This video is sponsored by Squarespace. So having a structure right here,
let's see. 12, 15 feet we said. Three, Six, Nine, Twelve, Fifteen.
I mean this area is raised up that side is sloped you know if we want to go more than 15 feet this
direction say you know 18 feet, you've got plenty of space I think. Hi everyone Nico from Nebula
Photos. I'm here with Timothy Emerson who is an architect and he is going to give me some
tips about building my backyard observatory that I have recently gotten some plans for and I haven't
started construction, so it was really great that Timothy reached out to me and offered this
consultation because uh he has a lot of great ideas and I think this is going to be really
helpful to anyone out there who is considering building their own custom observatory in their
backyard. So Timothy first just tell me a little bit about your background as an architect and
sort of why you reached out to me. Yeah so I got into astrophotography about a year and a half ago
and you know pretty much made all the beginner mistakes: bought a telescope that was too big,
couldn't get them out working, tracking errors. Of course it was the middle of January so I was
really frustrated and cold. So I started watching a lot of videos I came across your videos and some
other people uh and they were a lifesaver to me like learning this hobby uh and so you know the
work that you guys are doing on you putting out free YouTube videos uh I kind of wanted to give
back a little bit, uh and so I reached out to you. I am an architect, I practice in Massachusetts
a little bit in New Hampshire. You know then you started doing videos on you know backyard
observatories I was like I can I can definitely help you with that you know it's something I could
do, you know if nothing else, kind of give you my two cents and maybe you know show you where you
might have some problems. [Nico] What would you say are are the the biggest problems that here in
New Hampshire we have to be aware of when building something like this? [Timothy] Yeah so this is a
good a good point because you've got people all over the country all over the globe and everybody
has you know a different environment right and that's going to be the biggest factor in planning
your Observatory bill here in New England we've got everything you could possibly imagine we've
got warm weather we've got humid weather we've got cold weather Frost and having all of those things
together makes it pretty challenging you know I would say the biggest thing for us would be
the winter time and Frost and the the secondary thing to that would be having a you know very
humid environment in the summertime uh as and in the fall so moisture problems [Nico] Do you advise
getting like air conditioning for an observatory? or is it because the roof rolls off I guess it's
actually... I should back up: in the style that I want to build, the roof is going to roll off.
That allows it to really cool off to ambient temperature quite quickly and sort of yeah but
oh for I guess a lot of the time it's going to be the air will be trapped in there and
I guess also the humidity would be so how do you how do you go about sort of like dealing
with moisture and things like that? [Timothy] Yeah so you know having a roof that comes off
makes it very tricky tricky especially um a roll-off roof uh and that your primary
issues are going to be where the roof is connected to the walls where the roller
bearings are going to be there's really no way to air seal something like that
some people uh in like a prefabricated kind of insulated uh enclosure with maybe you know a
pop-up roof or something like that where it's got a nice gasket that seals around something
like that would be worth uh you know dehumidifying in the summertime uh but something like this you
know air wants to be at equilibrium right so if we create this nice sealed box and try to dehumidify
or let's say we create this box and it's not quite sealed and we start to dehumidifying it
well we're going to take the human the humid air that's in there but that will force the air that's
outside to drive inside the building so you're really kind of not doing anything by trying to
dehumidify a structure like this so what I would recommend is actually make sure that there's a way
of natural ventilation right so you know this is not a structure that you want to be heated
anyway uh so you know in the summertime we want to keep the humid air out so you know a fan towards
the Gable end and at the bottom we can we can have some louvers to kind of pull in fresh air and get
the air moving if we can get the air moving we're less likely to have condensation. [Nico] So one
thing I've seen is uh on you know you you have an intake fan and an outtake fan or something
like that and that maybe will move the air across the top but I've never heard about this louvers
towards the bottom can you explain that a little yeah so uh in a structure like this up towards the
top the air is going to be the warmest right because the warm air is going to rise so the
idea of having the louvers at the bottom is you're bringing cool air in now this glass is a perfect
example here in our humid climate uh we've got condensation here so the the air around us has
