Garden office air conditioning

With temperatures rising, Shedworking has had a lot of enquiries about how to heat and cool your garden office. There's a nice (and short) piece about just this topic on the Advantage Air Systems site. Here's a snippet:

A professionally installed air conditioning system, when compared to direct electric heating or gas, can lower your electricity bills by as much as 30-50%. If you use your garden office all day every day, you could find that your new system pays for itself within 5 years in reduced running costs. And of course, an air conditioning system also gives you the option to use it in cooling in the summer months to lower the temperature and humidity. Simple split type air conditioning systems are ideal for garden offices, typically consisting of an indoor wall mounted unit and an outdoor unit positioned behind the cabin. Mitsubishi Electric has recently launched its sophisticated and stylish M-Series range. Available in a variety of colours and using the latest R32 refrigerant, they offer superior energy efficiencies too.

Advantage also has a short case study of their work on an osteopathy practice based in a garden office (pictured above).
 
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Thursday posts are sponsored by Cabin Master: garden offices and studios to fit any size garden. Top quality contemporary or traditional buildings.

Yann Martel: Shedworker

Novelist Yann Martel (Life of Pi) works from a garden office at his home in Saskatoon, Canada, where he wrote his recent ‘The High Mountains of Portugal at a treadmill desk. In an interview with the New York Times he explains how he drinks plenty of herbal tea inside while he is writing.

“My studio is a strict working space, but my children blithely ignore that. They pound on my door, clamoring that they want to come in and draw pictures. My studio is therefore a strict working space and a children’s museum of ephemeral art.”

He goes on to describe his writing studio as "no more than enclosed emptiness, a cube of uncluttered quiet warmth in which I can collect my thoughts and try to marshal them". Inside there are no books to avoid distractions and few other bits and bobs including drawings by his young children. "All I need is a clean, well-lighted place as blank as the page I hope to write on."

In the video below, Martel talks about his writing life and shows us around his studio from about the 2:50 mark.

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Margaret Drabble: Shedworker

Author Margaret Drabble, Lady Holroyd (A Summer Bird Cage, The Witch of Exmoor), works in a writing shed at the bottom of her garden in Somerset with marvellous views over Porlock harbour. In an interview with the Guardian she explains that her wellknown gardening son Joe Swift helped her turn a jungle-like garden into "a long, level retreat, complete with pond, willowy foxglove tree and a wooden writing shed".

She first started writing in her garden office in 1994, saying: "I work better in my little shed. Your concentration changes when you know people can't get at you. When they can, you're half-waiting for them to do so. You even feel a bit annoyed if they don't. It's such a luxury to have something that you've arranged for yourself, with a view. "

Apparently there is no phone line inside the shed, nor any internet connection, but there is a desk, typewriter and laptop, a globe, and a photo of her father.

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Tuesday posts are sponsored by Garden Spaces, suppliers of contemporary garden buildings, offices, gyms and studios, many of which do not require planning

Tiny house bookshop

Very high on the list of 'I really like the sound of this' is La librairie itinérante, a travelling bookshop from French company the La Maison Qui Chemine (rough translation, 'The house that plods'). It's been built specially for bookseller Jean-Jacques who plans to wander from city to city and from festival to festival plying his trade. 

This perfect shedworking atmosphere is essentially a 5.4m-long trailer, measureing 2.5m by 4m which has dry toilets, a kitchen, office, and bedroom on a mezzanine level, accessed via a ladder also hangs on a handrail that runs along the library so you can reach the highest book . According to Jean-Jacques's request, there's no plumbing.
 
You can see their similarly lovely but less bookish tiny house model here. --------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists. Click here for more details.

Shed Box of Delights: Green roof container garden office

Turning shipping containers into garden offices and buildings was flavour of the month half a dozen years ago and there are some signs that it is on trend again. The Grass Roof Company is among those putting forward some lovely designs, the one above built from two used containers and clad in larch featuring a wood burning stove. The company supplies them straight to site with green roof and habitat walls. Here's what they say about them:

We love used freight containers, they have already spent at least 10 years at sea, they are immensely strong and versatile. A perfect base to fix green roofs and habitat walls. Take the side away and you have a shelter for interpretation, cycle store, outdoor classroom or stage? A truly sustainable building, they can move with you or sell on complete!

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Friday posts are sponsored by Warwick Buildings, manufacturers of outstanding quality timber buildings. Click here for more information.

Garden pod office and library

A marvellously bookish garden office/library from Booths Garden Studios owned by genealogist and writer Liz Howell who calls it The Dreamery. It's the QCB garden pod model, 6.1m x 2.44m in anthracite grey, a size which means it cleverly squeaks in under the building regulations requirements. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thursday posts are sponsored by Cabin Master: garden offices and studios to fit any size garden. Top quality contemporary or traditional buildings.

Garden office in a small space

A common issue among those considering becoming shedworkers is worries about how much room a garden office will take up. Here's a good example of what can be done in a restricted area, in this case by eDEN Garden Rooms at a terraced home in Hither Green, London. It was built boundary-to-boundary at the end of a narrow garden, measuring 3.3m x 3.7m and featuring aluminium sliding doors (replacing an existing shed) on screwpile foundations. The whole build took just under a week.

You can see more about how eDEN puts together their buildings in the video below.

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Wednesday posts are sponsored by The Stable Company®, the UK's premier supplier of garden offices and garden rooms. Click here