Installing a Pier
I had to decide somewhere in the garden that had good sky visibility without taking over the garden, so I chose a corner out of the way but not far from where I’d typically setup my telescope.
I set about digging a hole to pour the concrete base, this was surprisingly harder than I’d imagined. Luckily I had two little helpers and after a couple of hours we’d dug out a nice hole approximately 60x60x40cm.
Next I added some steel rebar and mixed about 22 bags of concrete to fill the hole. (Crikey hand-mixing these almost killed me).
Finally before the concrete went off, I placed some steel bolts into the concrete, positioned it with a wooden form to match holes in the pier base, then bolted it in place to keep it aligned.
Finally after about a week of letting it harden covered up from the elements, I was able to remove the wooden form, bolt the pier in place and fit my mount and telescope to it.
Woohoo I now had a permanent setup to enjoy.