Pouring the observatory foundation

Last Sunday Annie and I have been inspecting the Schrebergarten to see what the plants are doing, and my gaze fell upon that muddy whole that was supposed to contain the foundation of my telescope column.

Enough! So I donned the rubber boots and shoveled out mud for 30 minutes. To my surprise the hole did not cave in (though the upper part had widened a bit), and I had a pretty clean surface on the bottom that slowly got covered in water. Hurry! I put in a couple of brickes, laid on one of the three rebar mats I had cut half a year ago (holy sh*t), put in three vertical rebars, and started mixing cement in two large plastic vats.

Mixing concrete manually with a shovel is hard work! I started dripping after the first two bags, and had eight more to go. Removing the mud already had me caked in, and the concrete added some more accents that later required showering with my clothes on, using a brush to clean me off the worst.

10 40kg cement bags later (I could hardly close my fingers for two days from lugging around the weight and mixing the concrete), two more rebar mats and all of the stones we had found in the garden had disappeared in the hole, filling it to about 10cm under the surrounding surface. Just like I hoped it would. Meanwhile in total darkness I fixed the rebars into position, and called it a day.

Now I have to wait for the frost-free time of the year before I can pour the column itself. And then - enjoyable astronomy without tripod from a rock-solid, horizontal and polar-oriented platform.