The observatory will be constructed with normal building materials. It is being built in a manner that will allow it to be disassembled and moved at a later time when we move from this home, hopefully to more land in a darker location. A pressure treated floor structure will sit on top of leveled deck-blocks. The walls will be normal tilt up construction but will only be approximately 5 feet 5" high with a 5 foot high door and will be bolted to the floor.  The dome will sit on top.

The floor structure is sitting on about 20 deck blocks and has the decking on it in this pic.  Still have some more work to do to get the area finished around the pier.  Main concern there is not letting the floor touch the pier so it doesn't cause the scope to vibrate as I walk across the floor.  Secondary concern is keeping creepy crawlies from climbing up that space.  I need to find some kind of weather stripping to seal around pretty tight without transmitting vibrations.  The floor is basically 10 foot by 12 foot. 

Got the first wall standing finally.  Took longer to repair the nail gun than it did to build the wall.  The wall height will be about 65" once I get the cap rail on the wall.  That should allow me to have a 5 foot high door in the opposite wall.  I'm 6' but it should be high enough for entry and I ca stand upright under the dome or sit at the desk once inside.  That is a little lower than I would have liked but it is about as high as I can go without having the scope looking straight up to see out the shutter opening.  As you can tell in this pic, there are trees, houses and other obstacles around so seeing the horizon is not possible.  I purposefully set the dome a little high in relation to the scope to give a little extra height inside.  No real horizon loss anyway.   The wall is screwed to the floor and the walls will be screwed to each other.  The roof will also be screwed instead of nailed so I can disassemble the whole thing and move it later whenever we find a new home.   We actually got 2 more walls up today but ran out of light to take the pics.

 
Kaspir and Niko are lots of help.

 
Four walls up.  The first shot is looking through the door opening.  I was afraid the door would still be too low to enter comfortably but it actually works very nicely.

 
Got the start of the roof up there and the base ring is temporarily in place.  It's possible the dome will be a bit too high in relation to the scope but I can always put spacers under my pier to get it higher if need be.  You can see the dome behind it upside down.  It's that way to let the sun warm the rim so it can go back to the correct shape and so I can reach inside to mount the wheel tracks.

 
Laura caught me pointing at something and said I looked like the characters from one of her favorite but now defunct TV shows - Middleman.   Pretty good chance I will need spacers under the pier to get the proper height but I'd rather do that and have a roof I can actually move around under.  My brother Jim made the pier for me so I may have to bribe him to add a spacer if I can't find anything off the shelf that will work.  Niko and Kaspir of course have to inspect everything.

 
Looks like we have rain coming in so instead of spending $40 on a tarp we decided to go ahead and buy the vinyl floor covering and put that down to protect the decking.  Overall it looks really nice.  We got a few more pieces put on the roof but the battery in the drill died so we called it quits early.  We're suppose to have rain all week so there won't be much work for a while.

 
We got the first decent weather we have had in a while and we got the roof structure almost done.  We got the corner pieces in under the ring to form the octagon that will support the ring and dome.  Laura did her math thing and calculated it out exactly right.  We also cut and installed most of the triangle pieces and got the 2x3 cleat installed all the way around to hold the roof down.  Basically, I wanted an easy and cheap but sturdy way to attach the roof to the building but have it still be easily removable when I needed to move the building.  That meant that I could not screw or nail the trusses or triangles to the walls.  What I decided to do was put a 2x3 all the way around the inside up in the corner where the roof met each wall.  The trusses and triangles screw to that cleat and the cleat is screwed to the walls.  When it gets time to take the building apart,  I will lift the dome, remove the screws from the cleat all the way around and the roof will just lift right off with tin and ring and all.  About 5 long screws in each wall corner and one every few inches around the floor and all walls will come apart and off the deck with siding and doors and windows still attached.  I should be able to dismantle or reassemble the whole building in about an hour if I have some strong help to lift the pieces.  Next time I need to finish 4 triangle pieces and then it's on to the dome track and wheels - Almost time to mount the dome!

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