Change in Plans

This is how the observatory has looked for the past 18 months.

The original plan was to build a “roll off roof” observatory. What’s that? It’s an observatory that looks like a large shed, but the roof rolls off. The roof moves with the help of a garage door opener. Here’s a link of what I was going to build . Due to the lack of time and Erika becoming impatient with my slow progress on the remodel, my plans have changed.

Each block weighs close to 45kg

The first thing I needed to do was make the foundation larger and permanent. The new observatory is 3 meters in diameter. The old foundation is 2.5 meters by 3 meters. I needed to add pier blocks and additional joists to bring the foundation up to 3 meters by 4 meters. Here’s what I did.

First I installed eight pier blocks around the perimeter of the foundation. Each block required a hole and road base gravel. One hole is located near a tree stump. The old roots needed to be surgically removed before the block could be installed. The block installation took an entire day to complete.

The last block to be installed. Yeah!

Each block needed to be leveled and correctly spaced. The blocks will prevent the wind from blowing the structure away

The additional floor joists were installed.

Most of the additional supports are made from recycled wood. The wood came from the remodel.   

That's it for today. I'll add more supports tomorrow. The planking will arrive on March 1st. The planking is made from cedar and will be stained on both sides. An important feature of the planking is its thickness. It’s two and a half inches thick. That’s an inch thicker than a 2 x 4. The additional thickness is required to support the observatory which weighs 350 kg. What does the new observatory look like? Stay tuned…