Many people who work from home find themselves working from a cramped corner of their lounge, surrounded by household paraphernalia and interruptions. The solution to this home working problem is simple - utilise your outdoor space with a garden home office. You can choose a size to meet your needs and there are hundreds of styles available allowing you to choose the number of doors and windows, thickness of logs and shape of the roof.
Copyright (c) 2010 Filton Kingswood
With the growth of the internet and improvements in information and communication technology such as wireless broadband and virtual conferences in recent years, there are now an estimated 700,000* people in the UK working from home. These include a diverse group of people from small business owners to telemarketing operatives.
Many people who work from home find themselves working from a cramped corner of their dining room or lounge surrounded by household paraphernalia and interruptions. Those who have curved out an office by taking over the spare bedroom, often resent the loss of a room and find it awkward for friends and family to stay. The solution to this home working problem is simple - utilise your outdoor space with a garden home office.
If you are now thinking about your tiny, cold, damp and prehistoric garden shed nestled amongst the nettles at the bottom of the garden, stop now because things have moved on a lot since then. The garden home office is just like having an extra room in your house - the only difference it that you can enjoy some privacy and peace away from the hum-drum of daily household life.
A home office in the garden offers several advantages for anyone working at home. First, at the end of the working day, you can lock the door of your garden office and leave your work behind. Second, you have a great working location ‘ you can watch the seasons change from your home office window ‘ you could even set up a bird feeder nearby (try not to get too distracted though). Third, because the garden office is out of the house, you won’t be constantly interrupted by the home phone, TV noise, the kids, the Hoover or whatever.
It couldn’t be simpler and you will get more work done
Garden offices can now be equipped with electricity allowing you to run all your office equipment, plus you can choose to have a heater for the winter and an air conditioning unit for the summer. They can have telephone lines installed so you can hook up to broadband and are easily accessible if someone wants to speak to you. You can even paint the walls, hang pictures and install carpet so you can still experience those little home comforts.
The practicalities of a garden office
Will I need planning permission?
It’s unlikely, as most wooden outbuildings of a reasonable size will not need it. But it is worth a call to your local planning office to check.The ridge height and the square footage are key factors in with this so we recommend checking first
How can I connect to the internet?
A wireless connection in your home should reach your garden office as long as it is not too far away from the router. It’s worth testing this before deciding on the final position of your new office in the garden.
Will I be insured?
Check with your insurance company that your home office equipment will be covered if it is stolen from your garden office. Some companies put a cap on the amount of cover offered, so make sure that covers your equipment.
There are a wide range of sizes available to buy in the UK today, plus as they aren’t a permanent structure and you don’t need planning permission, you can always expand or replace your garden office to suit your needs. There are also a number of different styles for sale with the most common type of garden office being a log cabin. You can select the thickness of the logs and the number and size of windows and doors to suit your taste and requirements. You can choose a pent roof which slopes to one side or an apex roof which peaks in the centre depending on the style you would like. You can decide whether to have just one room in your home office or to install partitions to allow the space to be used for more than one purpose for example you could add a home gym or games room too. You can even choose to have a veranda or a canopy installed so you can work outside during the summer - just imagine building up a suntan in preparation for your holiday while working on your laptop.
* Source: www.flexibility.co.uk
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