The Astro Podium

[OK Apricot]

Hey all hope everyone is doing well. 

Decided to make a bit of a progress thread about what I'm going to call The Astro Podium. Easter weekend the Mrs and I  decided to do something about the garden. It was a terrible state when we moved in; grass over a foot long, trees and weeds everywhere, horrible flower bed with B&M special picket fence pieces etc. We made a good effort of clearing up and peeling it back to something somewhat more presentable, cutting the grass, trimming and de-weeding, and re-doing the flower bed. 

There's no reason that my hobby can't be done from my home, so we had a little brainstorm about how we could transform the garden somewhat. Firstly there were 20ft+ conifers and trees at the back fence blocking the view to the east sout east. Secondly there's a street lamp right above the garden. It's going to take some persuading the council to do something about it, maybe shielding. Let's face it, they can't take the "security" stance seeing as my van was broken into, all tools gone, when it was parked right underneath it. Even so, we decided it'll be worth it even if nothing comes from it, as I believe you can still shoot good images from badly light polluted areas. 

Anyway, I went primal on the trees and stumps with an axe and bow saw leaving a nice view to the east south east.

 

Next is the issue of having line of sight to the NCP. Having mocked up a rough area, it'll have to sit a few feet higher than patio level and a little more central. This is where the podium will come in. With a scope set up where we want the podium, I'll have around 180° of a sky to scan, though the lowest I'll be able to really see is around 20°+.

Over the past week I've been chipping away at the original flower bed to find a line and level to work from. Tonight I finished the initial rough line where a retaining wall will be placed. The idea is the podium will be 2.4m in a square, levelled and set back into the slope of the garden, sitting around 1.2m proud above the patio. Either side of that will be a smaller retaining wall to the outline of the garden. Not sure if I'm coming across well here, but I have a vision and will work with it. Nothing but good old fashioned elbow grease and a bit of guess work 😅. 

 

This should make for a great summer project, target to be completed by birthday in October. The extra calorie burn will help me find those last 20lbs to complete my weight loss goal as well, having gone from 224lbs to 188lbs in the last year. Anyways thanks for taking a look and feel free to offer some advice to a complete novice - I'm a lift engineer not a DIY gardener! 

[M40]

Looks like you have done a fair amount of work already 👌 biggest challenge may well be that street lamp but a bit of screening later 🤞 Looking forward to see how you get on.

[Stu]

Nice project.

I’ve found on two occasions that a polite and friendly email to the council (or whoever manages the streetlights) results in quick action. I have a streetlight overlooking my garden in Crewkerne and they fitted a shield to it within about a week or so of my request.

[OK Apricot]

Cheers guys, I've certainly got my work cut out. Your success with shielding is encouraging so I will pop them an email and see.

Plan for today is to dig a 300x300mm trench. It's thick clay down there 😮‍💨

[OK Apricot]

I reckon that's in the region of 1.5 tons of clay removed to dig that trench... Jeez 😮‍💨. That absolutely crushed my back so think I deserved one of these (what's with the small flakes these days!?) 

Trench done and crudely marked out the separation of the outside edges of the podium. 

[OK Apricot]

Not a lot more done today on the progress front, but plenty of hard work involved.

To be honest I probably should've barrowed the dirt and rubble up top in the first place, but I didn't, so I have spent a good amount of the day moving the dirt elsewhere. It needed moving as it was stopping me from laying a rough string line. Another 1.5 tons moved with nothing but a spade 🤣. Fail to plan.... 

Money being pretty tight this month I used the old bamboo that was removed from the garden as stakes to run some string. Didn't fancy paying B&Q £3.50 per stake... Very roughly outlined here and will pay closer attention tomorrow where I hope to start cutting out the turf where the midway paving is going to go, and the small wall behind it. Blimey. 

 

[OK Apricot]

I've been chipping away after work and the gym during the week - this sort of gardening really takes it out of you! Settling for a minutes break here and there I have a puff on my vape, and the laser made things interesting - like I've dug out a portal to my final resting place in the trench 🤣

 

As I said, more or less guess work with some measurements here and there, but I've come to feel that the trench at the bottom was nothing but a waste of time and energy - I know I needed to dig down a little to half Bury the bottom sleeper panels, but going down as far as I have was overkill - the clay that was there was plenty solid enough for some concrete post foundations, and all this is done is increase the cost of timber required, as I need longer units 😒. Anyway, I'd decided to cut out the area of the garden where the midway paving is going to go. I don't feel like I have that much purposeful direction, but I believe the end product will be at least satisfactory. Going about it this way is helping me visualise and measure what needs measuring - as I said, I am NOT a DIY gardener! 

