Weather Station

A couple years ago, my Dad and I were talking about some of the complications with his weather station. At the time, he had all of the gages set up on a broom stick out in his lawn but he wasn't receiving accurate readings, especially when the sun was beating on it all day long. He also had a need for a platform for the rain gage to sit on.

Here was my solution. A white, louver wall box, with an inverted roof. I made the entire box out of pine. The hardest part of this whole project was making sure the louvers were even between the top and bottom rail. I did measure quite a bit and ended up trying to make a template first on a piece of scrap before I did it for real. Once I created the dado's in one side, I realized all I needed was a mirror image of the side I just made. I was able to simply nibble out a dado for the louvres with my table saw and my miter gage set at 45 degrees. I made them tight so I wouldn't need anything but glue to keep the louvers in. Each louvre was made out of a 1/4 inch piece of pine that I had a friend surface plane to size for me. As for the frames the louvres fit in, I built each exactly the same size. All the frames were glued, pre-drilled, I counter sunk the screws and covered all the screw head holes with plugs. I basically made a cube!

As for the roof, this is where I got pretty creative. At least I thought it was. The roof was designed to accommodate for the function of the rain gauge. In order for the weather station rain gauge to work, water needed to be able to enter through the top of the instrument and drain out the bottom. In order to achieve this, I decided to invert the roof to create a channel under the rain gauge would. I pitched my table saw blade at 5 degrees and ran the two piece through. From the back of the box, you can see how the roof is pitched. I also found that I needed a couple of wedges to offer some support to the roof. The other roof on the outside of the box is purely for looks to give the illusion that it there is a normal roof.

After 5 sides were finished, all I need was a couple hinges, a knob, and a magnet to keep the door closed. I painted the entire box with flat exterior latex paint and mounted it on a 4x4 pole in my dad's yard. It took quite a few hours of work, but it was worth it! My dad is getting good readings from his weather station I now know how to make a weather station box!