moisture in it right this this water here didn't come from the inside of the grass right so we've
got this warm air which can hold a lot of moisture and cold air has less moisture in it so as soon as
the air comes in contact with the glass it cools the air off and the moisture falls out of the air
right so if we can put the Louver if we put the fan at the top we're pulling the warm humid air
out and we're bringing in cooler less moist air at the bottom [Nico] and what is a Louver? [Timothy]
um a Louver would be like a screen okay right uh it usually has metal fins on it uh so when
you've got driving rain it kind of protects the opening it's not like a regular open window and
so you would build that right into the wall or yep you could build it into the wall you
can get pre-manufactured metal louvers um you've probably seen a lot on gable vents so like houses
right so the attic vent is kind of sticking off the side there that would be a Louver [Nico] oh
another thing sort of related to this movie is you mentioned it might be a good idea as
an observatory to have Windows could you explain why? [Timothy] Yeah so off camera we were talking
about our climate specifically uh and because we have so much moisture in the spring and the
fall we often get mold and mildew along with some rot which we'll probably talk about later uh but
one thing is with that moisture and you know this particular structure that we're looking looking at
it's wood now mold uh you know it's one thing that we're concerned about in New England quite a bit
and mold needs a few ingredients to grow it needs a source of food it needs water and it
needs Darkness so you know it's nice when you close up the hatches and keep everything nice
and uh sealed up in the daytime and the night time you roll it off but in the daytime when you're not
using your Observatory the most humid time uh in the warmest time you're giving mold an opportunity
to grow so my recommendation would be to have a few windows in there to kind of keep the level
of light up and kind of reduce the one of the at least one of the variables for a chance for mold
to grow mold spores will you know they'll feed on the wood but that doesn't also mean that they
can't get on all your equipment as well [Nico] So that reminds me that I've heard different things
about sort of heat dissipation when you roll off the roof you want the heat from the building to
get out of there as quickly as possible and so I've heard that wood is generally better for
letting the heat off than concrete but then I've also heard like the reason that a lot of people
leave the inside of their buildings unfinished like that is because that will also help with
getting the heat out quickly do you agree with all that or is there anything you could elaborate
on? [Timothy] I would agree with that okay um concrete is what we call a thermal Mass once
it warms up uh it takes a while to dissipate right you know in older homes like this one you probably
have a big fireplace somewhere and fireplace Made of Stone winter time it warms up and
you know it'll help disperse the Heat and keep things warmer longer the same is true for a
concrete slab on grade and in even some passive kind of uh low energy homes we use concrete and
dart flooring material like tile to kind of let the concrete absorb more light so that at night
when the sun's gone and the temperature outside is cooled off it releases that energy back into
the building so something like this you know insulation is not really going to help you a
lot because you're going to be rolling off the you know the purpose is not to live in this
space right the purpose is for astrophotography so I would agree keeping the structure as light
as possible you know even insulation will I mean the the purpose of insulation is to slow down the
transfer of air yeah and so when you roll off that roof its job is to hold on to that warm air as
long as possible so yes insulation would uh slow down the heat the cooling of your your Observatory
[Nico] Another question I had about these buildings is um a lot of people with a roll-off
roof roll the roof off to the north and my understanding is the main reason is just because
it's important more important to have a clear view to the east west and south for astronomy purposes
um I am going to be pretty blocked by trees to the West so I was thinking of instead rolling
the roof off to the West because in terms of an obstruction it's not going to matter but is there
any engineering or structural reason to roll the roof off in a certain direction? [Timothy]
No okay not really if you live in like a a very open kind of flat region where you're
susceptible to you know not like microburst isn't like tornado quality but like really heavy winds
uh it is it would probably be beneficial for you to uh orientate your building kind of like a
Weather Vein into the wind right so that you don't get kind of a sidewind to try and lift up your
roof or expose it to any more kind of severe wind than you know than normal [Nico] This is something
that I've heard from a number of people including Alan who had recently visited you mentioned is