The cut out for the midway wall is nice and square, and the base is level. I've been using my work laser level to achieve this with some sort of accuracy. At this point I believe the bulk of the excavation is complete, and the plan tomorrow is to dig out a couple of stepped trenches at either end of the excavation site. This is where some of the sleepers will go to "cap off" the Astro Podium at each side, and I'm hoping, with all the clay underneath, that some steel rebar (through the sleepers into the clay) will be sufficient footing. 

 

[AstroNebulee]

Very interesting to watch your build evolve, I'm very impressed by your hard graft. Looking forward to watching your build. Love the vape and laser line, I thought we were holding a rock concert on your garden 😊

[OK Apricot]

Thank you! Very near the point now where materials are going to be the bottleneck, specifically purchasing them - timber is so expensive 😔

Edit: Plenty of music to keep me going, though no rock, it's more late 90s trance 😜

[AstroNebulee]

10 hours ago, OK Apricot said:

Thank you! Very near the point now where materials are going to be the bottleneck, specifically purchasing them - timber is so expensive 😔

Edit: Plenty of music to keep me going, though no rock, it's more late 90s trance 😜

Timber is an outrageous price atm, hopefully you'll get it all sorted abd once done abd completed you'll have an amazing place to setup on 👍

[SpaceWatcher]

Taking shape nicely 👍

Re the street light, tell them it’s stopping you sleep

I told our council it was for stargazing and they didn’t want to know, my wife told them it was stopping us sleeping 2 months later and it was shielded within 2 weeks

[OK Apricot]

I have sent an email off to the council about the lamp. Not sure I'll get away with the sleep really as the bedroom is on the other side of the bungalow. I have a feeling they will only dim it, which of course is no good. We will see.

Only a few odds and sods today due to rain, but cleared out the trench, dug the first foundation hole and mocked up the dugouts to the left and right. Looking like this overall... 

 

[Alan White]

Looks like decent progress, interesting to watch others graft.
Have you a final plan or is this being flexible in build?

Material wise, costs are indeed rising as everything else, but some materials go in and out of stock for no imaginable reason, so good luck on the materials supply, just take your time.

[OK Apricot]

13 hours ago, Alan White said:

Looks like decent progress, interesting to watch others graft.
Have you a final plan or is this being flexible in build?

Material wise, costs are indeed rising as everything else, but some materials go in and out of stock for no imaginable reason, so good luck on the materials supply, just take your time.

I have a vision but that's about it. It'll probably change slightly along the way through either measurements or materials I can get, but this is the idea:

It's a terrible draw edit on my phone, but red is timber and walling, blue is paving, with two sloping flower beds either side (but only drawn on one side). Whether it turns out this way or not remains in question 😅

[jjohnson3803]

On 14/05/2022 at 16:12, AstroNebulee said:

Very interesting to watch your build evolve, I'm very impressed by your hard graft. Looking forward to watching your build. Love the vape and laser line, I thought we were holding a rock concert on your garden 😊

I was thinking more of the mystery hole in "Outer Range".

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by jjohnson3803

[OK Apricot]

Soooo a little more progress made. Went to Perks where I got a healthy discount on timber, so came home with more than I was expecting. Decided on 100x100 - it looked meaty enough in person, and 100x200 looked like overkill (also more than twice the price of the former). 

It turns out the trench wasn't a complete waste of time, just digging it to the depth I did was. I need to half burry the bottom sleepers anyway which will leave approx 200mm below, so I'm thinking of using some dirt to bring that down to 100mm then use type 1(?) hardcore to fill the gap, the idea being the sleepers have some sort of water drainage. 

Anyway, leveling and aligning the posts was a little awkward but my bro and I managed to get it done to a standard I'm satisfied with  (you'd think I'd be a pro at this sort of thing as I need to level vehicle lift posts as part of my job!). We started with the two left and right posts so that we could run a string line between them and have a datum point for the other three. 

