December 19

We were right about last week's rain forecast - our desert site only had about an inch of rain compared to the 7 to 8 inches the forecasters predicted for the past week. When I got to the site this AM the other crew pouring cement for the other four, not three observatories - my mistake, were already at work. During the course of the day they brought in five trucks with a total of thirty-six cubic yards of cement.

Pouring the slabs down the hill from us.

By the time John showed up I had already laid out the four hundred feet of hose and set up the cement mixer. We spent a bit more time taking the tarps off the footings and once again vacuuming out the two footings holes - probably twenty pounds of loose material that blew in over the last two weeks.

Once we started we realized several things. The cement mixer was Chinese and it did work - barely. Once we dumped the water and three bags of Quikrete in and started mixing, we found that the baffles in the mixer were not well designed and did not mix the material in the bottom of the mixer. We had to stop every few minutes and hand mix the bottom stuff to get it uniform. I should have known with my previous experience with Chinese equipment that they are barely functional if they work at all - you get exactly what you pay for.

We also realized that because of the height of the top of the mixer that only I could load the 60 pound bags of Quikrete into the mixer - I had to lift the bag almost to shoulder height and then flip it over and onto the top of the mixer. We got through the first twelve bags, or 720 pounds of cement, pretty quick with me mixing, John and I sharing the transport to the footing holes by wheel barrel. Then John shoveled the cement into the footings and his wife worked the cement to fill in vacant pockets, all while I mixed another load.

Then we found out that the gods approved of our light hearted acceptance of their trick upon us the other week. The club contractor, who was directing the pours for the other observatories, came over and said that they were finished and did we want the remaining cement for nothing - about a cubic yard by his estimation. We of course said yes and the last cement truck pulled as far up our driveway as possible. The cement was dumped into our wheel barrel and we wheeled it over to our work area. We got a total of eight wheel barrels out of the truck and that turned out to be a bit more than we needed.
John taking a barrel of cement from the truck.

This was great! What we figured to be an all day job finished by noon. Of course now we have 48 remaining bags (1.4 TONS) of Quikrete that we have no current plans for but we do have some future plans. We are thinking of building a totally enclosed BBQ pit off the south side of the observatory. Also, we are thinking of building a pad for visual observing off of our south-east corner; it would include a small shed that would roll on rails set into the pad and would house my sixteen inch Dob reflector that has been mothballed for the last five years.

John and his wife working on the initial smoothing after the pour was complete on the west footing.

Close-up of the east footing completed and starting to cure. You can see the cement deep in the main hole. We may decide to add more cement there instead of entirely using back fill. The scratches in the surface are to provide a rough surface for the grout that will top off the footing.

John rough smoothing the surface of the west footing.

Today was the first time that we finished a days' work ahead of schedule so after we had lunch and basked in the 70 degree sunny weather for awhile, we walked around the site to see the other pads that were poured today. Tonight is the club's monthly star party so there were quite a few people starting to show up by mid-afternoon. One of the old timers said that today saw more construction at our site than has ever occurred previously in a single day.

Here I am having my turn to mug for the camera after the pour was completed.

While walking around the entire site, we came upon a view of our observatory site from an angle I haven't shown in this blog before. The picture below is from the southeast:

You may be able to tell that our whole site is on a small leveled area on a hillside about ten feet above the lower surrounding area. On the left in front of the observatory are the steel bars that we refurbished last summer. The sunlit side of the observatory is the south wall. You can see that there is no longer any structure remaining on top of the walls that was to support the originally planned dome. John's pop-up camper is to the right on the driveway. Behind the camper is the PVC frame for a large tent to cover our vehicles if we want - we haven't used it yet. The ridgeline is about fifty yards beyond the observatory to the north.

Here are two of the new slabs poured today. They are the ones from the first picture that showed the cement truck at work.

Notice the two open rectangles in each slab. Each one is the site of where a cement pier for a telescope will be placed. These observatories will be of simple stick construction and are much smaller than our observatory so they will probably be completed by February while we will continue to work until summer.

Our next plans are for John and I to work independently for a month or so. He will start on the heavy fabrication work for the rail system and the roof trusses at home. I will be working on removing the warm room window, rewiring the building, and replacing the hanging roof panels and lighting system.