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Another round of pics:

September 19th: ...

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That is just a BIG BIG building !!!
You could hold a square dance in there, and never bother the scopes.

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Hey, I like my elbow room! Not to mention the wife likes to put out her lounge chair and watch for meteorites. Of course at this point I'm thinking I should have put in a third pier given some of the recent acquisitions. Of course as is I guess I have room for a 25" Obsession in the middle!

Beo

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Great thread, great observatory.. I'm totally hooked at following your progress, like many others, I'm sure.

24' x 14' = 336 sqr.ft. So, do you have a rough estimate as to the final materials cost for the enitre project, less scopes, other astro gear and interior furnishing? I'm looking to find a cost/ sqr.ft number, a benchmark, for a large, top quality, high end ro/ro ob. Thanks for any info you wish to share.

Da Bear

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Actually it's 26x16' for the observatory plus another 12x16' for the warm room, for a total of 38x16' = 608 SF. I really don't like to think about what I've put into it, but when all is said and done, excluding things like the land and gas to get there all the time, and all the tools that I used this as an excuse to buy, I'd say I'm into it for at least $15k, or a bit more if I include stuff like the long electrical run, etc. Now about $5.5k of that was just the slab, which would have been cheaper if I'd been willing to pour it myself, and another $2k will be the standing seam metal roof, for which there are considerably cheaper alternatives. Of course if I paid someone just to do that part, it'd be more like $6k! So paying someone else for labor will cost you. Basically on the roofing they're quoting material and labor costs as roughly the same with a ~30% profit margin for the contractor. I'm not sure how that runs for other trades, but seems about right for what I paid to have the slab poured too, vs. what I was quoted for materials. At any rate, that puts me in the $25/SF ballpark, which isn't too outrageous. Of course the sad thing is that since this time last year when I originally starting pricing materials and hoping to get started, the materials prices on most things have gone up 15-25%! So that's just depressing.

Of course when I start adding scopes, etc. that I can't seem to stop collecting... (Thus the need for a third pier!) And to think that all of this started from a little 50 mm Celestron piece of junk scope that we got on clearance for $10 at Fry's... UGH!

Beo

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Of course when I start adding scopes, etc. that I can't seem to stop collecting...

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Of course when I start adding scopes, etc. that I can't seem to stop collecting...

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Thanks Beo, and welcome to the madness of scope collecting...LOL. It's worse than coffee and tobacco. I have an entire garage full of astro gear....including three Cave reflectors.

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Yeah, tell me about it. I've gotten in the habit of watching Craig's List for good local deals after getting my like new 11" NexStar GPS and JMI case for $1500 that way! What I tend to do now though is anytime I see a really nice starter scope that I can get for $50 or so, I'll grab it, clean it up and play with it for a bit, and then find some kid or family that shows an interest and give it to them with two rules: 1) You have to use it. 2) If you realize you aren't using it and it starts gathering dust, you have to give it away to someone else who will use it. Either that or give it back and I'll find someone else. You can't sell it!

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$25 a sqr.ft makes a lot of sense, I may build my ob this summer, 1-2 years earlier than originally planned- as building supply costs are sky rocketing every month.

Da Bear

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Best of luck on that.

Beo

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