Your house is bursting with life, its inhabitants big and small make you see all the colors and you have a hard time finding a little corner of peace in all this tumult and this agitation. Looking out the window, you see your garden shed, the one where you store your mower and your tools, and you find yourself imagining how to arrange it, how you could make it your own space.
So, living in your garden chalet, is it possible? And if we looked into the question!
The essentials for living in your garden shed
Before considering investing in your cabin at the bottom of the garden, you must already define your needs. The primary purpose of these sheds and small chalets is of course to house your garden equipment or serve as storage space. In this case, any model of shelter will do the trick.
If you want to settle in your garden, create a space for your leisure activities, or to work, your cabin will require some work. You can contact Garden Rooms House Extension Builder in Leicester
Insulation
Indeed, to be able to be comfortable there all year round, your garden shed will have to be insulated. We therefore forget the hut designed with simple planks or a single layer of wood or bricks which, of course, will protect you from the wind, rain and sun, but that’s all.
If you are a handyman, there are several solutions to insulate your existing chalet:
– Glass wool: A natural solution that offers effective and affordable insulation.
– Rock wool: Another natural solution, offering high-performance thermal and acoustic insulation.
– Cellulose wadding: An ecological and economical solution from recycled paper, with a very good value for money.
– Polystyrene: This is a synthetic insulation in the form of rigid expanded and extruded polystyrene panels. Efficient and easy to install, but less ecological.
The priority for you will be to insulate the roof because 30% of heat loss is through the roof.
Connections
Whether your new place of residence is a workshop, an office or a space for leisure, you will not be able to escape the need to bring electricity there. So if your garden shed is not connected to the electrical network of your house, you will have to make these connections.
To do this, you will need to make trenches and pull cables from your electricity meter, while respecting the standards in terms of trench depth, insulation and cable thickness.
More than a workshop or an office, you really want your garden chalet to be fully equipped and to have a water point and toilets. In this case you will have to connect to the drinking water network as well as to the waste water drainage network.
These two types of connections are significantly more technical to set up than electricity and it will take some knowledge of plumbing to make them.
Heating
Your insulation has been done and your new living space is now insulated as it should be. However, until you bring a heat source inside, it will remain cold and stark on winter days.
Several simple solutions are available to you such as electric heating, connected to the network that you have previously connected to your main home or the stove and the gentle heat of its flames.
Unfortunately, even if you bring in a source of heating, a shelter, cabin or simple garden chalet, no matter how well insulated it may be, will always present a fault in its insulation at ground level; the winter cold will still spread under your feet and still not allow you to enjoy the same comfort as that of your home.
The ideal alternative: the garden studio
As we have just seen, it is not impossible to adapt your existing garden shed to make it a place to live, but this still presents many technical and structural constraints. You risk incurring costs and work which, in any case, will not be able to provide an optimal solution.
The alternative that will save you from making your mower homeless is to invest in a garden studio or office!
What is called a garden studio is a “modern” version of garden chalets, often with a contemporary design with a roof terrace, large bay windows and wooden cladding. Their advantage is to be fully planned to welcome you all year round.
