Observitory the story so far

[radioactive]

My part built Observitory is comming along nicely right now its a bit more finished that this picture shows actualy but as the pics were too large a file to upload I have waited until I got some advice off Alan on how best to reduce it anyway here is a snap of it as it was a week ago

You can get the gist of it from this I am rather limited on space this used to be where the greenhouse sat the front room is approx 9ft ish by 3ft6 ish the obs itself works out at 9by 8.5 foot now I know how to resize my pics I will post some more very soon this other pic is showing where the pier will be in the area of floor by the red brick shards if you look carefully you should spot some polythene triangles these were made prior to concreting the floor and in fact the square shape is a flagstone this will be broken when ready to put in the pier under the flagstone is just sand all the rest of the floor had 6inches of well broken up hardcore

[GordonCopestake]

Looks like a great start! What sort of roof are you going to have? Have you put a pier foundation in?

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

That's going to be very very nice when it's finished, great start.

Captain Chaos

[gaelicstorm7]

Looks great that Martyn, very posh, hope your going to have it alarmed if your leaving all your gear in there, did you need planning permission for a structure like that ?

Alan

[SteelRat]

Yup, looking good there Martyn (lucky so n so) 8)

[radioactive]

Thanks for the kind words chaps Yes Alan I have an alarm system ready for it to put in just the mag reed type but effective for it being so close to the house I think.

Re the Planning bit well its a very confused grey area as its not having a perminant roof on it which answers G Cs Question slightly I can say its ("some tall garden walls" ) The smaller control room will have a static flat wooden roof on the Obs roof will be mounted on steel runners and wheels I have sourced these well in advance < the roof will slide over the top of the control room roof completely and onto the patio by some 4ft 6inch approx the runners when put end to end will be 6 metres long so I am looking into allowing the roof to travel in either direction to a degree so maybe if I only wish to observe a small portion of the sky I can slide the roof the other way a little well thats the Plan

Re the pier base Yes at the moment the pier base has an opening 2 feet square but this is covered by a paving flag on top of a pile of sand this was placed in situ, so I could then concrete the whole floor area using the brick foundations I put in as the shuttering a common building practice that is I tried to show this in the second picture but its quality is too poor me thinks now to see it clearly I am taking some pictures tomorrow after I finish off what I can do with the last remaining bit of building sand I have hand then of course the rest will have to wait for another year! :shock:

this picture shows an area which has to be built around the exisiting arch between the two french walls I had to make it such a way as the main roof will still slide over it

heres two more pics I have added one showing the steel runners the roof will sit on it also shows the other side of the two french walls you will also not a lot of topsoil this was dug out for footings now I have been told to redifine the garden by mrs radio so it will be I think a raised veg bed I thinks

[OlympusMons]

Hi,

Very nice solid looking observatory!

I cannot wait to see it finished, keep us posted.

Regards

Stewart

[Albireo380]

Nice looking so far - it will be a cracking observatory when it is finished. Perhaps a few of the boys should come round and demolish the houses behind it - improve the FOV no end

Keep sending in pics as the work progresses.

Tom

[newstargazer01]

Hi. 

I have been looking for roof options on my nearly completed hut/observatory conversion. I see you have a sloping roof which slides out over an original or lower roof.

Do you have any advice or points of caution IRO weather sealing and the gable ends?

maybe the attached pics shows my structure. I want to roll a ROR out over the smaller structure or I will create a sliding hatch over the higher sloping roof.

[solarboy]

Looking good