What it’s like to live with a garden office
Mark Brinkley reports on the pros, cons and costs from his man cave in the garden
Self-build expert Mark Brinkley details his first-hand experience
Our plans for a loft office were kicked into touch by a conservation officer who argued that such a structure would be out of keeping for our neighbourhood. As a result, my man cave was relocated into a newly built studio at the end of our garden, from where I am writing this piece.the fact that I can see four loft conversions from where I sit and that I happen to know that there are another 12 within a quarter of a mile is, in the great scheme of things, neither here nor there now, as I now love my garden studio.
Garden studios are very popular in these parts it seems. Since we built ours, the same local company, My Space, has built two more in adjacent gardens.they are pretty simple to build. In this example, the insulated timber frame was built on site on top of block pad foundations, and clad with western red cedar and an EDPM rubber roof. Ours is quite small, at 3.5m x 3.5m, making just one room, which doubles as an overflow bedroom.there is no plumbing, and therefore no sink or loo, so it’s not what you would call a self-contained unit. Coffee, tea and toilet breaks require a 15-metre hike up the garden and into the house.
We included the plans for the garden studio in our planning application. The downside of this was that it had to be pre-approved by the council before we were allowed to build it, as its scale and siting became a planning condition.they were worried it might be too high, but it is single storey and has a flat roof, so that was never really an issue.there was an upside as well: because it formed part of the overall planning permission for our self-build, we were able to reclaim VAT on the structure, so it cost us £15,000 rather than £18,000.
Studios with insulated walls and double glazing start at around that price – £1,500/m2 – and become more costly in proportion to their size. Adding plumbing usually adds a lot, because waste removal is often hard to connect with the rest of the house. There are cheaper garden structures available, but they don’t really suit winter use; if you want a studio to use all year round then it needs to be heated.
My studio has a simple electric radiator. In winter, I set this to 8°C, which keeps it warm enough to stop it getting damp.when I start work in the morning, I hit a button on the radiator and it switches to 15°C, which sounds cold, but it takes about 20 minutes to get up to temperature and then it becomes a question of keeping the lid on things, because if anything the temperature tends to overshoot. There is a side window that can be opened for ventilation. All in all, it takes a little management to keep it comfortable, but it’s hardly taxing, and the overall heating bills are very low.when the temperature outside rises above 25°C, it does get too hot to work in, but that’s a pretty rare occurrence here in the UK. And who in their right mind would be sitting in front of a screen when the weather is like that?