AN OBSERVATORY FOR THE GARDEN

Good afternoon @ARMANDII hope all goes well my friend

 

Thanks!! Well, it is here!!! When I got up this morning after finally getting to sleep....to find the rain coming down. The rain decided to stop at around 0930am but the concrete base was awash with water, so I got a stiff broom and swept as much as I could off and then followed up with a mop to dry the base as much as I could.
The guys, [Dave and Trevor],arrived at around 1035am after starting out from Norfolk and had made good time. I was worried about ease of access for them to transport the parts from the Van to the base via the passageway between my Garage and the House but Dave just grinned saying he was happy that it was so easy.
They started straight away and got all the parts out of the Van and into the garden pretty quickly. It's seems that their standard practice is to construct the Dome roof first and Dave had spent the previous day putting all the intricate bits and and rubber seals onto the most important parts so that it would be quicker. The roof was put together quickly and then laid to one side so that they could start on the walls of the Observatory. They'd both done it so many times and made it look easy.....and I know it wasn't. As they started on the walls it decided to rain again but they kept on working. After about 20 minutes the rain stopped and it stayed dry after that, so within 2 hours they had lifted the roof onto the the completed base, put in the accessory bay that I'd ordered and secured the base to the concrete base. The roof just glides around without a sound and the motor drive gives me the various different astronomical speeds that I will need to track Stars and Planets. So it doesn't exactly blend into the garden.......but it does look pretty to me
Having said that I'm having to dry out the inside of the Observatory which was laid onto the wet concrete base so that I can put sealant down to make it waterproof at the base.......which at the moment is Catch 22 as the water outside the Observatory which will be stopped seeping in under the base when I put the sealant down is seeping in and stopping me putting the sealant down
I'm just importing the pics of the building of the Observatory into my Steam Machine but since Windows 10 doesn't recognise my camera is plugged into it I have import the images into Lightroom and use Lightroom software to import them back again into my Computer. So I'll post them asap.

 

Hi Jiff, well, to be honest, having to chase the company time and again for information as to what was happening did nearly kill the buying experience pleasure but once I knew for certain it was coming it started to return.
Then both Dave and Trevor were good guys and always joshing each other so that and seeing the Observatory coming together made it really exciting. So, Yes, it was definitely worth the wait.......especially as it is a quality building.

 

Hi Jimcub, I went to Argos this afternoon and bought an oscillating Fan Heater. That's been in the Observatory since around 3pm in an attempt to dry it out. But the concrete is slow to dry out, or I'm impatient!!!, so it's still a little too wet to put down the sealant I'll keep the Heater on until midnight and then if it's not dry enough I'll leave it until tomorrow and try again. Hopefully, it won't rain during the night.

 

Congratulations on finally getting the observatory.

Maybe some mini-sandbags around the outside will stop the rain seeping in underneath the edges. I'm not sure that a fan heater will work all that well if it's in an enclosed space as the moisture will still be in the air and may settle again when the observatory cools down.

A dehumidifier, or air conditioning, will work better as long as there is somewhere to vent the moisture.

 

The oscillating fan heater has worked fine. When I first used the Heater I left the door of the Observatory ajar and slightly raised the Roof Shutter so that the warm moist air would rise up through it and also out of the door. I did the same today and within a couple of hours the concrete inside was dry, so I applied sealant to the inside floor flange and sealed the Observatory from the inside.
Later on, because it hadn't rained, and the outside concrete base area had also dried due to the warm breeze I masked off the outside of the Observatory at ground level all the way around. Then I used Roof Waterproofing Paint around the bottom of the Observatory to seal it off from the concrete base. That will stop any ingress of rain water on the concrete base under the Observatory base, plus the interior sealing of the flange that runs around the whole of the base will doubly seal it.
After that it was a case of painting the interior walls matt black paint and leaving the Heater on to help dry the paint a bit more quickly. I'll need to put another coat of matt black paint on the interior walls tomorrow to completely finish it off.

 

Hi Fern, yep, it's all sorted. It was just that the Observatory had been laid on the wet concrete base and therefore the inside was wet. Also the rain water on the outside on the concrete base was seeping under the base of the Observatory walls, so the inside needed drying out asap to be able to use the sealant as it wouldn't "take" if applied to a wet floor.

 

I've been toiling over the pics nearly all night due to the fact that Windows 10 won't recognise my camera as it did when I had Windows 7. So I have to download into Lightroom, then download into my local disk to that I can upload to Photobucket Good old Technology

Anyway, I'll start the pics of the installation tomorrow night......but there's a fair amount of pics so I'll do them in blocks/posts of 6-10 images.

 

You could probably make things easier for yourself if you installed one of the VM (Virtual Machine) software packages. This sets up a separate piece of software into which you can install an older operating system. So you should be able to install W7 within it and run your old photo software in it.

I've done something similar to that in order to be able to run an old piece of equipment that had no software for W7. I now run it in the VM software using W98 (the last operating system that supported it).

This is one of the many VM software packages.

http://www.download3k.com/articles/...achine-to-Windows-10-or-8-using-Hyper-V-00770