Sunday:
Another cruisey morning (I love slow start weekends with a few espresso's, ciggies and reading.)
My dad had me help him with a bit of shopping for the motor home he is renovating, a couple of hours gone at Bunnings.
I did however find a few things I needed, and I was able to grab the M16 allthread to replace the 3/4" allthread.
Back home and 3 trips to Bunnings later (My car can only carry five or six 20kg bags of concrete before the rear wheels rub the guard) I repaired the wheel on the wheelbarrow. Had to re-tube the 6.5" x 8" wheel. These things are a nightmare! When fixed I started digging a hole.
I had decided to compromise on the amount of concrete to use.
Not enough and the pier won't be super stable.
Too much and it's going to be a lot of effort mixing concrete, and then sometime in the future when I move house, disposing of a huge block of concrete.
A friend of mine has 300kg on his pier and his astro gear is much heavier than mine, and he works at a much, much longer focal length than I do(for now) and he has never had any issues, so, I shot for the 300kg mark.
I dug the hole 600 x 600mm square by 600mm deep. The plan was to leave the concrete 100mm below ground level so the studs can be concealed under the irrigation valve box during rent inspections, which means the hole was roughly(try digging a perfect cube
) 180 litres, or approx. 360kg of concrete.
Four 600mm long M16 allthread rods were bolted to an MDF template of my pier's baseplate, then a re-bar frame was wired to the allthread rods(imagine naughts-and-crosses pattern when seen from above) all of which was set into the hole, checked for height below ground and leveled.
I bought 18 off 20kg bags($5 ea) and used 16 of them, so I put 320 kg into the hole. I re-checked the level of the studs and walked away pretty exhausted after all the hole digging and concrete mixing in the wheelbarrow two bags (40kg) at a time.
By this time it was getting late so any further work will have to wait for next weekend.
Monday:
This afternoon, after the concrete had cured a little, I removed the MDF dummy baseplate and checked the pier baseplate. It was a wriggle fit, but it did fit! Hoping the fit won't change after welding. Nothing a die-grinder can't fix
Looking forward to completing this next-weekend!
Unfortunately I was rushing around alot on Sunday and didn't get many photo's:
Photo 1: Freshly concreted.
Try to ignore the dead grass and sand (dirt). We haven't had any rain for... 100 days or something?
Photo 2: Test fit of the baseplate... sweet!
Edit: The stud in the foreground of the second photo appears to be leaning to the left, but it didn't look that way in person. I will have to investigate tomorrow. I think it's an illusion as the base plate would have never fitted with its tight hole clearance!