Ultracold neutrons (UCN) are free neutrons with sufficiently low energy such that they may be confined for lengths of time approaching the neutron lifetime. They have great potential for a wide range of experimental studies, however almost all of these studies are limited by the available UCN density. A UCN source is being installed at the PULSTAR reactor at North Carolina State University (NCSU) that will efficiently provide a high UCN flux per available reactor power. The NCSU source is uniquely placed outside the reactor pool and features a system to transport neutrons from the reactor core. This transport is modeled and benchmarked against foil activation measurements. To produce UCN, a heavy water thermal moderator is coupled with a solid methane cold moderator, the temperature of which can be optimized for down-scattering in the solid deuterium UCN converter. This work will present the construction and testing of the NCSU source’s cryostat, cryogenic helium system, and gas handling systems, including a deuterium spin-state converter and Raman spectrometer. Further, this work will characterize the growth of the solid deuterium crystal in our UCN source cryostat.