 

Once that was done, we positioned each one so that it was level and juuuust grazing the string. In theory they will all be in line and level... Right....!? 

Phew! It actually turned out quite well. Didn't quite have enough postcrete to flush the holes with the trench so I had to pop out and get more today. Not quite rock solid yet but I'm sure it will dry out and harden over the next couple days. May have used a bit much water 🤔. 

With the main posts in I set my laser level up to mark out the required height. I then set to work making a more concerted effort to dig the smaller trenches so that I could lay the capping timber. I know I've said it a lot on this thread, but it was back breaking trying to achieve a reasonable level into which I could place the timber, while keeping it level and at the right measurement from the marked top of the post, while manoeuvring a spade around a six foot post 😣. Got the job done though. Everything there is temporarily fixed with angle brackets to help with mocking things up and getting things in the right place until I'm happy, where I'll then probably drive some 175mm timber screws into it all. 

 

A good weekend's graft, and only progress will tell if my measurements count for anything... So far so good! 🤞

Edited May 29, 2022 by OK Apricot

[AstroNebulee]

Looking excellent and some blooming digging there, well done and enjoy a cool drink 😊

[Stu]

Nice work! 👍👍

[Franklin]

On 14/05/2022 at 22:12, AstroNebulee said:

I'm very impressed by your hard graft

Couldn't agree more, I would have took the top fence down and brought in a mini-digger! What an excavation!

[maw lod qan]

I'm enjoying watching your build!

The shovel is one of man's worst friends! That was an amazing amount of soil you moved!

[Franklin]

While that trench is out it would make sense to install some kind of land drain (gravel/perforated pipe) before it's filled in, just in case of heavy rain and flooding in the future. You could link it up with a rain water gulley at the house.

[OK Apricot]

Thank you all for your kind words! It's been a real chore, all this digging, but there's such a sense of satisfaction when you sit back and think "I did that". 

@Franklin thank you for the tip on the perforated pipe! I'd seen it before in a few how-to's and totally forgot about it. It's on the shopping list 👍

[OK Apricot]

Hope we're all making the most of the jubilee break, I know I am! Managed to acquire a bit more timber, fixings and such yesterday. I wanted to make a good chunk of progress on the main structure while I have the extra time off. 

I started with building up the end cappings of the wall. The sleepers are slightly staggered so as to avoid having to dig a deep narrow trench and use so much timber. With efficient use, it looks like some of the offcuts can be used for the wall I will build to retain the turfed part of the garden, though I question the strength of 100x100s to hold back so much mass. Might go for something larger for that. Anyway, a couple pictures... 

With a little luck everything has remained level bottom to top on both sides. I drove a few 600mm sections of 12mm rebar through the rear of the capping and dead-man sleepers to help give the whole structure something to "pull against" and strengthen it up. Hopefully this will help when the ground inevitably gets wet and water weight is added. Also used were over 100 timber screws on this section alone - definitely going to need more! 

I suppose it's worth mentioning at this point that Mrs Apricot had second thoughts about her flower beds either side of the Astro Podium, so we're now going with a big straight lump of a wall, but the overall paving layout will remain the same. We will probably put down some decorative stone, slate etc and put some potted plants there instead. 

I then started on the main paneling using the same 100x100 sleepers. I still need 14 more to complete the main part of the build, bringing the total to 39 😳. Rain slowed play a little today, but I got there with an the timber available... 

So, 14 more timbers to go, then I will be going about drainage and it's integrity - Membrane to help defend the timbers from the soil and wet from the inside, lined with some kind of hardcore, hardcore in the trench and some perforated pipe - this should give it a good chance of lasting a few winters! I did notice when the trench was empty and we had some good convective rain and thunder a few nights ago, and the trench filled right up (we had a moat!), it had drained naturally after a day, so I'm umming and arring at the moment but will probably do it anyway to be on the safe side. Drainage will be a must for the turfed section wall. In the mean time I will see if there's a way into the gutter pipe in the corner at I could run the drainage pipe into there. 

Overall a few QC issues but mostly happy with how it's turning out. I'm thoroughly enjoying myself I must say - it's starting to feel like a hobby of its own! 

[Alan White]

More good progress made, makes my own efforts feel minor.

 

[OK Apricot]

Not at all Alan - your observing area build looks very smart! Loving the Khazi 🤣