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Today I had a bit of a tidy up to clear away tools and materials that I probably don’t need in the near future, another trip round with the hoover and sealed all the joins between the ply in the warm room (no point insulating it if cold air can still get in).  I also removed and numbered all the sections of aluminium for the lighting.

After that I went for a swim with my daughter during which time my wife found me some tins of paint to investigate.  One was white, but there won’t be enough of that to do more than one wall in all likelihood, but the other two tins were “Lavender Cupcake”, whatever one of those is.  I’d call it a sort of pale pinky-purple myself 🙂 In boring conformity with common practice I decided to use those to do the walls and the white for the ceiling.  I started with the walls and I have to admit that I wasn’t entirely sure about the colour to start with, but actually now it has dried a bit the paint does go quite well with the “Galaxy Blue” of the scope room.  Having completed the walls I decided I’d call it a day and try to get the ceiling done tomorrow if time allows.  I’ve got a few other jobs that must get done first, but if there’s time to do the ceiling and for the paint to go off a bit then I can fit all the lighting.

More progress today, though I was slowed a little by having to share resources with my father-in-law who was making some new doors for the polytunnel.

First up was finishing off the last pier which was pretty straightforward.  Then I started lining the warm room ceiling during which time the aluminium section for the lighting arrived which meant I could actually get it all in place and complete the ceiling.  Even without a door (and with the roof rolled back) the warm room was getting a bit sweaty compared with the scope room, so it looks as though the insulation has some effect.

Just before 7pm I was thinking I was all done as I was given my “15 minutes to dinner” warning when I realised there was a small section behind the internal door lining that I’d missed.  There wasn’t time to do that, so it will have to wait for tomorrow.

My wife said she’d sort out some paint that we no longer need so I can see if there’s any I want to use for the warm room.  It might mean that not all the walls are the same colour though 🙂

After that I’m probably going to have to play things by ear a bit.  The weather looks to be taking a bit of a downturn into the weekend.

Today has largely been spent working with power tools.  The first job was to drill all the holes (both top and bottom) in the next set of blocks to make up the piers.  To void blowing out the inside of the block I started with a 5mm bit and worked my way up to 12mm in three stages.  Over twenty-four holes it takes quite a while.   I needed a break after that, so using the cut-off saw I chopped down lengths of threaded rod for fixing the blocks together and cleaned up the ends with the bench grinder.

Next was the really messy job: using the disc cutter to cut the remaining blocks in half for the top section of the pier.  I looked like a ghost from all the dust after doing that and had to come in to clean up a bit.  Finally I had to drill the last set of holes in the bottom faces of these half-blocks and put a single hole in the top for fixing the mount.

All the hard work done it was then just a question of taking all the bits to the observatory and assembling them.  As with the bottom blocks I used Gorilla Glue on one of the mating faces and as it requires moisture for curing I “painted” the other face with water.  In the instructions it says to just spray the face with water, but the blocks were bone dry and sucked up the water so I had to be a bit more heavy-handed.  After positioning the new blocks I pushed the threaded rod through the holes and tightened up nuts onto large washers on each side.

I managed to finish two of the piers before calling it a day, though I could quite easily have carried on by the light from the LEDs with the roof closed.  I took this photo after finishing the first (farthest) one.  There’s an NEQ6 tripod hiding behind it with the legs collapsed down as far as possible for height comparison.

Eventually these will all be clad with ply and painted the same colour as the walls, but in the short term I think I’m just going to focus on getting one sufficiently progressed to be usable.

There were, I’m afraid, a couple of casualties whilst using the tools.  I don’t think this chap is going to be much use any more.  I’m not entirely sure what happened to the pointy bit.

And this one will mend, but stings quite a bit at the moment.

A bit of an unsatisfying day.

My intention was to remove all the screws holding down the rails for the roof and seal all the holes to stop water getting in, removing one of the rails that has leaked in the past and sealing the underside of the V channel at the same time (so water can’t travel down the inside).

Yesterday when I opened the roof I didn’t roll it fully open, but to seal all the screws it was necessary to do so.  But it wouldn’t open all the way.  It was clearly binding somewhere, but I couldn’t work out where.  Checking the latch fittings made it clear they weren’t the problem, so I thought back over what I’d changed since the last time I’d had the roof right open and the only thing that occurred to me was adding the top section of cladding on the wall, so I removed that and still had the same problem.  “Ok, perhaps the roof is binding on the screws holding the rails down”.  So I removed a few of them and the roof did open about six inches more, but still not all the way.

