Good quality garden offices are designed to last many years, some suppliers forecast a life expectancy in excess of 60 years, so thought should be given how you can future proof your building making it as useable in the future as it is today, here are our tips:
Design
Be clever with your choice of garden office design, don’t choose anything that is going to look dated in 5 or 25 years time, opt for design features which will stand the test of time – we predict that large expanses of glass connecting indoor and outdoor space will always be popular on garden offices. Give some thought to the materials your choose, a garden office that has a fully plastered interior giving the look and feel of a room in the house is unlikely to date compared with a matchboard interior which could be said already looks dated.
Future Use
Think about how your garden office will be used in the future – will it always be an office; will your business expand and need room for more staff? Consider buying a bigger building than you need today to allow for future expansion. Consider adding a toilet, a shower room or a kitchen area, this will enable the building to be self contained for use as a granny annex in the future – it is possible to add features like this at a later date but it will never be as successful as being incorporated in the original design.
Electrics
Don’t stint on the electrics for your garden office, try and specify more sockets than you need today to allow for future acquisition of electrical appliances. It is possible to fit more sockets at a later date but it won’t be as easy or as cheap as specifying extra sockets at the design stage.
Communications
How will our communications change over the next few years – who knows, but our guess is that we will become more dependent on computers. Wireless technology is bound to improve but because garden offices are so well insulted and have pretty thick walls, wireless signals can be intermittent. It would be good practice to plan ahead by burying a communications channel in the trench with your electric supply – make sure the channel is a reasonable size to allow for several cables and include a draw wire to pull cables through easily.
As you can see a little thought today can enhance your future use of your garden office.
