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The rough plan
thus far the above images are really all I have to go from so things will likely change but i'm hoping to use the central support as the center of all my dividing walls. unfortunately the joist is offset so I plan on putting a ceiling panel between the two small walls and the joist and use the space above it for eaves storage in the closest two room, with some luck I might be able to put really useful boxes up there to store stuff like christmas decorations and my camping gear or something.
the room are the rear left which will be my games room I am thinking of capping with a ceiling at the point where the wall meets the roof slope. this should give me some eaves storage for scrap wood and stuff. I may need to stud the external wall as well so I can fit the joists, I dunno.
the holes in the beams I think I'll just cover the two end ones and then get some sheets of secondary glazing acrylic and use insulation tape and some glazing clips to hold it in place, it should give a bit more light in the gym area then (the games room and workshop are just gonna be indoor lighting lit for now but may look at a sun tunnel for the workshop later on.
for the games room and the home office I think it might be worth putting in more insulation in a second subfloor and laying flooring on top, the gym and the workshop I am gonna see if I can just chuck down some rubber flooring over the current boards. I probably want the office floor to be as high as the gym floor with the rubber gym tiles installed if I want the door to open outwards (space it at a premium in the office, less so in the gym).
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Electrics are going to be a lion-share of the costs for this project I think as we want to make sure things are comfortably within limits of the circuits.
top of the priority list is get someone in to asses the main board and quote for replacing the cord that runs from the back of the house across the top of the fence with something that is either trenched or ran down the side of garden in conduit using armoured cable.
luckily it seems like there's a proper outlet for the cable at the wall so I'm hoping pulling a beefier cable is possible without too much hassle using the existing cable as a guide.
then we'll be looking for as beefy a consumer unit as possible in the summerhouse.
I want a lighting circuit including some transformers to run 24v led strip lights around the office, games room and maybe gym, a security camera/mains fire alarms circuit and as we're in full control of the specs I'll be looking to put plenty of sockets everywhere I might need to avoid extension strips them so may look at one circuit per room, then I would like to have dedicated circuits for my 3d printers and workshop tools. I'm thinking of using two shelly pro 4pm which can handle 40a max over 4x16A smart circuits so I can have one circuit per socket by running the beefy cabling to smaller breaker boxes in the workshop itself. i think each of them should allow me to run the tools and dust extraction off of an automatic switch with enough headroom. I'll never be using all of the tools at the same time so it should be fine. it means I can make sure there's no power to stuff when I'm not in the room too. having the shelleys in the room means wiring up switches will be much easier.the electrics will likely come in the same place as now which is in the corner by the patio doors and I want to run cat8 ethernet alongside (in its own conduit if needed) which will be a wired backchannel between my mesh routers (asus xt8) then I'll run from a switch to ethernet sockets by all of my networked equipment .
heating will be a 1100/1300w electric radiator in the office and games room and I'm undecided on the other rooms. but I'd like a heater circuit with hardwired sockets for the 2 rads and probably plug in sockets for fan heaters in the other two rooms.
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me working during the day with the gf doing an exercise video in my peripheral vision while my 3d printer whirrs away noisily in the background printing and having my collection of expensive board games and gaming table covered in dust from the workshop is 0 for 3 on my list of wants.
my current study is a meter shorter but the same width as my new office and lacks a south facing skylight, the gym has a patio doors for lighting and just needs room for an exercise bike and enough room for my gf to lay out flat with all lumbs extended, the workshop extends out into the wide alcove so its bigger than the rest of the rooms and I don't want any windows for the local crackheads to be looking in through anyways (but could remove the black covering from the alcove windows). the games room will have dimmed room lighting and powerful lights over the gaming table and my painting table will use daylight lamps so sunlight is never gonna be a factor. if it wasnt a games room it would be rows of shelving for storage which still works.
I'll hang sheets up to simulate the walls before I start to check it feels ok but as is none of it feels like a compromise to me.
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You win the forum shed game
I'm definitely not crying
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It's fine really, @TW already made me irrelevant
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I have big plans for the decking too haha. my to-do list is very long.
the entire skylight side of the roof gets direct sunlight from the second the sun rises til it sets so it would probably be worthwhile but we need to replace the main roof as the third priority after redecorating main house and this summerhouse project so not sure we'd have the budget for installation left after that.
it'll still be a conversation I'll have with the electrician if we can find one not fully booked til 2024 just to gauge what we'd get for the outlay because it would be a relatively easy install for them and electricity prices aren't gonna get any cheaper and even if it just runs some of the stuff in the summerhouse it will slash our energy bills as most of the usage will be out there tbh. my buddy two streets away has his whole house plastered with panels but I know it wasn't cheap. it'll be an easier sell to the gf once we see a few energy bills for this place too.
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You should look at upgrading your mains fuse to a higher one. Its normally done for free(or low cost) with a request from your power distrobution company. I cant remember what we had but it was something like 60amp and we got it taken up to 100amp as we are planning on adding an office in the garage, and incase we ever needed a car charger out there.
Becuase of a quirk of the system, they actually paid me to do mine. I booked the appt. on the morning the chap called me and said his first appt. had cancelled and he could come early if I wanted, which I did.
A week later I got a call from customer services to ask how the service went, and to say they would pay me £30 compensation for inconvence of the installer did not come in his alloted slot... -
Have been very busy with my proper job's project and trying to get the house decorated (three weeks in and we're still knocking it back before building things back up).
