thnk RobH has an upright sentry box (fixed) for his Dob.

Olly

Yep - this should work as well.

I'm thinking in terms of a 14" (16" will require a stepladder to reach the eyepiece comfortably I think) that I can collapse at the end of the session.

I'm also considering adding some insulation to the sentry box  / shed to protect the scope from heat waves in particular.

[Astrobug]

Take a look here if you are not sure to build one yourself:

http://www.homeobservatoryuk.com/

The quality is much better than Alex..... Obs....

[Tinker1947]

If you want to get away from the cost and effort of a cement base, i dug out holes and placed 4" x 4" post in them squares it all up and filled the voids around the posts with pea shingle £3 a bag used 9 bags including the 6" x 6" oak pier........3" x 3" posts would do the job......

[odiferous02]

On 30/12/2013 at 11:01, JB80 said:

Depends how you want to go about it but you can buy a basic shed kit relatively cheaply as a starting point.

Here are some that I found http://www.shedstore.co.uk/garden-sheds/8x6-sheds/ but you can get different types for less too. You would just need to figure a way to make the roof easily removable.

I have thought about it before and would prefer to build one from scratch maybe using some green materials/methods but I decided since this would be something for a few years down the track to not get carried away but a cheap little kit shed could be a interim solution.

B80 you mentioned the 8x6 shed that you were looking at in your post. Did you ever use that? The reason I ask is that you can pick them up for £240 and they have a pretty good review according to http://whatshed.co.uk/8-x-6-shed where it comes in at number two. The full review says it's got 28mm x 28mm standard framing, will this be pretty sturdy with a retracting roof?

From reading the thread it seems a good budget option over paying £1,500 for a more tailored version. I am on a bot of a budget so I am just trying to work out if its better to wait a few extra months and pay more or go for the cheaper version.

Thanks for your thoughts. 

[odiferous02]

1 minute ago, odiferous02 said:

B80 you mentioned the 8x6 shed that you were looking at in your post. Did you ever use that? The reason I ask is that you can pick them up for £240 and they have a pretty good review according to http://whatshed.co.uk/8-x-6-shed where it comes in at number two. The full review says it's got 28mm x 28mm standard framing, will this be pretty sturdy with a retracting roof?

From reading the thread it seems a good budget option over paying £1,500 for a more tailored version. I am on a bot of a budget so I am just trying to work out if its better to wait a few extra months and pay more or go for the cheaper version.

Thanks for your thoughts. 

Hey guys, I was using the search function when I found the thread. Sorry I did not realise how old it was before I posted. Ill check next time. 

[Adam J]

my 1.7m x 1.7m was 1300 pounds including foundations and pier, cost does not scale linear with size.....