Installing the Observatory
The POD arrived today, November 10. Good timing — we are having a warm spell, and
it is sunny and 10° C. And tomorrow is a holiday. So I have 1.5 days of
good weather to assemble everything, and temperatures warm enough for adhesives
and caulking to cure properly.
The POD XL-3 comes in 3 large boxes: two for the dome
halves, one for the wall sections, and one for the storage bays.
It comes with a detailed DVD of installation instructions, and the
videos are also available online so I had already viewed them several
times when the boxes arrived.
The POD parts unpacked. Visible here, left to right,
are the 3 storage bays, the 4 quarter-pieces of the dome, and the 3 wall
sections.
After watching the relevant part of the instructional video
again, I dragged the dome pieces to the observatory site for assembly. Each piece is
(barely) light enough for one person to carry, but they are bulky and the quarter-dome
pieces are especially awkward to handle.
The two halves of the primary dome, joined together.
Inside view of the primary dome.
The secondary dome also assembled.
On the primary dome (left), the semicircular steel running plate for the rotation
wheels, now installed, is also visible.
After installing the rain water management gasket on the primary
dome, I called the work finished for the day, as the sun was about to set and the
temperature would drop rapidly. I’m satisfied that I got this far, as I was able to
do the caulking between dome pieces, so it can cure overnight.
Day 2, warm and sunny again. There is still frost on the deck
but it is disappearing as the sun moves in.
The 3 POD wall sections are loose here, ready for installation.
And the 3 storage bays. Walls and storage bays alternate, making
6 sections in all.
We assemble the walls by starting with a storage bay in
approximately its desired final position.
Add a wall section (a molded plug on the bottom of the wall
drops into a matching hole on the storage bay, and vertical lips overlap).
Another wall, and another storage bay, leaving a 1-wall gap.
And here all 6 wall sections are now in place. They aren’t
bolted together yet and there is lots of adjusting and aligning still to do. The
last wall section is the one with the door in it.
The primary dome will rotate on wheels set in the tops of the
walls. There are 30 wheels and each go in a recess, with a nylon axle and a bushing
spacer.
Here all the wheels are in place and the wall sections have been
aligned and bolted together.
With a second person helping, we lifted the primary dome onto the walls,
and carefully rotated it several times to true up the circularity of the walls.
I couldn't have done this step alone — plan to get help.
The dome is then secured in place with metal clamps that hang
from the dome and pass under the upper lip of the walls. The clamps also contain
wheels, to hold the dome at a fixed distance from the walls.
Next, the secondary dome is lifted into place.
And the secondary is fastened with pivot axles so that it can
fold up inside the primary dome.
Finally, there was then a lot of small-task work to do, installing gaskets and foam to manage
rain water run-off, and fastening the whole unit to the deck with lag screws. I was tired by
now and forgot to take photographs.
