Local green garden office

According to my local newspaper, The St Albans Observer, environmental scientist Neil Johnston has designed and built an innovative garden office that maintains a comfortable temperature with the minimum of heating. Alex Lewis writes that Mr Johnston has built a prototype in the back garden of his house in Granby Avenue, Harpenden, and that it needs no electricity at all on clear winter days. "But unlike rival designs which maximise sun capture by large amounts of glass, his office, through carefully positioned south-facing windows, stays cool in summer," he writes. The walls, floor and ceiling have 10cm of sawdust for insulation, bolstered by two-inch air gaps under the floor.The office has been built with Douglas fir from a sawmill in Ayot Green and a special plasterboard made from recycled plastic. The roof is only 2.25 metres high, reducing the space that has to be heated.

Garden office feature in The Guardian

It's always welcome when the media write pieces on garden offices/sheds and The Guardian has a big piece on the front of its Work section in today's paper. Unfortunately, while it does fly the flag for shedworking (hooray) it concentrates at bizarre length on one shedowner's problems with BT rather than on the immense range of garden office options available and shed-related issues such as green roofs (boo). You can read the feature here , but sadly it's really rather disappointing.

National Shed Week - 10 Downing Street

Uncle Wilco from readersheds.co.uk reports that his efforts to get a petition going on the 10 Downing Street web site have been rejected. This is what he was told:
" Hi, I'm sorry to inform you that your petition has been rejected. Your petition was classed as being in the following categories:
* Intended to be humorous, or has no point about government policy"
However the campaign continues. Please do sign up to the new petition at the new petition site here.

How to build a shed in five minutes...

Marvellous, but you might want to turn the sound down a bit...

Ofsted - major public sector homeworking

John Carvel and Lucy Ward report in The Guardian about the enlargement of Ofsted's role to oversee children's social care and adult learning provision as well as schools. "Aside from the promised improved effectiveness and coordination of inspection, the super-inspectorate also breaks new ground as an employer," they write. "The merger will see a significant increase in homeworking, with the children's services inspection team - those formerly within CSCI - all abandoning their bases in big offices to work from home. Together with the childcare inspectors, who already are based at home, the change will make Ofsted one of the biggest users of homeworking in the public sector. For the inspectors there will be compensations: their package includes a computer and broadband connection, mobile phone, satellite navigation kits for inspection visits and subsidised gym membership."

Other people's desks

There's only one thing better than nosing around someone else's house, and that's nosing around their desk. And so a strong contender for the interweb's most addictive blog must be Linzie Hunter's marvellous On My Desk where artists, illustrators, designers and creative follk share the stuff on their desks. Devastatingly simple, you could spend a day on the site browsing around. Though difficult to pick any one posting, I do have a soft spot for illustrator, designer and author Bob Staake's entry since he also includes an outside view of his studio, pictured. Naturally, you should subscribe to the feed so you don't miss any new ones.

Homeworking women

If you are a female homeworker there are various sites online which are tailored to your gender. Among them is Home Office Women which "desires to inspire, encourage, empower, provide a healthy network and safe environment for ALL women to help and share with each other our life, experiences, successes, failures and anything close to your heart." There is a wide range of subjects in their daily posts as well as occasional carnivals.

WAHM, the online magazine for work-at-home moms (mothers) asks the pertinent questions: "Is every day "Take Your Children to Work" day? Are there Legos under your desk? Is your coffeepot the most-used appliance in your house? Then you're a WAHM, and this is your magazine!" Founder Cheryl Demas says the site is a source for home business information, work at home/work from home jobs, and all the support and advice a work-at-home mom (or dad, or anyone) could ask for."

Have a look too at the emomsathome blog/ by Wendy Piersall and Mom Gadget, a guide to gadgets, gizmos and working from home.