The Concrete Pier 

Moving on slowly! Excavations done. Shuttering done for the pier, The pipe is just to check the rebar for size, the actual pipe will be 1100mm tall. I'll be picking up the shuttering timber for the trench for the concrete under the side next to the fence on the way home from work tomorrow. Then all the concrete can be poured in one go. 

The brake disc arrived. Big thanks to my neighbour Tony for his drill stand! Three M16 threaded rod lengths fitted and ready to drop into the concrete in the pier. £90 for the Baader mount adapter, £2 for the brake disc from ebay! 

Shuttering is all finished, pipework is nearly there, I need one more 135° to kick the internet/camera/alarm pipe back to the shuttering. The pier support is looking a bit Heath Robinson! But the spirit level is happy with it. The blue tape is holding the pipe for the 12V and USB to the mount. 

As well as the 10mm rebar there's a 1m length of M25 threaded rod from the bottom of the block to the top of the pier. I'll make up a wood former for the 3 x M16 studs when the concrete gets poured. My good friend Tony is coming Wednesday with his concrete mixer and vibrating poker. 

The concrete pour went well today. We filled the base cube and vibrated out all the air bubbles. 

Base cube filled, pier pipe filled and brake disc studs inserted. There wasn't time to wait for midday to line up the shadow of the studs with due north! But we lined up a string line to the marker I put in a couple of weeks ago.

Job done! We filled in the trench along the fence line which will be the support for the back of the observatory. Apparently I have to wait a week for the concrete to cure before I can put the mount on top of the pier. The jet wash came out to clean up the patio block work. I'll be putting the Baader mount adapter on the brake disc, putting that on the studs and levelling up this weekend. Then I can finish the pipework back to the garage and start thinking about the observatory build!

Massive thanks to my good friend Tony for some excellent concreting work today.

And here it is with the shuttering struck.

Looks like we didn't use the poker on the rear section! But the cube and pier are as solid as a rock.

Going to start laying bricks tomorrow. I'll pug up the holes in the concrete with the mortar!

This is definitely the most accurate spirit level I have ever used!

I need to get an M6 tap to fix the bolts that came with the Baader adapter to the brake disc.

Phase one civil works is now finished. (After I've had a bit of a clean up!) Next stage is the wood work which I'm hoping to get on with this week end.

Well there was a bit more concreting to do to hold the base section to prevent lateral movement and uplift. There's now a bag of ballast at two opposite corners. Now I need to take up the base section to lay the damp course before I start on building the timber frame. The 4"x4" corner uprights and the 4"x2" for the top section have been stained and are ready to go. 

Wet concrete calls out for having construction dates scribed into it!