I might even have some carpet lying around myself, a good idea that I had not thoought of. We had carpets done a few years back and there is some spare so long as the mice and rats have not got into it.
I will keep hold of one of my scrap rotors for you. I have a couple at the moment that are acting as doorstops.
I did see that Bo, I think someone posted it on the IIS facebook page a couple of days ago. it is what set me thinking on the lines of a tube and plate wedge though I would have to to the other way and have the fixed portion in the middle and the moving section on the outside. I still have to watch out though that I do not spend so much time and money that I may as well just buy the off the shelf product and bolt it down.
Last edited by The_bluester; 03-04-2014 at 08:37 PM.
Actually, councils including ours have become known as avid users of nearmap .
I guess that a turf roof would stop that being a problem.
Or just plain camo paint.
Paint rocks on it so it looks like a rockery.
I guess if you're going to use a car stub axle, you have it all there - just bolt the steering assy (king pin) to the pier and adjust with a tie rod
Actually rocks might not be a bad idea, we are in a pretty rocky area!
Ah well, having lost two sheds in the recent fire we will have plenty of practice for permit applications, what is one more?
I am just trying to decide once and for all on siting at the moment, my original location has both advantages and disadvantages. But so does everywhere else on the place. Biggest advantage I can think of is that my original thought I can make accessible by car year around without much effort and other places would end up havng to cart equipment in with a wheelbarrow in the winter!
Last edited by The_bluester; 03-04-2014 at 02:20 PM.
Cart equipment in winter? - two answers to that depending on your sense of humour and ethnic extraction...
1. You're married aren't you?
2. I thought you built a shed, what's in it if you keep taking the contents back to the house?
Lol, not my gear to set up. My imager friend would be carting his gear out each time from Melbourne. If i get this built then mine will have a permanent home out there.
An idea of my situation attached, the property shot shows the place overall, you can see the bend in the road that gives me headlight issues, to make it worse the far end of that corner is higher than we are.
The close up shot shows about where I was thinking to place the shed, handy to my existing shed to get a power connection. I am thinking of 240V to the warm room and a 12VDC regulated power supply in there to run the gear, perhaps stopping off at a small 12V rechargeable battery along the way to provide a bit of float in the event of a power interruption.
For simplicities sake I would make all the lighting 12VDC so it can be run off the PSU that will be running the scopes, less work that I have to get a sparky to do that way and if something does not pan out in a way I am happy with, I can just change it myself (Legally)
Having already drastically increased my pier footing size expectations. Full concrete pier with a pier plate on top? Concrete to a little above ground level and steel above that or concrete to level with (But isolated from) the slab and steel from there up?
I know that concrete is not really all that rigid, and a floor level top to the concrete gives that much less to stub toes on (For the visual scope that you will be closely approaching anyway, less important for AP where you want to leave it alone and keep shake inducing feet away) But are there any inherent disadvantages to a steel pier dynabolted to a big footing? Aside from the cost of the steelwork anyway.
I am handy enough to make a good fist of any of the above options and without having to buy much more than the raw materials (Every big job has to let you buy at least one tool you have never had before, right?)
There is one thing you seem to be missing here - room for expansion. You are building to accommodate what you have. What happens when that new scope or friend comes along? I'd consider leaving some space for that big dob / solar scope / friend's imaging scope on tripod. Yes, it costs more now but it could be much cheaper in the long run.
The roro I used to know had fold-down walls on two sides. The entrance was from the south, the roof rolled to the north and the east and west walls swung down. They were counter-weighted. A bit more work but much lower horizons, especially for newts where the centre of rotation is lower then for SCTs.
Actually that is with me allowing for some expansion! The space allowance I have made for each scope is the same, and is allowing for my imaging mate buying something significantly larger than his 700 odd long refractor on a GEM in future, it is utterly rediculous for my own current gear which is a fork mounted SCT!
I based my guestimate (Which is still just a guestimate at the moment) on 700mm from the pier for the counterweight bar plus 300mm of fat to make a 2.0M diameter circle for the imaging rig to occupy. Add to that another meter of space to each side of the shed for easy walking space.
Following on from that I want nearly a meter between that exclusion area and the end walls and nearly a meter between the zones for each scope and it starts to look like 7M for the scopes, which I have a hard time justifying, I reckon I can justify a 10M long shed overall, 6M for the scopes and 4 for the warm room. I would love to build something to rival Keck, but something that houses everything I can think of right now will have to do from a financial point of view.
While I may not get general approval for it, I do want the warm room to have enough space for bunks in future as well as a couple of desks. Or at least a couple of nice chairs, if we are going to spend the night out there we might as well be comfy. I am also planning for the roll off roof to be set slightly above and to roll off over the fixed portion of the roof, that means no ugly structure hanging out one end to support the rolled off roof, but it also limits how much of the length the scope area can occupy.
