My Observatory Build.

[anthony]

I’ve been a long time out of astronomy due to various reasons, mostly available time and a house move.

Always there in the back of my mind and wanted a new obsy. Saw an opportunity when we took down an old summerhouse (so my wife could put an outdoor office in it’s place). I had a concrete base laid and asked them put aside as much of the old wood that was salvageable.

The pad is 150mm thick and about 4mx2.5m. I didn’t ask them to put a deeper, isolated pier block 😕

With this approach I save a few quid by minimising material costs (I also held as much of the left over office materials) but created a lot of extra work by having to plan how I’ll get the design to fit the bits that I have. As such my starting plan is to have a conventional ROR Obsy and the rest is dictated by what is in the big messy pile in the corner.

Fri - mostly mulling things over, fixing a base of sorts to the ground and getting frustrated by damp course. Hot day!

Sat and Sun - making saw dust, constantly backtracking, hiding from some serious rain.

The inner space is going to be around 2.3m x 3.7m. I’m wondering if I can put in two piers…..?

I’ll be observing, doing some solar and solar system imaging. Will dig out my old cameras and see if DSO imaging is an option.

Very keen to have ideas thrown at me with this build. I have nearly got 4 walls and a door up. By next weekend I hope to be working on the roof. I have not properly planned that yet but am thinking castor on rails (sliding gate stuff). Haven’t decided on apex roof or single slope roof.

If I did the roof with a single slope and made it the long side would I get problems or have to do something special to make the structure more rigid? For me this would be good as its less obvious to passer by and would have the least impact on obstructing my telescope view.

Keen to hear what your think.

 

Cheers

 

[Dinglem]

@anthony Sorry but this is all wrong, what build thread goes so well and smoothly. We all love to hear about the issues people have and everyone gets to give their opinion on the best way to solve them.

Also we like to wait months between updates due to unforseen circumstances, then we can all congratulate you on the progress you're making.

But on a serious note it's looks a great design, one many may copy, keep up the good work and share the progress with us. 😀

 

[anthony]

😂 I guarantee there was plenty of head scratching, head bumping, measure 3 times and still cut it wrong. Plus some silly mistakes I’ll probably never admit to!

[Swoop1]

A pent roof should work quite well with your layout- have the high side towards you as viewed from the images, with the low side towards your neighbours,

That will allow for a water butt to collect runoff that doesn't get in the way so much.

Am I correct in thinking your garden is a westerly/ north westerly aspect?

P.S. That is no way to treat a pier! Just dumping it on a pile of dirt. Shame on you.... 😉

[anthony]

3 hours ago, Swoop1 said:

A pent roof should work quite well with your layout- have the high side towards you as viewed from the images, with the low side towards your neighbours,

That will allow for a water butt to collect runoff that doesn't get in the way so much.

Am I correct in thinking your garden is a westerly/ north westerly aspect?

P.S. That is no way to treat a pier! Just dumping it on a pile of dirt. Shame on you.... 😉

🤣  Indeed. I do agree and I apologise to everyone that exposed to such a cruel sight. In my defence, That pier is substantial and there’s not a lot of me. As it was one or both of us going down, I made a split second decision and chose not to be too involved. Think I chose right too! 

Cheers for the thoughts on the roof. I was always in fear when rolling the roof on my old obsy  I am going to do this one better.

The alignment is roughly West-East. Not precisely but pretty close.

All  very exciting  

 

[maw lod qan]

On 08/07/2024 at 08:05, anthony said:

😂 I guarantee there was plenty of head scratching, head bumping, measure 3 times and still cut it wrong. Plus some silly mistakes I’ll probably never admit to!

That's like the old apprentice carpenter joke!

Gee boss, I've cut this three times and it's still too short!

Your build looks great.

[anthony]

Some light maintenance on my 20 year old pier. 
Look away if easily offended.

[Swoop1]

That velcro could do with a wash....

[anthony]

3 hours ago, Swoop1 said:

That velcro could do with a wash....

Just on its second cycle. Was looking pretty good after the first but I thought “why skimp?”

[anthony]

A little bit of TLC to the pier and a quick set up to make sure the height is about right.  

[anthony]

Over the course of the last week I have spent a lot of free time working hard yet seeing the build progress remain fairly static! As I thought about how top approach the next stages (roll off roof) I spotted potential issues and had to backtrack, make some adjustments.

