Anatomy of a Garden Room
1 Foundations
We use groundscrews where possible. This means we use no concrete which is quick and also good for the environment. It also means we can easily cope with sloping sites.
Often we can include initial landscaping and site clearing as part of our quotation and we often dispose of tired looking sheds!
2 Floors
Our floor uses 150x50mm treated timbers. The floor is underscored with a damp-proof membrane, before being insulated with 75mm foil backed dense (Kingspan style) insulation. Finally topped with moisture resistant 22mm chipboard flooring.
3 Timber Frames
We use an 89x38mm timber stud method to construct our building and the roof timbers are 125x50mm. A waterproof breather membrane is used to stop condensation build up in the walls and make sure the weather is kept out. Walls are pre-made in our Sheffield workshop and delivered with pre-cut cladding for speedy install times.
4 Insulation
Dore Garden Offices are not afraid of shouting about what we hide in our walls, floor and roofs as we use exactly what you need to make your room warm in the winter and cool in the summer. 75mm rigid dense insulation under the floor, in the walls and in the ceiling and then we use insulated plasterboard on the ceiling to help stop the loss of heat upward. Installed expertly, it leaves your room dry, cheap to heat and draught free.
5 Cladding
Our standard cladding is rough-sawn, pressure treated softwood. This has a soft, rustic appearance that easily blends into the garden. Standard cladding can also be painted in a colour of your choice. We also offer cedar or thermowood engineered cladding for those who want their garden room to stand out rather than blend in. We can help you choose the right cladding for your garden and budget.
6 Roof
Our gently sloping roof design is finished in 18mm external OSB board and then covered in a single piece of 1.1mm EPDM rubber. This great material lasts for 20 years, needs no maintenance and is enviro-ready meaning we can lay a green roof on top of it. If you are worried about running down the garden with your laptop or cup of tea in the rain, you may also want to add an extended roof canopy to shelter under while you open the door.
7 Doors & Windows
Predominantly we install Anthracite Grey uPVC but can install any colour to match a house or preference. For the complete inside/out garden experience, aluminium bi-fold doors are a must. Whatever you opt for, security and heat retention are always the priority.
8 Electrics
Just as with our wall finish, our electrics have the feel of a cosy home. 3 double sockets are fitted as standard with all the cabling in the walls. A central 3 spotlight light fitting and light switch is included in our standard price but LED downlights are another option. We undertake all the work and connect the room to your home electrics.
9 Internal Finish
We believe that when you walk into one of our buildings, it’s as if it was another room in your house – this means that it’s beautifully plastered and doesn’t feel like a porta-cabin or pimped shed with badly joined panels, cover strips and gaps around the ceiling. The walls look and feel solid, inset electrics, skirting and clean lines all add to a ‘home from home’ space.
10 Flooring
We use a new type of laminate called SPC which is a compressed limestone base with a ‘foiled’ top. It is incredibly heavy and hard wearing but thin and easy to install and comes in 3 colours. With a sound dampening underlay, we find the flooring excellent – easy to clean, grained for that real wood feel, long lasting and almost impossible to damage. It also hides a little bit of mud walked in from the garden.
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Finishes
We have a range of cladding options for you to choose from.
All lasting 15-20 years with little or no upkeep.
Standard
Cost-effective solution which will last for 15-20 years with minimal maintenance.
DGO are unusual in using a rough-sawn 200mm x 20mm pressure treated softwood as standard. Laid horizontally and overlapped, it has a soft rustic appearance that easily blends into the garden.
It is also a cost-effective solution which will last for 15-20 years with minimal maintenance.
The timber has the same treatment as other garden timbers like sleepers and fence panels which helps it to blend in. It is durable and withstands other garden activities like childrens footballs and pets!
As with all timber it will age gracefully to a grey/silver colour however the treatment does mean it retains a beautiful pale wood colour on most faces for around 10 years.
Standard cladding can also be sanded after application to give a smoother finish
Painted
We have painted our rooms in a variety of colours and it is in an inexpensive way of personalising your building. It can help your room blend in or stand out or enhance a garden design.
Paint finishes obviously need upkeep however we have found that our initial coats are lasting 5/6 years without problems.
Engineered
We supply Western Red Cedar or Thermowood for a contemporary feel. Both these are an engineered, smooth, tongue and groove, vertically mounted board with a hidden fix nail for clean lines and modern look.
Both finished are more expensive than our standard cladding so DGO offer bespoke solutions where only visible faces are treated and then others with our standard or painted cladding. This helps keep costs affordable while getting that contemporary finish.
All timber will be affected by UV and over time the colour will change. With cedar and thermowood we find some customers want to keep the colour and we can apply a UV protection oil at the time of installation. Customers must accept that this is an ongoing annual or at least bi-annual treatment though, otherwise the wood colour will eventually fade.
Cedar
Western red cedar has a fantastic warm brown colour and is very popular. It does not shrink and has very few knots giving it an incredibly clean look.
Cedar has incredible qualities which lend itself to external cladding but it is not often pointed out that cedar is actually quite soft grained and is easily marked.
We always make sure clients know not to lean a bike or spade against a cedar wall for fear of marking it!
Thermowoods
Thermowood is (generally softwood) timber that has been treated with heat hence why it’s also called Heat treated Timber. It is a beautiful, sustainable timber material produced using chemical-free heat treatment.
Due to the heating process breaking down hemicellulose, the wood doesn’t contain the appropriate nutrients to allow rot and fungi to grow and develop – it doesn’t rot!
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Extras
The bespoke nature of our work enables you to pick and mix from our optional extras range to personalise your building if you wish. Here are just a few of the options we can supply but we strive to accommodate any client suggestions and desires:
- Underfloor heating or heat pump/aircon
- Internal LED downlights
- External lighting with motion sensors
- Bi-folding doors
- Ceiling speakers
Extended roof canopy
Useful if you can imagine yourself running down the garden in the rain to escape the noise of the kids with your laptop open, trying to fumble for the keys while talking to an exciting possible new client on the phone…
We design our canopies in 200mm increments with 600mm offering just enough to protect you from the rain while unlocking the room. But any size is possible. Beyond 1.5m you might need supporting posts.
Sedum turf / Living roof
Green Roofs can provide important microclimates for insects, bird life and other even rare species. Green Roofs significantly reduce the surface run off of rainfall and gives an attractive finish to the roof.
Thought has to be given to how much you might see. Sedum roof plants are designed not to grow too high so dependant upon which way the roof will slope, you might decide you would not get enough benefit beyond the sustainable and ecological reasons for having it.
Extra width step / decking
Garden rooms often need a step since you have an insulated floor hovering above the ground. Our price includes for a step across the door however this can be expanded to give extra walkway or space for a table and chairs.
Either standard treated timber or composite decking can help create a ‘natural’ extension to your garden room and make sure access is as perfect as it can be. Whatever the landscape underneath.
Side store with external door
Often Dore Garden Offices are replacing an existing shed with a garden room and the mower still needs somewhere to live. We offer side stores to compliment your building.
Boasting a very secure, powder-coated metal door, a light and socket, our stores can be as big or small as required and have a couple of internal finishes. We can obviously also design internal storage as required.
Toilet / Bathroom
If you want to make sure you don’t need to leave your room, we can install toilets and bathrooms as required.
See our gallery for examples but our standard small toilet room is only 800mm x 1400mm, big enough for a toilet and sink.
A drain survey will be undertaken to check whether we can use a normal gravity or a pumped system.
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