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I spent a good few months carrying equipment outside and it would take on average between 1 and 1 ½ hours to get set up. Sometimes the clouds would then appear.
At the end of a night’s imaging there was then the task of carefully dismantling, not losing any cables or connectors and carrying it all back into an outdoor shed and setting it running again to take dark frames. In the early hours with cold hands it was easy to damage something.

One night I decided this hobby was now getting serious and it was time to think about getting an observatory. But what type, size or shape? I wanted something inconspicuous – I’m quite suspicious and it the observatory looked like a garden shed then all the better. The design I chose was a shed with a roll off roof. I looked at several commercially available observatories and each one had it’s faults in my eyes.

Eventually I decided to get the four walls of a shed made by a local firm and then build the roof myself. I opted for 10 foot by 6 foot in size.

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The first task was to lay the foundation and dig the hole for the pillar. I placed an ad on our local Freecycle website for some 2’ x 2’ flags and within a couple of days a lady responded. A few trips in the car and I had the required number of flags – fourteen.

I laid the initial three rows and the dug a hole about three feet deep, wider at the bottom than the top. I was going to build the pillar in two stages. I bought a few lengths of reinforcing iron from the local scrap yard and pushed these into the wet concrete base.

The remainder of the flags were laid and left for a couple of weeks to settle, then re adjusted where necessary. I didn’t want the shed to move as the roof may twist and be difficult to slide open and close . . .

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I specified the shed to be lined with breathable membrane. I’d recently had a house extension built and this was specified by my architect for the roofing. Using this would stop any leaks if knot holes fell out or the wood shrunk.

I arranged to have the floor delivered about a week before the walls so I could

• cut the hole accurately for the pillar and reinforce edges
   
• fix cable trunking on the reverse side for running various cables later (separate runs for data and power)
   
• treat the underside and edges with preservative

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If alll went well I would have the floor laid and walls up in time for the Bank Holiday weekend which would give a good few days to get the roof built and weatherproofed. The local shed company were superb and delivered the floor on time and turned up on the Friday to erect the walls.

Now for the interesting bit the construction of the roof. I had decided to have maximum headroom inside the observatory and so didn’t use the standard A frame layout for the trusses.

Most of the professional observatories I’d seen had an intrusive bottom support to the roof. My construction would allow for the scopes to be moved whilst the roof was closed.

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My roof would be supported on castors which would run in aluminium channel as guides. These guides would have a slight slope away from the observatory so rain didn’t collect.

The roof was lined with breathable membrane and then covered with corrugated bitumen roofing sheets.

Finally I tested the roof before cloaking the gables and it was apparent that the castors I’d purchased were a bit on the domestic grade for the weight of the roof.
A quick trip to the local DIY store and a new set were installed, four along each side. Mark II roof was perfect and just needed some wooden guides fitting to keep the castors central in the aluminium channelling.

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With the outer structure finished it was now time to complete the second part of the concrete pillar. A friend had a short length of a cardboard former left from his construction which would give a good finish to the pillar. In parallel to other construction activities my local engineering company had begun construction of the steel pillar and supplied the base so I could set the appropriate bolts into the concrete in the correct positions.

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The final construction phase was the building of the Warm room. This area has changed a few times and developed to it’s current configuration of

• Desk with drawers
• DELL PC P4HT, XP Pro with dual monitors
• Radio clock for accurate time
• Blind to prevent any stray light from monitor screens escaping
• Wall heater, insulated walls and sliding internal roof for those cold winter nights

Other features of the observatory:

• UPS for battery backup to key equipment if power fails
• Dehumidifier for controlling humidity inside