When I looked into sliding gate tracks I quickly realised that the wood I had intended to support the roof and rails on wasn’t going to be wide enough. So I strapped extra wood onto what was the original platform and made sure everything was level with everything. This did involve some work with an electric plane. Though I did wing this a bit it seems to have worked out well enough.

I’ve got to the stage where I have run out of useful wood and have to put my hand in my pocket. I went through previous threads and decided on FH Brundle as the company to use for the sliding gate track and wheels. I’m going to need 9x3m lengths of track and 6 wheels. That came to £219. Eyes watered a little.

In the last picture you can see that the cat came to help. Don’t know how she got so comfortable in such an uncomfortable position and location.

[Odd Thomas]

Hi Ant, I love reading other peoples build threads. All are very similar but each has their own take on details. I'm at a similar point to yourself ie fitting the rolling roof gear. I note your comment that the top of your frame wasn't going to be wide enough to support the rails, how wide is it? Scarily it looks about the same as mine, which is 3" nominal. By the way, love your cat.

[anthony]

Hey Thomas, Sooooooo sorry to have missed this post. I’ve been busy 😳

So my frame top was 45mm across and the base of the rail was 60. All I had to do was strap another length of wood to the existing top and think I ended up with is OK.

[anthony]

Life has been busy and I haven’t kept up with reporting my progress. Annual leave and other things got in the way and this is where I was on 18th July 24

[anthony]

It seems the next date I got on to do something was 26th August!!

I started with the uprights and the horizontal beams. At this point I had to buy some wood and the chap that runs the local timber yard was awesome with helping me out.

[anthony]

 

 

With the help of my son I made a “jig” to try out the rail position, the castors, see how level i had things and to serve as a template for the actual roof frame.

[anthony]

From there I strapped the jig down in the “off” position and started to construct the roof frame.

Putting the OSB and the felt onto the roof itself was a much bigger job than I had anticipated. Fortunately for me I had been chatting with a friend just prior and he foolishly offered to help me at some point. He was invaluable. We worked quite hard but it still took a good 4 hours to cut and fit the OSB and felt it up etc

Didn’t get time to stop for photos and we were up against it with the weather too.

 

 

Edited Saturday at 09:40 by anthony
Removed a number plate

[anthony]

[anthony]

Because of the way I built this by salvaging some old, not planning very well ahead and possibly being a little impatient at times i had a few odd gaps to fill. Found this character checking out one such gap.

Edited Saturday at 09:42 by anthony

[anthony]

Just kept plugging on. Cutting and fitting wood when the wether was poor and slapping more paint/stain on when the weather was good.

Then I started sizing up the door. Once more, the door is a donor from an old summer house. I’m in two minds about the window. I know there are obvious security issues but when I’m in there during the daytime fettling, I’d like there to be some natural light.

[anthony]

The door. I had to hack bits off it as the frame I made was too short! The frame was also too wide (😂) so I had lots of extra working getting it to fit.

Got there in the end though.

[anthony]

The the floor. I put down a whole load of interlocking foam tiles thatI got from screwfix. They are good but I did want to get rid of the roughness. So I did my research, planned and prepared and put down a levelling compound. Not perfect but I was pretty happy. I got 1 more bag than I needed but was definitely a bag short of what in hindsight I should have got!.
I’m putting the foam tiles back down today and painting the rest of the pier.

[anthony]

I’m inside and pushing and pulling the roof. I have no plans to motorise it. I want to get on and enjoy it and I think a motorised roof would be too complex for me.

I have electricity and data cables ready to be poked through the side but until I can get that done by someone qualified I’ll run out an extension lead and start hauling my old kit out of the loft and see what is still working.

[Skipper Billy]

10 minutes ago, anthony said:

I’m inside and pushing and pulling the roof. I have no plans to motorise it. I want to get on and enjoy it and I think a motorised roof would be too complex for me.

You have done the heavy lifting and motorising it would be relatively straightforward - I was forced to motorise mine due to surgery but I wish I had done it years ago !!!

Some info about mine is here and this video was a great help although I used a much simpler method of controlling the opening and closing sequence. Happy to share details if it helps! (PM me).  https://www.davidbanksastro.com/observatory-conversion

 

[anthony]

😀Thank you for the vid link. I’ll watch that at coffee time!