The news is full of doom and gloom about the terrible winter we are having, although we are only in the second week of bad weather.  Swine flu has gone, the Iraq war is over and Afghanistan is now a peaceful place once more, or so it seems.  Instead of the news that has dominated the airwaves for the last couple of years we are being bombarded by reports of a small bit of white stuff falling from the heavens which has, once again, ground Britain to a halt in a matter of hours.

The first wave of bad weather has come and gone for most, but the weather people who failed to predict it in the first place are saying more is to come.   One thing comes to mind, other than the fact we all can’t cope with snow in this country, is that there is a stronger need to be able to work from home for quite a large proportion of the snow bound workforce of the U.K. 

Technology has come a long way when it comes to networking and PC based office work.  Computers are smaller, much cheaper and more powerful.  The ability to connect to the office is only a click away and with file sharing and networking more widespread than ever we could easily continue to do our jobs from the comfort of our own home.  I for one could be writing this anywhere and could post it to the internet from on a plane for all anyone knows.

With the snow falling and blocking us all in and industry losing millions daily isn’t it about time we figured out that we don’t all have to lose a day’s pay because we can’t get to the office, especially if we had thought ahead and invested in a home office.  If we had a designated and ‘hooked-up’ area of our home that can easily allow you to work without going to the office then business would continue to run even in the whitest of winters.

But what are the best solutions for home office working? Working from a room in your house may not be the answer, especially when the kids are home from their closed school. A more convenient and more productive place to work is undoubtedly the garden office.  You will still need to be able to separate your home and working environments to be able to keep productivity high.

By utilising a log cabin or converting your garden shed you will be giving yourself that distance from your home without having to leave your property.  Snow wouldn’t be an issue, loss of pay wouldn’t be a worry and we might not be too bothered about the wet white stuff falling so annoyingly during winter.

To view a range of excellent Log Cabins fit for use as a home office visit: http://www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk/Log-Cabins

If you want to go down the shed convertion route visit read our popst insulation: http://www.gardenbuildingsdirect.co.uk/blog/post/2009/12/02/A-Brief-Introduction-To-Shed-Insulation.aspx

BillyOh Tongue & Groove Apex Shed  BillyOh Classic Overlap Pent BillyOh-Country-Plant-House-Potting-Shed

This problem always comes up every year.  You buy a shed, nothing special, wooden framed panel building felt covered roof, but you want to be able to use it all year round and not just for chilling your Christmas beer during December. 

Sheds are much more than just a storage place in the modern garden.  They have become a special part of the home, or rather an extension of the home, where hobbies and activities have taken over from the usual resting place of the lawn mower.

The autumn and winter months are long and cold in Britain, probably not as wet as most people believe, but the cold is the real reason that the shed then becomes a neglected place and therefore a lot of creative time is lost to our dismal weather.  Imagine what all of you artisans could achieve if the shed was a much more inviting place to potter, construct and escape to - if only it was warmer.

Insulating your shed to improve it’s ‘comfiness’ during the cold periods of the year couldn’t be easier.  Using a roll of bubble wrap stapled to the inside of the shed is a nice, easy and inexpensive way to boost the cold prevention qualities of your garden retreat. The stress relief potential is also high, pop, pop, but remember each pop takes a little away from it’s insulating properties.

You can go further though and use products such as mineral wool to line the walls and then plaster board over. But be aware that you’ll probably knock a hole through it in no time so a hard board, OSB or MDF would be more appropriate.  Also the smallest amount of moisture will make the plaster board swell and deteriorate.

Polystyrene sheeting, at about two inches, between the framing will work well too to block the chill. Cover it with polythene, then a 12mm plywood board finished off with paint will protect the inside of the shed and keep it much warmer than if left uncovered. You will also get a handy winter snow scene from cutting the polystyrene sheets to fit the panels, which will impress the kids.

The greatest loss of heat from your shed will come from the floor, ceiling and windows.  Shed roofs can be covered in the same methods as the walls, but make sure you secure those boards above your head really well.  Silver insulation foil could also be included in your packing of the roof to reflect your own body heat back down from above.

For the windows you could go to the expense of fitting double glazed glass, but using UPVC will knock a lot of the heat loss away.  The floor is where most of the cold will enter your shed, also water can make it’s way through the boards if they are resting on the ground or if water is allowed to pool under them.  Raising your shed higher up above ground level, and the lying water, will counter this, but you will also need to consider insulating between the bearers with strips of polystyrene or using carpet underlay with boards over the top on the inside of the shed.  If you really want warm feet you’ll need to invest in under floor heating.   

You can spend as little, and do nothing, or as much as you want to make your little hideaway, or hobby room, or workshop warm for the winter. Consider the costs and the work involved in fitting the shed out and whether you really are going to make the most of the winter months before forking out for insulating your shed.

The whole world has gone crazy for the environment and so it should. This is our planet and we’ve spent far too long ruining it, which has to change. So the idea of trying to run a manufacturing and garden building distribution company in an environmentally friendly way, or at least as environmentally friendly way as we can, doesn’t take much thinking about as there are plenty of ways in which us humble garden building creators can help to minimise our impact on the environment.

All of our wooden garden building products are made from timber from sustainable forests, which are managed and maintained to perpetuate the supply without compromising the forests that it comes from for a start and not only do we use sustainable timber, but we make sure that nothing goes to waste.

As our buildings range in size and shape from small wooden storage solutions, playhouses, wooden sheds, and log cabins, and timber comes in specific lengths there are occasions when timbers are cut to the precise measurements for a building leaving off-cuts that another manufacturer would just discarded. We, however, take these off-cuts and incorporate them, where we can, in to new buildings or pre-existing buildings that require such lengths of wood. In short we use one piece of timber for two buildings, leaving even less waste.

When chopping and sawing down the timber for the panels and boards of our sectionl buildings and wall boards for our log cabins buildings we accumulate a lot of saw dust. Normally seen as a waste by-product of the manufacturing process we allow it to become a profitable part of our business. The saw dust gets drawn into our extraction system and blown into trailers. It is then graded and dust goes into cat litter manufacture, sawdust “crumbs” go into pet packs for animals such as hamsters and gerbils and the shavings are used in the equestrian market for stables and show rings.

Another aspect of our environmentally friendly manufacturing policy is highlighted by the fact that supermarkets are being forced, by popular descent, to reduce packaging of their products as they are seen as a great contributor to the problem of waste in our country. It’s simple, the less packaging a company uses the less waste is created by the end user. Garden Buildings Direct have always employed the same ethos when it comes to packaging for their garden buildings. Basically, short of a binding strap to hold the sections of the building together in transit and as little polythene as possible for the nuts and screws, we use minimal packaging helping to reduce waste in the same way.

With our mind firmly fixed on helping out our planet we strive to do our bit to reduce our environmental impact. So when you want to purchase a garden building product that you know has not ‘cost the earth’ you can’t do much better than coming to us at Garden Buildings Direct.