Have an appt with UK power networks who are coming to survey the place to install a 100a fuse (thank you spotter for the heads up there) I enquired about going higher but a three phase supply is the next step up and would be about £8k minimum so we're going to just be more judicious about what/how much stuff we have running.
electricians are booked in also to replace our ancient consumer unit with a 100A 14 slot modern jobby in the main house and then we're running a cable to a 60A 14 slot sub unit in the summer house. they explicitly mentioned not including any trenches in their quote so I'm preparing myself mentally for a few days of back breaking work to get it done myself. have also purchased 50m of cat6a swa armoured cable for the house <-> summer house data run. buriable cat 8 seems rare as fuck and cat 7 seems to be the odd one out in terms of specs/uptake and I didn't find any proper armored stuff not on a big drum of 100s of metres so 6a will do. even with fibre arriving in the street soon (cabinets just went in) that should be plenty to run the wired backlink between mesh nodes on my network.
I also noticed after mowing the grass for the first time it appears we may have some rodent friends living in our lawn as there are burrow like openings along the edge of our decking step, got pest control people getting back to me about that. but keen to get that sorted so they don't try gnawing my freshly laid cables (hence the armoured swa in the first place too).
Also spotted the site I had bookmarked for getting the electric radiators from had a 20% off sale so we decided to just buy them all now so they're ready to use (they're plug in and come with freestanding feet so hard-wiring and wall mounting can be done once everything is finished but given how long things are taking sorting out the main house I may need them before it's all fully completed. went for 1000w models for the gym and games room and 1500w for my office and workshop. office is the one I'll need to be as comfortable as possible year around and the workshop has the largest volume of space to heat so figured they are where to go a little bigger. we'll probably never have more than 2 on the go at once anyways as the rooms will all see use at different times of the day. https://www.electricradiatorsdirect.co.uk/ecostrad-iq-ceramic-wifi-controlled-electric-radiators-black/
am a little frustrated that it's going to take a back seat for another 4-6 weeks while the redecoration/house move is sorted but hopefully having the new consumer unit installed and ready waiting to be cabled up should mean the studwork and first fix for all the fixtures can be done nice and quickly and I can get things turned around pretty quickly.
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I have just dug a trench for armoured cable for my shed. If you buy the right cable it doesn’t need to be deep. I left the hose running moving it periodically up and down the line so it was easy to dig and then just went one spade depth deep and turned it, it took half an hour to do ~7m, but a lot longer to bust 1m of concrete.
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nice work. i'm tempted to just do the same for the ethernet separately to whatever we do for the power line run. will be easier to sort out later on if i do decide in 10 years that i need cat 12 or whatever is the new new by then.
uk power networks came for site visit to upgrade main fuse to 100a. house needs upgraded supply cable which is fine but they need to scaffold up to the overhead cables in the street and separate us from our joint supply with the neighbour to do so (neighbour is a lonely 87yr old man who thankfully was ok with it happening but not happy about losing power for a couple of hours when they come and do it, luckily i've been making a point to chat to him when I see him so i think he wont be a problem and we offered that he can come hang out at our current rental place in the next street over on the day of the work if he's worried about not being able to do anything while the power is out).
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Did the very same a few years ago.
Some of the stuff i learnt.
Dig in a duct as big as you can to future proof services from house to "shed". Learned the hard way assuming the super dooper wifi would service the workspace. It didn't. Then my missus work insisted on a hard connection to her work laptop. Lots of wishing id just taken the time to run services down a duct.
Timber stud. was expensive for materials then. It'll be hella expensive now. Id look at metes instead.
Plasterboard fixing and taping ready for a plasterer should be pretty straightforward. When i worked in house bashing, some of the states of pboard that was plastered over and gave a good finish, you should be ok. That said, the tighter the joint the better.
Sparks coming over and giving a cert on someone else's work. We couldn't find one. We ended up pulling cables and fixing boxes ourselves and letting a spark wire sockets (at an extortionate rate) and certify. Still cheaper than letting him do the lot (by quite a way).
Insulate, insulate, insulate. Typing in gloves was not fun.
I agree with comments above about creating small rooms. Big space with movable panels maybe?
Anyway. Theres my comments. Looks ace. Just wish i had a decked area you could see from space.
Aroogah
platypus
si_mon628
hugo7
BareNecessities
Tonts
tbc
spotter
Greenbank
t.o.
lardy_biker-
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About
Hatbeard's H'outside House (summerhouse conversion)
Posted by
@HatBeard
I plan on spamming the DIY thread massively with this project but it might also be useful to have a dumping ground for my thoughts and ideas.
so we complete on our new house next week and we picked this place because it was almost a BOGOFF offer because it comes with a massive summer house at the end of the garden.
I'm yet to get in and measure but it's roughly 8 x 4.5m with an extra 2.5m x 2m alcove at one corner.
The house itself is plenty spacious but I have a ton of hobbies that take up a lot of space and my GF and I both work from home now so we need 2 home offices as I need silence to work and she is on calls all day.
so the plan is to take this summerhouse and split it into 4 rooms, a garden office, a board game/hobby room, a workshop and a yoga studio style gym.
We have some equity set aside from our previous sale to finance the work but to avoid spending all our money on labour costs (if we could find available tradespeople that aren't booked solid anyways) I'm going to build out the studwork, fix all the electrical boxes in place, get a sparky in to wire it all up, then I'll insulate, stick the plasterboard up and depending on how brave I'm feeling either do the plastering for the joins myself or get a man in, then I'll decorate and be done.
I have amassed a whole bunch of workshop tools in preparation and once I can get at it with a tape measure I'll work out how much timber I'll need I can order it and then it'll be off to the races.
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