You know its going to be a bad day when you see a reciprocating saw in the observatory

This is the 2nd of 2 piers that have had to be removed. The first came down a couple of years ago due to rot.

This one too rotted out and had to be cut out in pieces.

It was a 2×6 wood construction down about 2-3 feet in concrete, laid down some 15 years ago. I’m been doing all of the Jupiter, Mars and Saturn imaging from it over the last 5 years.. and more and more its pointing and tracking were getting worse… no wonder… it moved easily at the top of the pier an inch, easily, a few inches if you pushed harder.

We will be storing the scope that was on it for a few months until we can build a new observatory just for imaging.

So far it looks like a very solid 4’x4′ platform of plywood over 2″x8″ joists sitting on deck blocks on limestone.
The walls look like they need to be 5′ tall to clear the tripod mounted scope and accessories attached to it. We have become less enamoured of roll off buildings, unless you can put them on a concrete pad, so this will be a rolloff roof system with a steeper pitch roof than our existing observatory.