Hello, and welcome to the build.  As many of you know setting up and tearing down seems to take up most of your observing time.  If you are fortunate to have semi-dark skies like myself, an observatory can greatly increase the time you spend in astronomy endeavors.  After a 2 year hiatus (due to the birth of my second child) I am sorely missing being out under the stars and have begun the process of building my observatory.  It will be something I see taking place over the course of the summer as I have many obligations this summer that will prevent me from getting it done in one quick fell swoop.  I will attempt to take everyone through my build so that you may get a grasp of the process, ideas behind it and some of the things I may have done differently having got a second chance.  If anyone is out there contemplating a build I would offer a suggestion to you.  Having gone through the design phase and getting to a point of excavation and foundation pouring, I cannot empress upon you enough to plan,plan,plan, and plan somemore.  Think about what type of observing you want to do with a permanent pier/place to gaze/shoot from.  Think about what aspirations you might have for your future observing, and incorporate as many of these things into the design of your observatory.

For myself the key items were integration of technology, ease of layout and use, upgrade to newer scopes and platforms, and astrophotography.  I knew that at sometime I would be building an observatory when my family moved into our new house.  So when I dug drainage lines and sprinkler system lines three years ago I also ran power, and CAT5 cabeling from the house to about where I thought the OBS might go.  I also integrated my observatory to be half obs and half shed to get the tools out of my garage and into an appropriate place close to where they are needed.  I am building a 10'x20' obs that has 12 feet of observatory covering about 200 degrees of sky from north east to south west.  Due west is a light dome from 3 nearby cities that would exclude good photography so I positioned the OBS in such a way that it will roll off in that direction.  I am running with a cement slab floor, as I was pouring a sports-court and had to run 300ft of line pump to get the mud out there anyways, and figured I would have less vibration issues that way. 

 

 

Heres a long look at excavated observatory site on the right, garden behind it and future sports-court to the left (gravel area)

 

This is a closer up view of the excavated OBS site from the front

 Here is a close up profile view of excavated OBS site and 1 post sunk in the ground

 

This next one is the excavated site from the garden with both posts sunk.

 

Forms set and ready for mud, Pier placement as close to true north as possible and 3/4 pvc ran under the floor from the wall to run cabeling to pier.

 

Profile view of forms

 

The mold for the Pier is 2'x2' and the depth of the hole was 3ft; rebar and pvc shown as well

 

The pier lid has the bolt pattern for a future metallic red mount with the initials ME anyone want to guess what I'd like for an upgrade?

 

Pier is poured and lid attached

 

Karly was in on the action

 

Finished pier with mould lifted. we next poured the sports-court to give it a bit more time to cure before pouring the rest of the slab

 

The hard work....Thanks Bro! my brother in law is on the left helping out.

 

Still at it my brother in law has a heart of gold, front view.

 

The slab is all done... pier top down view from front

 

All poured and starting to cure.

 

Done for the day, sports-court and observatory poured and finished in 5 hours. 27 yards of concrete!!!!