Eventually (and this did take quite some time to work out) I realised that I’d laid a trap for myself.  The ends of my roof rails are still not supported where they extend beyond the warm room and clearly they have sagged a little over the winter.  As the first set of wheels started to run down the sag, the middle of the roof between the wheels was grounding out on the rails.  Hunting around I managed to find a section of old door frame destined for the woodburner that hasn’t yet been paid a visit by Mr Chainsaw and fashioned temporary props for the ends of the rails, in the process discovering that having the rails rise rather than droop also leads to the roof fouling the rails in a completely different way.

With that sorted my daughter and I spent a jolly hour or so removing all the screws, squeezing sealant into the holes and replacing them (and sealing up the rail).  After that I had to replace the cladding that I’d removed and so on.  I don’t like to feel that things have gone backwards.

So, next I really need to get the piers moving and to sort out the proper supports for the roof rails.  Not sure I can do anything about the latter until after the bank holiday weekend, so tomorrow I shall try to get the piers sorted.

Twilight is fading now and another check of the white LEDs suggests they’ll be quite adequate for the job, so I’ll look at getting another strip (it won’t need to be anywhere near as long this time) for the warm room and put them in the ceiling.  Initially I was thinking that I’d just have white for the warm room, but in fact I think it makes sense to have red available too, so if I’m doing something that involves moving between the scope room and warm room and I want to maintain dark adaption then I can do so.

Making that decision means I can now get on with lining the warm room ceiling.  In fact given that I still have some clips left and a few bits of the aluminium section to use as spacers, I could probably do the entire thing and get on with painting the warm room too.  Not sure I want the same colour as in the scope room though.

What a busy (and lovely) day it has been!

Painting the scope room was first thing on the agenda.  I bought the paint earlier in the week.  I was looking for something reasonably dark for the scope room and having browsed through some colours, how could I not go with “Galaxy Blue”?  My daughter was keen to help, so out came the rollers and brushes and for the first time in what seems like ages I rolled the roof back so we could work in the sunshine as much as possible.  With two of us it went very quickly and by lunchtime the majority was done.  In some lights the paint does look quite grey, but in others it’s definitely blue.

We also decided to paint the sides of the roof — I’m not going to bother with the actual roof yet, in case I decide I need to insulate it.  That’s a decision for another time.  I still have the gables to paint as well, but again I’m thinking about adding ventilation to those so they can wait for a bit.  And obviously the end flap isn’t finished enough to paint yet.

But with all the other painting done in the scope room we fitted the aluminium section back into the walls and then broke out the roll of LEDs.  The self-adhesive tape on the back made fitting them a doddle, though I did have to think for a few minutes about which end to start from and whether I needed to unroll the entire reel first, as the connectors are male at one end and female at the other.  Fortunately it worked out that we could start from the scope room window with the loose end of the reel.  We felt it was necessary to finish everything off at that point and my daughter was keen to play with the mitre box and razor saw, so she did all the cutting of the diffuser and I did the measuring and fitting.

And here’s the result (maximum white, with the camera flash on)

This is maximum red, this time with the flash off:

And minimum red:

That’s all with the standard control unit that came with the LED strip. When I plugged in the wifi control unit I discovered that it would actually allow the LEDs to be dimmed even further:

It’s hard to judge without being dark-adapted, especially after spending most of the day in the sunshine, but I think the red will certainly work ok.  The white is harder to judge.  I might wander out after dark this evening and see what it looks like.

I did notice that the wifi unit has a tendency to whine when the colour settings are in the middle of the range which might be irritating, but I probably won’t be using that part anyhow, and if I’m in the warm room I probably won’t be able to hear it anyhow.

Not sure what I shall work on next.  I shall have a think on that this evening.  Had I trusted the weather forecast I should have planned a bit further ahead and sorted out the remainder of the bits to allow me to finish doing the EPDM on the rolling roof.  As it is it might be a good idea to get at least one pier finished so I can actually start using the observatory before its first birthday.

This evening I’ve had a bit of a “tidying up” session in the observatory. All the spare materials and tools have been moved to the warm room and the scope room is now completely empty and swept. Hoovered, even.

That done I removed and numbered each of the sections of aluminium channel for the lighting. The intention is that tomorrow I can start painting the scope room (more easily done if the lighting isn’t in place). I’ve bought some paint in the aptly-named colour “galaxy blue”. It actually looks quite a dark blue-grey.

Once the paining is done I can finally fit all of the lighting and test it out. I’m very much looking forward to doing that as it will allow me to decide how to progress with the warm room lighting (and ceiling).

The next major job in the scope room is probably getting the piers built, though I still have to sort out the end flap. Talking of piers, having cleaned up all the sawdust and suchlike, I discovered this around one pier:

Looks like a rodent has been chewing on my flooring. Clearly I need to get something in their to discourage it, but I might also fit some aluminium or steel angle over the edge to protect it.

There are also quite a few outside jobs I can be getting on with now the weather seems to be improving (for at least the next few days, anyhow).