um over time it becomes harder for the roof to roll off because of um the roof I mean the
building's sort of changing over time yeah how do you and it seems like people have different issues
there but what is sort of like general advice for how to prevent shift? [Timothy] uh and for
for that to be a hard issue with a roll-off roof building yeah I mean so most likely what's going
on there is I mean in our climate we have Frost right but we and in some Southern climates and
Western climates they have you know what's called expansive soil soil that holds moisture and water
um and the soil moves right so in either case whether it's Frost or expansive soils we want
to design a footing that is going to best resist what we would expect to see in your
local climate right so in our case we're talking about piers so we can't just build right on the
ground like some Southern climates can we have to dig deep and we have to dig below
the frost line so for New Hampshire that's the code minimum is 48 inches. [Nico] we've been
talking about piers and just to make it clear there there's the piers that the telescope are
going to go on to and then there's the piers that the building are going to go on to uh and
in both cases though I have to dig a hole that's at least four feet deep and fill it with concrete
when I've been digging holes for other reasons like my vegetable garden I've
noticed I have very rocky soil we're like taking out Boulders like this big a lot
um so what are your recommendations for digging holes if I want to do this myself? [Timothy] yeah
so growing up in New England myself I had to dig a lot of holes in this kind of ground and what I
recommend is you can get a post hole digger can help or just a spade shovel a post hole digger
is going to help you dig a more straight hole if you're using a long-handled spade shovel you know
you'll have a more tapered hole just to be able to get down to the bottom when you encounter a
rock I mean as long as it's not the size of this table here um you know those Bolder you
know kind of Cobble size Stones what I recommend is getting I've always called it a pry bar but
you can get them at most Home Centers or you know local hardware stores it's about five feet long
it's a cylindrical Rod at the bottom of it it has a taper and at the top it has a kind of a round
um flared end at the top and it weighs about 50 pounds and when you hit a rock you know you can
pound the ground to kind of loosen it up you can get beside the Rock and kind of pry it into the
hole uh the idea here is that the girth of the hole can be large the girth is not what we want
to avoid the depth of the hole we want to be at four feet minimum to be below the frost line but
it's kind of imperative that when you're digging a hole that you don't go the bottom of your concrete
footing doesn't go below undisturbed soil soil it's been undisturbed has the highest compressive
rate it's it's ever going to have once you disturb it there's no amount of pounding that you can do
to kind of recreate that um existing undisturbed capacity for the soil to resist load. [Nico] In
our conversation so far what am I missing? What do you think are things that I haven't
thought about in building this myself? [Timothy] If we are doing a wood construction like you are
uh most cases people just dig the sonotube they dig the holes put the Solitude down and fill it
and then they build their wood structure on top of it but my recommendation to you and particularly
in our climate where we have a lot of groundwater and moisture is to underneath of your building
remove all the organic material not just where the the posts are going to go but remove all the
organic material and lay down plastic a thick six mil or ten mil uh plastic continuous underneath
the whole thing. [metal spade hitting rock] I hit a rock already that's lovely.
So the organic soil is this black stuff right okay uh and it's got the roots in it typically in New
England it's not going to go very deep right when you're stripping the topsoil you'll just take the
first 12 inches right off the top yeah and it's you know it's labor intensive uh but you know
you're you're removing all the ability for the soil to hold moisture in that spot and you're
replacing with the plastic to keep the water from driving up and you're putting stone over the top
to um to keep the plastic down and something like that too you know Critters that do go under there
aren't going to be burrowing into that stone right material so it makes it less habitable
for them. [Nico] When I just had the plans it was like sort of like a little bit loose in my mind
and talking to you it's like becoming a little bit more clear I think so this has been really helpful
um well thank you so much Tim and uh hopefully this is helpful to other people building their
observatories uh I'm going to be you know sharing my progress on the channel and so uh hopefully
people can give helpful advice in the comments and we can continue having discussions about
this thank you very much Nico thanks this video is sponsored by Squarespace and I use Squarespace
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all right this has been Nico Carver at nebula photos clear skies everyone