Observatory Complete!

OK so I finally got my observatory all built apart from a few small cosmetic items and thought I would post a few pictures and give a little update.
Firstly all I have to say is "You gotta love Tec Screws!!!!!". I only recently found out they even existed and they are just a brilliant invention. They are basically self-tapping screws and are similar to sheet metal screws but have a drill point instead of coming to a sharp point and will drill their own hole which eliminates the need to pre-drill a pilot hole. The whole process of cladding the shed took only a day by myself using these (although i did have a whole rack of batteries on charge that I had to constantly keep cycling to keep my drill going).
The Tec screws can be used for almost every part of the construction and are supplied to both affix the panels to the frame and can also be used to stitch the panels together where the seams meet. I also used them to affix some wooden framing to the inside of the roofing supports so that I could later fix my interior panelling over the insulation.
Here i have affixed 33mm square section to the angle iron roofing supports that were welded on. I could have used the wood fixing version of the Tec screws for this and fitted it directly to the roofing sheet but I found that due to the large diameter of the wood screw versions it would have just splitthe wood as they are really designed for construction much larger industrial buildings.

Also the double mounting at the top of the apex.

 Below is the fully clad shed including the doors which i also made using a wooden internal frame to save on weight and allow easier fixing of door furniture which I clad on one side with a 1mm skin of galvanised tin sheeting which I painted over and on the inside I used the same 9mm plyboard that I used on all of the internal walls.
I'm sure someone will notice that I have used opposite profile sheet for the roofing and the walls. This was not in the original plan for the build but the supplier for the sheeting ballsed up (even though I gave them detailed dimensions of what i required) and basically sent me a single cut to length sheet for each of the sides and each roof slope. In the end I knew of someone nearby that had a load of panels left over from the construction of an industrial building and managed to scrounge enough sheets to clad all the walls (I just used the panels I had and cut them down to make the roof skin as there was only just enough cladding to do the walls). I had to sacrifice a little on aesthetics for this but it probably saved me around £500 in the costs of panelling in the end (should have known the price i was quoted for it was too good to be true!).

 You may be thinking that the amount of screws used to secure and stitch the panels is a bit overkill but due to the fact that I wanted a weathertight seal on all seams I had to put that many in to get the seams to pull up sufficiently on the applied mastic sealer.
Yes I know it looks a bit dirty but that is due to the scrounged up panels that I had to pull out of a scrapping pile at the construction site.

Below is my trailing electrical supply, just a coiled wire under the desk that acts like an extension lead when I roll the shed back for viewing. If I ever build another I will buy the underground ducting with the cable already inside! When i tried to install the cable (I had chosen a good flexible cable due to the fact that I needed the shed and hence the power supply to be portable) I found that I had a small kink in the ducting where a large rock had fallen on it when it was buried and that a soft rubber coated cable does not feed at all well through an corrugated ducting! I think it took me over two hours to pull the 14m of cable through with a lot of cursing and the ingenious use of a coil of Mig welding wire as a cable snake.

Installed IP54 distribution socket as well as lighting (I used a red lamp in the light of course)

I found out to my frustration that it does not seem possible to buy a 240v power supply that goes with any dew heater controller (I did find some online for the Kendrick system I have but they were only available in 115v in Canada). The only connection they seem to have is the common cigarette lighter plug that you put into the car. Not happy with this I decided I would have to improve the situation as I did not wish to have one of those portable battery packs lying around the floor.
Firstly I did a bit of online research online and thought I would be able to get a mains to 12v DC converter with the correct adaptor and they can indeed be found, unfortunately they only go up to about 5A maximum and even then the reviews were not optimistic about them being able to cope with this load. I decided in the end to go the route of a proper industrial PSU that I could wire up to a 4 way cigarette lighter connection splitter so that I could then use it to power also my mount and CCD camera. I found a brilliant one online that could supply 10A and was a reasonable price http://uk.farnell.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?sku=1772179&CMP=i-bf9f-00001000 and even though it shipped from Belgium they had it to me within 24 hours. (sorry for the crappy picture, was getting a little sunny for once)

Below is also a quick snap of the inside of the observatory with the pier, mount and telescopes. I installed a wrap around desk at the far end and still had enough room for a big comfortable office chair! All the cables and equipment were hung from the walls using packets of cup hooks purchased from my local Homebase store. (you will have to excuse the empty beer cans in the background but building this was thirsty work ;-) All the walls and the ceiling were filled with a 40mm polystyrene sheeting material for insulation before fitting the 9mm ply board over. All I have left to do is insulate the awkward apex sections and make a draught excluder system for around the base.

A quick shot of the interior at night with the red lights on.

All in all it was pretty fun to build although if I did it again there are definitely a few things I would do differently. As far as a budget for the project goes I didn't feally have one set down before I started as I had no idea what the materials would cost but in the end I did a lot of begging and scrounging and got some of the materials for free. The only main costs are laid out below:

Cement: £75 for 16 bags (the concrete mix as well as 8 bags of cement for the extra tonne of concrete I didn't think I needed and equipment I got for free as well as some free help to pour the concrete)
Rollers: £6.50 each for the 6
Rails: £24.70 for each 3m length (3 were used)
Paint: £17.20 each for 2 tins of rust protection metal paint
Profile sheet: £160 for the panels I did have to buy
Tec Screws: £28.60
Insulation: £56 for 8 4' by 8' sheets
Plyboard: £148 for 8 4' by 8' sheets
Timber: £78.90
Electrical Fixtures: £213.40

This brought me to a grand total of £858 which I think is pretty good considering what it would have cost to have an observatory professionally built or even to buy one of the various "flat pack" variety that are around such as the "Pod".

All I need now is some good weather so that i can start imaging and continue posting!