Building an observatory. Construction #42

I’ve now put together my list of things that need to be done to keep the project moving forward. This is not an exhaustive list, but should get me a fair bit further on. In fact, it’s two lists. The first contains things I can do now without buying more materials (good, because I need to get things cleared out of the workshop before it becomes unusable), and the second contains the rest.

List one:

  • Complete the cladding at the tops of the walls where a full width piece is too tall
  • Complete the cladding on the gables
  • Make some adjustments to the fit of the southern gable flap
  • Fix the flap in place
  • Seal the runners so rain can’t be driven in along them
  • Finish off the access panel in the warm room floor around the cable ducts
  • Lower the internal window (I’ve decide it’s too high)
  • Finish putting the blocks together for the piers
  • Add trim on the corners to finish off the cladding there
  • Fit the internal window
  • Fix down the EPDM on the rolling roof
  • Trim the EPDM on the warm room roof

List two:

  • Add posts to support the ends of the roll-off rails
  • Clad the internal walls, warm room ceiling and piers with ply
  • Insulate the warm room
  • Fit an external door liner
  • Construct and fit the external door
  • Fit stops on the roll-off rails
  • Fit an internal door liner
  • Construct and fit the internal door
  • Lay floor tiles in the scope room
  • Put some sort of floor covering in the warm room (as yet undecided)

This gives me a fair bit to focus on over the next few weeks. Unfortunately there are other things that need to be done with my time, but at least the evenings are starting to get light now, so I may find time then.

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Swimming, 21st February 2019

By contrast with earlier in the week, today I was the only person in the pool when I started swimming, though two or three others did turn up during the course of my session. Odd that it should be so different today. I’ve no idea why.

Anyhow, back to the same session again. I must have slept awkwardly and woke up with some strange irritation of a muscle in my back that was uncomfortable when I was warming up, but once I got going I completely forgot about it. This time I managed a much stronger performance than the last one, completing thirteen reps before my first failure, then failing for a second time at twenty and going on to complete the set. I was very pleased with this, and actually it felt far less of a struggle than earlier in the week.

Hopefully this bodes well for future attempts at the set and I can improve again next time.

USRPT distance this year: 48,300m
Total distance this year: 50,100m

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Swimming, 19th February 2019

Awkward day, today. The pool was very busy and I found it difficult to establish a rhythm early on. My set was the same as yesterday, but because I couldn’t really settle in I even had one failure in the first five reps. By USRPT rules that didn’t could though, so I ignored it and carried on as if nothing had happened.

I’m still finding it a very tough set and eventually had a third “proper” failure on rep 21, having previously failed on reps 12 and 17. I’m really not sure if that counts as better than yesterday, but hopefully I can improve later in the week.

USRPT distance this year: 46,600m
Total distance this year: 48,400m

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Swimming, 18th February 2019

Well, I was expecting today would be tough and I wasn’t wrong. Doubtless some of that was down to the pool being very busy (it is half term, after all). I was sharing a lane with two others who were swimming different sets at different speeds, so it was all quite awkward.

In the end I did about as well as I did on the first attempt at my last set, back on 24th January. I failed on rep 7, failed again on 12 and had a final failure on 18 before calling it a day. It’s not a bad start though. Hopefully I can do better next time.

USRPT distance this year: 45,000m
Total distance this year: 46,800m

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Building an observatory. Construction #41

There’s not been much progress with the observatory over the last couple of weeks as other jobs have taken priority, but as daylight hours start to extend beyond the working day I’m hoping I can put that to rights soon.

This weekend I did at least manage to get the plywood flooring screwed down, which is a small step but still needed doing. I’ve decided that whereas it has been fairly obvious what needs to happen next so far, I now need to start making lists of jobs that remain so they can be done in the correct order and so that nothing gets left out. More of that in another post.

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Swimming, 15th February 2019

Had the pool to myself again today when I started, and there weren’t more than two other swimmers in for my entire session.

Again my target was just to do better than last time, and I did indeed managed to complete twenty-two reps, but felt relatively comfortable at that point and managed to keep going to finish the entire set. Very pleased with myself, I was 🙂

I think I can probably take another five seconds off the turnaround time at this point and still have between twenty and twenty-five seconds rest for each rep. My times for the fifties have been stabilising throughout the set recently whereas six weeks ago I’d probably start just as quickly, but the times dropped off towards the end (though I was still hitting my target most of the time). It’s certainly not going to be easy though. It’s quite obvious how much longer it has taken to be able to complete my current set without a fail than previous ones. Anyhow, I’ll see how it goes next time.

USRPT distance this year: 43,350m
Total distance this year: 45,150m

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Swimming, 14th February 2019

And another quiet day in the pool. Same set, same idea: just push things a little bit further than I’ve managed before.

And it went pretty well. I managed twenty-one reps before failing for the only time on twenty-two, one more than last time. I’m getting very close to completing the set now. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

USRPT distance this year: 41,550m
Total distance this year: 43,350m

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Swimming, 12th February 2019

A second very quiet day in the pool. Odd that Monday and Tuesday last week were really busy, but this week have been very quiet. Anyhow, usual drill. Same set as previous swims with an aim to get just a little further.

It’s becoming quite tough now, though I have noticed that as I work my way through this set trying to complete the full twenty-four reps, my swim times look to be getting faster. I can’t complain about that, but I’ll stick to the plan because then I know where I am. Despite the difficulty I did manage one extra rep before my first (only) failure on rep twenty-one today. I was very pleased to get that far. Not sure if I go for a big push to complete the full set this week or just try to make sure I keep moving forward and hopefully finish it early next week. I suspect I’ll probably end up doing the latter.

USRPT distance this year: 39,800m
Total distance this year: 41,600m

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Swimming, 11th February 2019

Another very quiet session; completely the opposite of how it was last week. Same set for me again, but again attempting to push things just a little bit further.

And again it went pretty well, this time managing another two reps compared with last time, finally failing on rep 20. Again I was getting a bit ragged towards the end. I don’t think that can continue if I want to make it much further, but I’m happy to have a one rep per session improvement if that’s how it goes.

USRPT distance this year: 38,050m
Total distance this year: 39,850m

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Swimming, 8th February 2019

Had the pool to myself again for the start of my session today as I arrived just as the preceding school lesson was leaving. Same set as yesterday, with the plan just to get a little further.

I’m pleased to say things went pretty well and I managed seventeen reps before a fail on eighteen. From there I made it to the end of the set and even had enough energy left to sprint the last 25m 🙂

Hopefully the improvements will continue next week.

USRPT distance this year: 36,300m
Total distance this year: 38,100m

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