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Old 04-09-2023, 06:14 PM
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gregbradley
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Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Sydney
Posts: 18,101
New Observatory photos

Here are some photos.

100mm 1.6mm galvanised C purlin. Bought from Edon steel but a very common product from roofing companies.

L brackets from Bunnings and 25mm Tek screws into metal. Predrill holes with a rivet drill bit (#30 or 3mm). Then screw off.

L brackets are anchor bolted to the 100mm thick slab with 50mm x 10mm anchor bolts.

The bottom of the observatory walls has a colorbond flashing, 100mm up the frame and 50mm across the slab at 95 degrees to shed water and sealed to the slab with a thick bead of Sikaflex Pro set back from the edge about 20mm so it doesn't squish out.

The window I picked up 2nd hand off Facebook Market from a local who ordered the wrong size. It cost them $3,000 and I got it for $1,000. It's a bifold window 2 metres by about 700 and extremely well made. Same brand and colour as ther sliding stacker doors on my house.

Added benefit it opens up a more panoramic view behind the house when viewing inside the observatory. I plan on putting a blind on it to shield from light but it also makes the building prettier and perhaps more future saleable as a craft room, work at home space etc, etc.

Cladding is James Hardi Primelok preprimed fibre cement cladding. I got it halfo price as a clearance item from Bunnings. $1300 for 52 x 4.2metre x 145mm cover.

It is screwed to the purlins with 30mm M8 metal screws. We predrilled the holes so the screwing off was easy and no damage to the cladding.

I'll send some more photos of the roll off roof which is now framed and some details on that.

Tomorrow I plan to install chicken wire across the roof frame, insulation blanket and colorbond corrugated (custom orb). I'll then order some cappings. and a flashing to join the 2 halves of the roof. I found the roll off roof also works very well if the whole roof is rolled off. It exposes almost all the sky my limited view at this site has. It's still a large swath of the sky.

The sliding gate track and the matching sliding gate wheels from Bunnings worked really well. My son and I worked together on this. He has high standards and I am very happy with it. The roof rolls off effortlessly. One important tip there was to fit the wheels on both sides then lay the track loose and let the wheels push the track into the ideal spot then screw it off rather than trying to measure where it should be and screw it off and probably getting some misalignment error.

The roof rolls off easily. The colorbond roof should only weigh about 15-25kgs each side.

The trusses were made out of 50 x 50mm 3mm walled aluminium square section. Strong and light and easy to handle. My son was able to hang his bodyweight off the trussed with no problem so they are very strong.

This is 6 days work. Probably another 4 days to finish it off, painting, clad the gables of the roll off roof, another board of cladding to hide the wheels etc.

I have the pier in the room so just need to orient it to true south and anchor bolt it down. Then the mount - a PME.

More to come.

Greg.
Attached Thumbnails
Click for full-size image (Observatory metal frame .jpg)
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Click for full-size image (Observatory showing how the L brackets work.jpg)
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Click for full-size image (Observatory showing how the purlins are fixed to the slab..jpg)
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Click for full-size image (Observatory showing the ground flashing.jpg)
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Click for full-size image (Observatory cladding on.jpg)
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