50/50 Roll off build

[Yawning Angel]

Even with land drains, its not fantastically well drained - A dusting of tops soil over boulder clay. The curse of the new(ish) build!. It has had above and beyond the level of traffic it might cope with. I'll be making a path and step, and the rest will bounce back I'm sure ?

[Yawning Angel]

Now the roof is coated, the rails needed to go back on for a final fix. This is where we found out just how hard it is to dead lift to rolling roof! 

Rails fixed, over centre catches added and a bit of a tidy 

Cladding begins on Sunday, if the forecast is to be believed ?

[Yawning Angel]

Cladding!

and mud!

[JamesF]

That's looking very smart :)

James

[Yawning Angel]

Thanks James! Did well with the weather, for once ?

[JamesF]

Better than me then.  I was soaked by the time I called it a day today :(

James

[Yawning Angel]

Yesterday I thought it might get blown or washed away! My Dad has volunteered to carry on whilst I’m at work this week ??

[JamesF]

1 minute ago, Yawning Angel said:

Yesterday I thought it might get blown or washed away!

That it didn't is a good sign.  It's reassuring when what you've built stands up to some of our more extreme weather.

James

[Yawning Angel]

Dry inside too! I was so chuffed this morning when I went to check it

[Yawning Angel]

It's spreading!

and yes, that is 'sunshine'. You might need to google it ?

[Alan White]

Looking wonderful,
do you plan a clad door or a more traditional style one?

[Yawning Angel]

Thanks Alan. I have the door waiting, it's vertical T&G too, although narrower boards. I'm hoping it'll look like I planned to do it ?

[Yawning Angel]

With Christmas out of the way, things can resume a little:

All the remaining cladding is now pre-treated and waiting on a free & dry day. That will be a massive landmark event!

The minor water ingress problem seems to have been delt with - The rain was tracking back in along the exposed rails. A dam of silicon on the rail, under the rolling roof but outside the scope room has done the trick, tested in drizzle, now waiting on a downpour haha

Big event this weekend should be POWER! An electrician mate is coming on Sunday to joint everything and plumb it in!

The list doesn't seem to shrink:

Guttering (arriving tomorrow, I think)
Perimeter mesh
Window
Door
Insulation
Flooring
Internal walls
Vents
Network
...

[Gina]

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

[JamesF]

Excellent.  Power will be a very big step forward I think.  That and having a floor :)

James

[Gina]

A floor is a good idea ?

[Astrokev]

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. 

Edited January 3, 2019 by Astrokev

[Astrokev]

6 hours ago, Gina said:

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

So I'm finding !

[Yawning Angel]

Today saw 2 significant events, power and pier

The observatory now has power all connected up and live. A couple of sockets in initially, with more to come. A lighting circuit too, waiting for lights ?

Out from the main panel in the garage:

and into the obs 

Also the pier head gets its first assembly now all the bits have been machined up:

I think I better order the insulation and flooring, things are moving forward!

Edited January 7, 2019 by Yawning Angel
formatting

[JamesF]

Having power makes it feel like you're nearly there

Very nice-looking pier adapter, too.

James

[sloz1664]

That must be the poshest pier adaptor I have had the pleasure in seeing. It's a great feeling when you start to assemble your astro equipment into the Obsy. The end is in sight.........When I say end, it never ends. There is always something to add, modify or remove. The upside is you are actually using the Obsy whilst you are doing it

Steve

[Astrokev]

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.

[JamesF]

16 minutes ago, Astrokev said:

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.

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

[Yawning Angel]

10 hours ago, Astrokev said:

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?

I'm really please with now the adapter has turned out, thanks everyone! It's stainless steel offcut plates, 50mm stud connectors as the spacers, hex cap head bolts all from ebay and then AVX adapter from Altair. All stainless except the aluminum adapter

It only sign it's from offcuts is both plate have a tiny 3 or 4 mm slot in one edge where the cutting would have started - this is before it has been polished up a bit

The knob is quite close, but I'm hoping not to have to mess with it too much once it's installed. If it is a problem I have a shorter replacement I made up from back when I needed to use the polarscope...somewhere ?

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Yawning Angel said:

The knob is quite close, but I'm hoping not to have to mess with it too much once it's installed

The clearance looks absolutely spot on to me, you're only going to adjust it the once really so even if you need a shifting spanner to aid purchase it's a done deal.

Fabulous project thus far, I'm kinda envious mine is finished in some ways because building your own obsy is a real pleasure. I got a new scope to compliment my completion so obviously there has been continuous cloud cover  since lol