So you’ve decided you want to build a garden room in your backyard since:

• It’s less intrusive than a home renovation

• Your property value will increase

• You’ve completed step 1 and created the design concept for your first garden room

With the conceptual design complete, we’re faced with the next decision:

Determining Your Garden Room Location

Not all backyards are created equal. Some are long and thin, others short and stubby. If you’re in a rural setting, the borders of your yard may feel like a foreign concept.

The closer your borders are, the less options you’ll have for the placement of your garden room. Even still, there are several useful frameworks we can implement to determine the optimal location and orientation of your garden room.

Sun Path

Let’s start by thinking about when you’ll be using the space and how you want to interact with light at that time.

Say you’re a writer or an artist and do your best work in the morning. Strategically positioning your garden room and its windows to take advantage of the morning sun would add natural light to your experience.

Alternatively, you might like to use it as an evening retreat. In that case, identifying where the sun sets in relation to your backyard will help you find the best location to observe the evening colours.

Building Body Language

We all know what it feels like to approach someone with their back turned. You don’t feel welcomed. We even have a name for this: giving the “cold shoulder”.

Is there a view in your backyard that we want to give the cold shoulder to?

Contrastingly, is there a view or area that we want to welcome with open arms?

This may seem abstract, so let me give you an example from one of my previous clients, Jeff.

Jeff’s backyard had an existing plastic shed that was boring, ugly, and took away from the experience we wanted to create when entering his office.

We decided that his new office didn’t want to be friends with this shed, and so we gave it the cold shoulder with an opaque wall and wraparound overhang.

The patio however, we liked.

So we gave the building a front facade that could completely open up to the patio and welcome its guests.

What views do you want to celebrate with your garden room?

Proximity to Connections

If you decided you’ll be needing a constant electrical supply from your house, you’re going to either have to connect with an extension cord or a cable from your main electrical panel.

An extension cord will be able to power lights and your laptop, but adding additional loads such as a heater risks blowing a fuse.

Connecting to your house’s electrical panel allows you much more flexibility, allowing for heat pumps, mini fridges, microwaves, etc.

In any case, recognize that a connection will need to be made and that you’ll need to do it in a code-compliant way. For home panel connections, that means running the cable in an armoured pipe along your house and/or digging a trench at least 18” deep for spans along the ground.

What’s Below

Especially in urban environments, your green grass gives a false idea of what lurks below; it’s not just dirt.

You might also find:

• Sewage pipes

• Water pipes

• Natural gas lines

• Fiber optic cable

• Roots

• Rocks

• Treasure (please share some if you do)

Hitting all but one of those while creating your foundation is an unfortunate occurrence. Luckily, you can avoid the first four by contacting your local call before you dig.

You tell them where you plan on digging, they’ll tell you whether or not that’s a good idea.

As for roots, you can minimize the chances of hitting them by not building right next to a tree. If you come across buried rocks, your only solutions are breaking them through brute force or digging them out. On the bright side, both result in a crazy workout.

Example: An Urban Backyard Office

With these frameworks in mind, I’ll now continue an example that I started in step 1: You’re a writer looking to create a backyard office in a city.

Sun Path

You’ll be using the office from 9-5 and like to do your creative work in the morning and managerial work in the afternoon. You like the idea of having natural light across your desk as you write, so you decide to optimize for morning light.

The sun rises in the East, but there’s a large tree on your eastern border that you’ll need to be conscious of as you don’t want it blocking your light.

Building Body Language

You’ve got plain fences that surround the perimeter of your backyard that you’d rather not look at. Instead, you’d prefer that your office opens up to the rest of your backyard.

Additionally, you know that the main entrance to your backyard is through the West side yard. As you approach from that angle, you want the office to greet you with a window.

Proximity to Connections

Your office will require a mini split since you’ve decided you want to use it year round. Knowing this, you opt for a connection to your house’s main panel which is located in the basement on the West wall.

You decide to run the cable to your house’s exterior, then trench it the rest of the way.

What’s Below

After determining your desired location using the above frameworks, you contacted your local call before you dig and get the green light to start building.

Begin Building ⬇️