Now that I'm getting older I have decided to make a permanent home for my telescope. As having to lug my heavy Meade 10" Schmit Newtonian out side every time I use it is not going to get any easier in the future.

So here I'll be blogging all the trials, tribulations, successes and failures (of which there will be many I'm sure) of building an astronomical observatory from scratch.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

it FELT like a long day today


Well I'm halfway there, I put the roof covering on one side of the observatory today as you can see it's not your conventional just felt roof.  The black strips covering the gaps is 150mm damp course membrane which is very flexible so will not rip like felt.  The upper piece of felt over hangs the apex by 100mm and will lie over the top of the two section on the right hand side of the roof to stop water leaking in at the top.



The damp course has two plus sides to it. 
1 it's flexible. 2 it's as cheep as chips a 30M roll cost £9 from B&Q






I used another strip of  damp course to cover the vertical join, this is nailed to the left hand section underneath   the felt and over laps the felt on the right hand side.
I know it's not pretty but it's practical!
I'm sure this will be sufficient for normal day to day poor weather, for server contions   I'll cover the roof with a tarpaulin, SIMPLES!



Before felting the roof I strengthened hinge points with  four wooden planks to ensure the screws securing them did not pull through the roof panels. 
As that would  be a bit of a pain if that happened!




Roof closed


Roof open.


I have a little bit of tiding up to do to the felt, time to test that half now I have left it open to the elements and thankfully it's started to rain, will see in the morning if there are any leaks. 
Fingers crossed!




1 comment:

  1. Great pun hun! Everything crossed it is still weatherproof in the morning. xx

    ReplyDelete