I did have a simplification thought regards keeping stray light from the warm room at bay. Rather than a darkroom tardis door it would be simpler to use a sliding door with a switch that interrupts the warm room lights if the door is not shut (Plus a bypass switch for setup time when you want the door open and the lights on) The lighting I am planning to do with DC anyway so that would be easy to arrange myself.
Recent jobs have netted me a small lathe, a nice table saw, new cordless drill, a tractor with front end loader and 5kw gen set (though the last two are more bushfire related so not as fun)
Hmm, this thing is taking on a life of it's own. Looks like I might be able to get away with 5 X 10M instead of 4 X 10M. That would allow the piers to be offset 0.5m from the centre line and have at least as good a view in order to win a bit more space, makes the warm room more large and comfy too.
Still more permutations gonig on here. Thanks to all who have offered advice both in here and by PM.
One bit of advice by PM that is causing me grief as I would really like to follow it is not putting the pier footings into fill, though at least the fill I am looking at is decades old.
If the fill is well aged, how much of a concern would that be for ground movement? If I shift a little further off the dam bank and get a cut made and possibly a lower edge filled a little I might be able to get low enough on the bank to get at least the bottom portion of pier footings into undisturbed ground. I am just not sure if the extra cost of an excavator to make the cut will be worthwhile? The cost would feel worthwhile though if I did not do it and we spend time regularly fixing polar alignment as the piers slowly move.
I am also looking to use a standard shed size to keep cost at bay, so it would get bigger and smaller at the same time, the standard ish rural shed size is 6M X 3M bays, so 6 X 9M is sounding likely instead of 4 X 10, with re engineering of the roof to make it roll off. I would still like the roll off section to go over the top of the fixed portion as it saves space for the supports of the roof when it is off and would look nicer IMO.
There are plenty of flat places on the property where I could put this but they have various quite good reasons to not go there. Mostly the same reason over and over again actually, ACCESS. If I have to trudge through a muddy paddock in gumboots to go use my scope then it would all be for nothing as it would just not get used, likewise my mate would be far less keen to do the same when carrying in all his gear to set up for a nights AP. In my planned location I would still have a little access work to do but with a few truckloads of gravel I can make it into year round, all weather access by car or foot. And it is close to power and cloe enough to the house or main shed (Which will shortly be on the house network) to use a directional wifi antenna to get connectivity out there, handy for long hours of imaging to be able to get on to this site and others to stay entertained.
I have actually just had some (Hopefully) good news with regard to the permit situation. Sheds under a certain size by the sounds of things do not require a planning permit, only a building permit, which in Vic can be dealt with outside of the council process as accredited practitioners can issue building permits on councils behalf. Now to find an accredited practitioner who is also an amateur astronomer to ensure sympathy given I plan something a bit out of the ordinary!
Not getting too excited yet until the council put that in writing.
A further question while I am in the (No doubt protracted) planning phase of this idea.
For a warm room that is well insulated and in the interest of the warm room being actually WARM I am thinking on the problem of heating it.
Electric resistance heating is a no no due to running costs. Gas heating on bottled gas might be a potential but in the interest of staying alive, a coaxial flued heater would be the preference so there is no combustion products in what I would hope to be a pretty well sealed room. I am just wondering if the exhaust vent of such a heater would be a concern to imaging due to heat plumes? I may be able to control that if I can manage to work this out so the warm area is in the eastern section of the shed, one of the directions that imaging is limited in any case due to the nearest town being that way.
About the only other way I can think of would be a small reverse cycle air conditioner, split system or otherwise, which might actually be the best option for running costs and would produce cold air outside instead of a potential fumy heat plume, and no issues with combustion gasses in the room with us. It is probably more costly to install though. It would have the benefit of being able to go out and work in the "Shed" in the hotter weather in some comfort.
Am I concerned about something that is nothing to worry about with gas heat plumes from a flue?
I can see you are busy planning with the man shed there Paul.
My two cents, get a small gas heater and flue it to the opposite side of your imaging section of the shed. There are lots of small room gas heaters and they are very efficient in heating small areas and cheap to run. Many of them can run on mains or bottled gas, so you are not electricity dependent.
Bo
Why not go all 'ECO' and use a water bottle wall or a rock wall at the northern end if possible. Heat from the sun all day then acts as an internal radiator for the night.
I know it works, our house is solid brick clad and the northern side stays warm till well after midnight even in winter. Rooms on that side rarely need heaters and are always dry.
Surprisingly they also work as cooling during the day as the wall absorbs heat to re-energise from the nights cold. The system basically has a time lag on the temperature cycle.
My only concern with doing that would be it radiating heat during the night and affecting imaging, most of the imaging done here is to the north, the logical side to build a heat bank wall.
My thoughts exactly. My shed is looking much healthier since I adopted that idea.
