My Workshop

[Yorkie]

Hi David,
I'm need to replace my shed which is over 25years old and is suffering very badly with rot in the floor timbers and flooring. I have been looking at sheds/workshops of 8 x 10 and to build to the spec that I want (a workshop not a shed) it will cost in excess of £1 000 which is too expensive for me at present.

You have given me much food for thought to build this myself!
Regards

Rob

You're right of course to distinguish between a 'shed' and a 'workshop'. One is a draughty building often made from low grade sawn timber which - if you stand inside in daylight - you'll see light entering through knotholes. The framework will be from narrow section timber, perhaps no more than 1" x 2" at perhaps 2ft or more centres. The roof will probably be chipboard or OBS board, and the roof will be covered with garden shed felt - not heavy duty mineral felt. The floor will be thin and on battens rather than joists, and the timber won't have been treated with preservative. There's a market for such buildings of course, in which to store a few garden tools, lawnmower, fishing tackle etc, but they're not meant to be habitable buildings, and often have pent roofs rather than pitched roofs to save on timber.

£1,000 sounds about the going rate for a 'workshop', which are often used for home/office puposes too, though you could do it for a lot less than that yourself Rob. To build the framework from 3 x 2 CLS timber is really quite cheap - not morre than £100 I'd think. CLS timber is one thing that is still quite cheap at B&Q, unlike a lot of their stuff. You can select it yourself so you pick nice straight lengths with few knots. I think my framework is at 16" centres, held together with 4" screws, so the framework is robust. Really, it's the shiplap that costs the money and I haggled with a local timber merchant and got 35% discount for that. The felt roof tiles came from Wickes, the 22mm flooring grade chipboard (which is treated during manufacture so that it doesn't absorb moisture or start wearing when you walk on it) was from B&Q. I made the roof from T&G boarding, which you can sometimes by reclaimed. The fibreglass insulation and tarred paper was cheap, and so were the 8 x 4 sheets of 6mm MDF. The door I made myself from rough timber which I planed with an electric planer, but you can buy secondhand doors from reclamation merchants by the score as so many people have had them replaced by UPVC.

I dug a trench to lay armoured cable in ducting from a dedicated RCB on the main consumer unit in the house, and ran a gas supply from the house in a duct in the trench. There are laws that say you aren't allowed to do these things yourself of course, but with 40 years at BG, it's not keeping me awake at night, and is all done to the proper standards. Everywhere I look I see evidence of clueless people who have strung a length of mains cable (probably lighting cable at that) from their house to their garden sheds.

For those who fidget about what the town hall ‘jobsworths’ might or might not permit, though you don’t generally need planning permission for a garden shed, which are considered ‘permitted developments’ there are limitations and these are set out at the government’s ‘planning portal’. As my workshop is 3M high and 1 M from the boundary between me and my neighbour, it would need planning permission under current rules, but as it’s been up for almost ten years with no complaints, the score is: Planners NIL, Yorkie 1. It irritates me beyond measure that they claim to be relaxing planning rules and cutting out red tape, but manage to do it in such a way as to make life more difficult.

What the rules say are:

Outbuildings are considered to be permitted development, not needing planning permission, subject to the following limits and conditions:
• No outbuilding on land forward of a wall forming the principal elevation.
• Outbuildings and garages to be single storey with maximum eaves height of 2.5 metres and maximum overall height of four metres with a dual pitched roof or three metres for any other roof.
• Maximum height of 2.5 metres in the case of a building, enclosure or container within two metres of a boundary of the curtilage of the dwellinghouse.
• No verandas, balconies or raised platforms.
• No more than half the area of land around the "original house"* would be covered by additions or other buildings.

See: http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/permiss...buildings/

'No verandas or raised platforms' Why not?

Cheeky beggars!

David