About to drop £££ on a garden office, what mistakes to avoid?

[Buddy Bradley]

Run a network cable back to the wall nearest your router and drill it through the wall, you’ll need a sparky for the electrics in the outside room, get them to put a network port on the wall next to your router then you just cable that to your router and plug the end in your posh shed into your laptop

Not sure that's going to work, the nearest wall to the router is the front wall of the house, while the garden is at the back. How are the network ports connected, trunking all the way around the entire house?

 

[WouldBe]

if you run water to it i want to know about that process please! (new pipes across a garden).

Plastic pipe buried at least 2' 6" deep. Where the pipe comes up into the house / shed it needs to be covered in thick pipe insulation.

 

[WouldBe]

and a pisspot?

Or use the kettle. Just wash it out thoroughly before re-using it.

 

[Athos]

Get an a/c and heating unit that you can have iot control over, so the temp is good all year round.

 

[bimble]

Plastic pipe buried at least 2' 6" deep. Where the pipe comes up into the house / shed it needs to be covered in thick pipe insulation.

is that the law?

 

[WouldBe]

is that the law?

The depth buried is (or was) for mains water coming into your house, to stop it freezing in cold weather.

If you can fasten it to something solid like a wall you maybe able to get away with fastening it to the wall and cover with thick pipe insulation. It would be a good idea to put a stop tap in the house so you can turn off the water when not in use.

 

[alex_]

Not sure that's going to work, the nearest wall to the router is the front wall of the house, while the garden is at the back. How are the network ports connected, trunking all the way around the entire house?

You can just bury an armoured cable in a shallow trench, run it along a fence or anything. It doesn’t need a duct.

 

[dessiato]

A friend of mine bought basic summer house, very thoroughly insulated walls, floor and roof. He says it's ideal for him. He uses it for photo printing and processing. Because it's very well insulated he can use it year round with few problems related to temperature. He has it fitted with everything he needs, including bed, and the place is warm enough to sleep in during winter, if he wished to.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Might be ATOMIC SUPLEX judging by a search for relevant terms.

Indeed I do. I now work there all the time.
It's fab.
I can't tell you much about what to avoid, because I think I made the best possible choice.
I got one that didn't need concrete laid but got it laid anyway to be safe.

I would really struggle with working from home without it.
Mine is a Booths Garden Office. The aftercare has bonkers brilliant.
I believe they are a lot more expensive now though, and there is a bit of waiting list since the pandemic.

A very positive experience indeed.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Not sure that's going to work, the nearest wall to the router is the front wall of the house, while the garden is at the back. How are the network ports connected, trunking all the way around the entire house?

The guys that did mine did all the electrics and connected them to the house down armoured underground cable. I have a wifi booster by the router that sends the signal down the electric cable to a another wifi thing in the office that picks it up (Booths that installed the office just gave me these for free) which acts as a new wifi hub and also plugs straight into my mac.

I lose less than 10mbsp on the journey to the office.

 

[keybored]

Yeah, I am concerned about that - I've used powerline units in the house before, and they work 99% of the time but that 1% is super annoying. I don't really know what the logistics are of extending the ethernet though, since our router is right at the far end of the house from the back garden where the office would be - do I just need like a 40m cat5 cable and drill holes through all the walls in between, or is there a more sensible way of doing it?

Pretty much, but I'd guess you're going to be using an electrician to run power to the building and if so you might as well ask if they'll install a Cat5 at the same time. Even if they only run the Cat5 to the consumer unit or wherever in the house they are picking the power up from, you could try the powerline adapters and if they are no good you could then worry about extending the Cat5 internally to your router. Rather than end up having to re-dig a trench or whatever to run all the way to the building.

Depending how the power to the building is installed (and with the distance) I'd say the powerline solution could only be slower and less reliable than it would be when used in the house.

Hard to say if there's a better way of running it without seeing your house but I did a similar one recently (router at front of house, home office in annex at back) by popping the Cat5 through the external wall, clipped externally up to the soffit and into the loft, through the loft then back outside and down the back wall, then into the office.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

I lose less than 10mbsp on the journey to the office.

That would be a travesty at my mother’s her speeds are that bad lol.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Mine is a Booths Garden Office. The aftercare has bonkers brilliant.

That's who I was looking at - we went to have a look round their showroom yesterday, but the guy spent most of the time reminiscing about growing up in the same town as my wife.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Pretty much, but I'd guess you're going to be using an electrician to run power to the building and if so you might as well ask if they'll install a Cat5 at the same time. Even if they only run the Cat5 to the consumer unit or wherever in the house they are picking the power up from, you could try the powerline adapters and if they are no good you could then worry about extending the Cat5 internally to your router.

That's a good idea, thanks.

 

[High Voltage]

Assuming you're having power to your office, you can get broad band signal sent down the power line - it sounds like magic but it really works

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

That's who I was looking at - we went to have a look round their showroom yesterday, but the guy spent most of the time reminiscing about growing up in the same town as my wife.

