TheSkySearchers

jrkirkham wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 3:43 pm My questions are going to go in a different direction. What will you use the warm room for? From the look of your design I assume you will link in the computer from the warm room and will mainly need a chair and a desk. I assume this will be in your yard, close to your house.

The reason I ask is that my observatory is at my dark site, three miles from my house. My warm room is 8'X12' with two small lofts. I have bunk beds, small tables, storage, chairs, and heater in there. Once I started storing everything I realized that it was barely big enough. Five feet isn't very wide for table, chair, and equipment storage. The low end will be just high enough for storage trays, but you may have to squeeze around the table a lot. The tall end will be almost like a hallway, since it has two doors in it. If your observatory is just a few steps from the house you might not need much extra room out there.

KathyNS wrote: ↑Mon May 23, 2022 8:38 pm Interesting design!

The biggest challenges will involve the orientation of the roll-up door. Since it is designed for vertical installation, and yours will be closer to horizontal than vertical, one thing that comes to mind is drainage. Will water still run off it adequately? Or will tilting it back like that allow water to seep down through joints in the door structure? I'm told by the door manufacturer that with the side seals included there should be very little leakage from the tracks. Also, the door is one solid sheet of steel, so no joints mean no leaking.

You mention snow loading and have a plan to reinforce it with a removable centre beam. While that will cut the span in half, do you know if the door segments will support the snow load at half their span? Obviously you can't ask the manufacturer, since this is an "off-label" use of their gear. The door is a 26 gauge corrugated curtain manufactured from full hard galvanized grade 80 steel. If my math is correct this should hold a little under 2000 lbs or roughly 24" of fresh snow. The fresh snow up here is usually pretty dry and fluffy. With the center beam installed theoretically, it should hold double that.

Will the motor be powerful enough? Tilting the door back will mean that the motor is not doing a dead lift as it would in a standard installation. However, it is now fighting friction from the weight of the panels (and snow) on the tracks. That might be enough to actually increase to load on the motor in spite of not having to lift the weight vector. Will you be putting rollers in the tracks to mitigate this load? Initially, it will have just a chain hoist to get a feel for how much force is needed. My thinking is that I'm dealing with less force from gravity than if the door were vertical, so hopefully, it won't be as difficult to move. A motor can easily be added later. Since the door is one continuous sheet of steel there are no rollers involved.

I would recommend making the pad an inch smaller than the building's footprint. This will facilitate drainage and will avoid giving rain an opportunity to seep under the walls. Otherwise, you will have to rely on caulking to seal the walls, and caulking always fails eventually. The building is designed to be affixed to the concrete pad and then caulked to seal it, inside and out. It is easier on the builder if the pad is just slightly larger than the building's dimensions.

I wish you good luck with the build. You will likely be doing some original research for it, so I hope you publish your results for the benefit of others contemplating a similar design.

jrkirkham wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 3:43 pm My questions are going to go in a different direction. What will you use the warm room for? From the look of your design I assume you will link in the computer from the warm room and will mainly need a chair and a desk. I assume this will be in your yard, close to your house. All of this is correct. The pad sits about 150' from the main house.

The reason I ask is that my observatory is at my dark site, three miles from my house. My warm room is 8'X12' with two small lofts. I have bunk beds, small tables, storage, chairs, and heater in there. Once I started storing everything I realized that it was barely big enough. Five feet isn't very wide for table, chair, and equipment storage. The low end will be just high enough for storage trays, but you may have to squeeze around the table a lot. The tall end will be almost like a hallway, since it has two doors in it. If your observatory is just a few steps from the house you might not need much extra room out there. Originally, the warm room was only 4' x 10'. I set up a simulation of the space on my garage floor and quickly realized that 4' wide was not enough. 5' is just wide enough for a desk, a chair and a modicum of storage. Every additional foot of building expansion puts the project further and further over budget!

chris_g wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 3:53 pm

jrkirkham wrote: ↑Tue May 24, 2022 3:43 pm My questions are going to go in a different direction. What will you use the warm room for? From the look of your design I assume you will link in the computer from the warm room and will mainly need a chair and a desk. I assume this will be in your yard, close to your house.

The reason I ask is that my observatory is at my dark site, three miles from my house. My warm room is 8'X12' with two small lofts. I have bunk beds, small tables, storage, chairs, and heater in there. Once I started storing everything I realized that it was barely big enough. Five feet isn't very wide for table, chair, and equipment storage. The low end will be just high enough for storage trays, but you may have to squeeze around the table a lot. The tall end will be almost like a hallway, since it has two doors in it. If your observatory is just a few steps from the house you might not need much extra room out there.

Thinking about that, I would incorporate the same size walls for the warm room, then build a pitched roof so you can stand up at both sides, gives you more room for storage with shelves and such if you wanted to keep it the same basic size. You'd have figure out the height of the eastern wall so it doesn't mess with any of the mounts views to the south though, so it might not be doable... You could also move the pier mount closer to the northern wall to help compensate for the higher wall to the south but that again would affect your other mount. Perhaps a bigger floor plan with the same design specs, four feet to the east and 7 feet to the west with a 7 foot warm room, depending on how tall you are, you could change the warm room height to 6 feet. That would also help with the southern view... Since the obsy is on my main property there is no need for a great deal of storage and a pitched roof does add additional cost. Also, the location of the pedestal within the obsy room is not cast in stone yet. (pun intended). I'm still experimenting with the floor plan layout in my garage to come up with the ideal location for it.