[John0z (John)]

Hi All,

Just looking for some advice on where to place an observatory. I have a screenshot of my house and backyard from google maps. As you can see, there is a swimming pool occupying most of the backyard. Now, my wife is telling me that we don't use the pool much, yet we spend a lot of money keeping it in operation. To the left there is a very tall gumtree on council property, so no touching it. At the back of the house, there is a sunroom, which is where the metal roof is, then you can see the neighbouring house. The round object at the end of the swimming pool is a spa, basically just air is pumped through it and it is basically useless.

Option 1 (wife preferred) - get rid of the pool, dig up the concrete & tile area (yes, the rest is concrete or tile), put in a wooden deck (my idea), leave the rest as either lawn, and have a veggie patch on the left side nearest the road.

Option 2 (my idea) - get rid of the spa, and replace it with an observatory.

Option 3 - buy a small farm and travel hours to get there and have my observatory there.

I might have to combine both, I suppose. What is not shown is that we have solar panels on our tile roof. I was entertaining the idea of having a spiral staircase going up to something like a mezzanine level where the telescope would be - maybe this is too much to ask for.

So the question is, given the constraints - where should I have my observatory? Where the spa currently is, or thereabouts?

Any advice would be most welcome.

-John