[gush]

They have stepped up their operation a lot since I got my thing but golly, everything about my experience with them was great.
I spoke to Booth a bit on the phone before anything was sorted, he sent email updates all the time and would write to see how I was doing. It was his own brother that handled the electrics and internet.
For years after I got stuff like mugs and a fancy pen in the post from them (for no reason). They send me some graphite powder for lock lubricant. They remembered that I had asked about shelving, so years later when they found something great they sent me an email.
They came and fixed a smashed window during the pandemic, and though it wasn't a standard size that they deal with (there are new designs now) and they had to get especially it made up, they were considerably cheaper (including free fitting) than getting my local glazer to do it.

As mentioned, I got the concrete floor done in advance. This wasn't needed, however it didn't cost much and meant they could put the whole thing up in less than a day.
Don't forget that you can always flog it on if you have to move house and the buyers don't want to pay for it. Booth will take it down, deliver it and rebuild it for a reasonable fee.

I think I was lucky to have gotten in waaaaay before the pandemic, before prices went up and before there was a waiting list.
I have a desk facing the floor to ceiling windows into my garden, and just that alone makes my working experience/ environment so so so much better.

I didn't know how important it was to have my work office detached from the house, but now I seriously don't know what I would do without it.

[/gush]

 

[Buddy Bradley]

If you need to run power to the building you may as well run an external ethernet cable at the same time. It'll be more costly to remedy it later if you find out the powerline units don't work well.

So, this is what happened as I feared it might - the powerline adapter option was just losing so much signal it was basically useless. I have a 50m cat6 cable and a router coming from Amazon today, so assuming that works it looks like I'll be exploring some of the options people suggested up-thread for cabling from the home router out to the garden.

 

[platinumsage]

Did anyone suggest telegraph poles? Because that's much more fun and easier than burying trunking.

 

[alex_]

So, this is what happened as I feared it might - the powerline adapter option was just losing so much signal it was basically useless. I have a 50' cat6 cable and a router coming from Amazon today, so assuming that works it looks like I'll be exploring some of the options people suggested up-thread for cabling from the home router out to the garden.

Long term you won’t regret this, you’ll have much better internet wired in the office than on anything else.

 

[keybored]

I have a 50m cat6 cable and a router coming from Amazon today

I have a bad feeling about this. Big rolls of Cat* cable sold cheaply on Amazon are made of cheap, brittle aluminium wire and aren't up to spec (should be pure copper conductors) and you shouldn't need another router as you already have your router in the house. Don't want to throw a downer on you but I hope you're not wasting your money and time here.

 

[DaveCinzano]

I'm slightly perturbed by the lack of shed porn pics on this thread

 

[magneze]

Wi-Fi extender might be simplest.

I recommended this another thread:
Post in thread 'How to extend a WiFi network'
Help - How to extend a WiFi network

 

[teuchter]

How much do these things cost at the moment then?

 

[Buddy Bradley]

I have a bad feeling about this. Big rolls of Cat* cable sold cheaply on Amazon are made of cheap, brittle aluminium wire and aren't up to spec (should be pure copper conductors) and you shouldn't need another router as you already have your router in the house. Don't want to throw a downer on you but I hope you're not wasting your money and time here.

Using a router means I can have a different network/SSID for the studio rather than just extending the main network out there. Probably doesn't make much difference either way, they're about the same price for a cheap router or a wifi extender.

Fair point about the cable, the one I've got seems to be doing the job though, my DL/UL speeds at the end of 50m are exactly the same as I'm getting indoors.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

If the shed is hooked up to the mains what is wrong with sending it down the power lines with booster plugs at each end?
I know I have mentioned this before so I don't want to bang on about it too much, just wondered why it is rejected as an option. Seems like a no brainier if shed needs power anyway.
Mine is incredibly stable, and cheap enough to be given to me for free by the guy who ran the electrics to my shed.

 

[magneze]

A decent Wi-Fi extender also allows you to have a different SSID for the extended network. I did that for a bit but it was more convenient in the end to have them the same.

 

[High Voltage]

If the shed is hooked up to the mains what is wrong with sending it down the power lines with booster plugs at each end?
I know I have mentioned this before so I don't want to bang on about it too much, just wondered why it is rejected as an option. Seems like a no brainier if shed needs power anyway.
Mine is incredibly stable, and cheap enough to be given to me for free by the guy who ran the electrics to my shed.

This is what Mrs Voltz has - we got her unit from a local computer shop - they told me it either works really simply OR you'll have problems and it won't work (they agreed to refund if it didn't work) - luckily it worked straight out of the box - I installed it and I'm by no means a computer whizz

 

[Buddy Bradley]

If the shed is hooked up to the mains what is wrong with sending it down the power lines with booster plugs at each end?
I know I have mentioned this before so I don't want to bang on about it too much, just wondered why it is rejected as an option. Seems like a no brainier if shed needs power anyway.

That's what was initially planned, and the electrician supplied the TP links for it, but when we tried it it just lost virtually all signal strength. We live in a rural area without super-high-speed fibre, so the best I get in the house is only about 70Mbps, and half that when on the work VPN. Plus we have an extension that is on a different junction, and then the studio is spurred off of that - so when we tried the powerline solution the best we could do was an unreliable 1.5Mbps, which isn't good enough for me to work out there.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

How much do these things cost at the moment then?

Which things, routers/extenders or garden studios? Routers and extenders are about 40-80 quid.

 

[teuchter]

Which things, routers/extenders or garden studios? Routers and extenders are about 40-80 quid.

Garden studios.