Where do you keep your gear ?

[banjaxed]

After reading the thread on keeping your gear in a shed or not, it made me wonder about members experience and recommendations for keeping gear in good condition. This will be my first year trying to keep my scopes in good condition so it will be very helpful to me, and I hope a lot of other new members.

[joe aguiar]

In my living room I got like 7 of them 1 or 2 in my room

If u have spouse u probably cant have more than 2 norm 3 at most and probably only 1 in living rm

Most guys have a man cave isn't that what it's made for?

Joejaguar 

[Andy R]

I keep my visual & imaging setups indoors, in the dining room, ready to go at a moments notice. I don't have a shed, and if I did it would of long been blown away. I do however have a 20' storage container but due to a rather large false widow spider population and slight dampness I find the idea a little off putting. However its a growing collection and sooner or later the lesser used items will have to collapsed and moved upstairs.

Edited December 15, 2019 by Andy R

[Andy R]

14 minutes ago, joe aguiar said:

In my living room I got like 7 of them 1 or 2 in my room

nice selection, spoilt for choice.👍

[DaveL59]

While I do have a shed, it's not in great order and have had to refix the felt a couple times earlier this year, plus storing the "spare" road wheels etc in there doesn't leave much space. Luckily I've a conservatory so that's where the 4 bigger scopes live, set up so they're easy to move into position either out to the garden or viewing with one out the open door. Upside is they're pretty much at ambient given its an unheated space and if windy but using them thru the doorway there's less wind effect on the long OTA's and easy access to mains power etc. Downside is summertime it can hit 45C+ in there but doesn't seem to have caused any issues with them so far.

I'd think the critical issue to avoid is damp conditions, add spiders and maybe slugs into the mix and you can have problems aplenty if they get into the optics. Don't forget too that slugs if they find their way into the electronics cause havoc. One got into the electronic catflap a year or so back, stopped it working and wiped/scrambled the chip memory. Once cleaned up and working again I then had the fun of herding cats and persuading them to go thru to re-programme the chip ID's so they could get back in again. Bearing that in mind I keep the scope electronics bits in the eyepiece case as it sure wouldn't be fun trying to get those working if that happened to the goto components.

Edited December 15, 2019 by DaveL59

[Rob Sellent]

Keep manual mounts and tripods, observing chairs and street light blockers outdoors in a brick shed. There's little chance of excessive damp or things such as slugs, spiders or gales. We might get the occasional creepy crawly in there but the local Tarentolas chomp them up pretty quickly.  All optical gear, filters, maps and so on are kept indoors in one of the spare rooms.

[cletrac1922]

Few of the guys in my club, have a 3metre X 3metre garden shed, with pier

Have roof of rollers so slides open in both directions , and walls lined as well with concrete floor to keep out moisture. 

Seems to work very well

John

[Steve Clay]

I keep mounts in the utility room and scopes and other kit in spare bedroom.

[Robny]

I'm another one that keeps my scope setup in the conservatory ready to go.  Pretty much at ambient temp in the winter, the summer though 😣

[banjaxed]

42 minutes ago, Robny said:

I'm another one that keeps my scope setup in the conservatory ready to go.  Pretty much at ambient temp in the winter, the summer though 😣

What temperature do you have in your conservatory?

[johninderby]

Keep the dob and mounts in the conservatory and OTAs in a closet that being on an outside wall is pretty cold. Move wharever OTA I want to use into the conservatory and close doors to the house and let the temp drop to ambient. Then if it’s not raining ready to go. 

The conservatory doesn’t get too hot on most summer days as I pull the solar blinds and open some windows if it is sunny.

Edited December 16, 2019 by johninderby

[DaveL59]

I run up the portable AC in the conservatory to cool things down in the summer eves which helps  

[Robny]

2 hours ago, banjaxed said:

What temperature do you have in your conservatory?

In the summer....way up into the 30's

[Paul73]

I keep mine in the garage with a coat over the open end of the Dob to keep out the worst of the dust/spiders but let the air circulate. Ready cooled and ready to wheel out to play!

Paul

[Louis D]

In two first floor coat closets at the back in a climate controlled house.  I would never keep anything nice in the shed.  All the bikes stored in there have rusted chains, seized cables, and white mold growing over the paint.  It's drier here in Texas on average than in the UK, so I would think sheds there would be even more toxic to equipment.

[banjaxed]

54 minutes ago, Robny said:

In the summer....way up into the 30's

Yes it does get hot in the summer but I was thinking about through the winter months, do you leave the heating off ?

[johninderby]

I have a high security steel shed in the garden with built in ventalation. Nothing rusts or mildews and very few spiders. Good ventilation is the key. 

[Robny]

1 hour ago, banjaxed said:

Yes it does get hot in the summer but I was thinking about through the winter months, do you leave the heating off ?

Yes....the conservatory is not heated so it can get quite cold 0ish.  The problem is when I open the door to the conservatory from inside the house...everything instantly due's up.

[noah4x4]

I bought a house with a single width, but triple length garage. Absolutely useless for multiple cars, so I converted the rear third into a gym for my wife complete with seperate glazed door access, plasterboard walls, sprung floor, full length ballet style mirrors. That was 16 years ago. Once it became disused (she prefers to go to an outside gym to eat cake with her pals), it created a perfect "mission control" for me. 

I leave my scope fully assembled, carry it five yards to its location and connect two Intel NUCs with Iris Plus Graphics over Windows Remote Desktop with RemoteFX compression disabled to create a perfect indoor 4K UHD resolution remote controlled electronically assisted observing environment. I gave up visual astronomy from my back yard long ago due to light pollution, but with camera on Hyperstar I don't think I could better enjoy this hobby given my Bortle 6 skies in my idyllic warm and cosy man-cave complete with TV, fridge/mini bar etc.

Edited December 27, 2019 by noah4x4

[rwilkey]

We had a conservatory built earlier this year and the perfect place to store telescopes with immediate access to the back garden.  See below:

 

[banjaxed]

We have a conservatory also but my wife might not be very pleased if my scopes moved in 😟. The main reason for starting this thread was to see if storing scopes in a reasonably dry garage was acceptable, which would also keep my wife happy.

[JamesF]

If the garage isn't damp and the kit is protected from bumps and knocks with the optics all covered I see no issue with keeping them in a garage.  It's not really that much different from keeping them in an observatory.  Shelving with some sort of curtain to keep out dust and suchlike might work well, or even a lockable cabinet depending on the security of the garage.

James

[DaveL59]

so long as its dry and reasonably ventilated you could well be fine. I'd say at the back tho away from the main door might be best. You'd need to take precautions against creepy crawlies and dust/grit blowing in under the door but at least temps should remain reasonably stable and near ambient at this time of year.

[johninderby]

Cleared some junk out of a hallway closet making room for keeping a few scopes in. Normally kept in the conservatory but when vistors come a good place to stick things out of the way. 👍🏻

[Space Hopper]

No brainer.

Indoors. In a warm, dry, secure garage.

Way too damp, way too wet, way too cold to even consider keeping anything permanently outdoors here.

This is the UK !! 😀 Our climate is atrocious !!