Insulated garden offices are becoming a very popular way to add extra living space, a space that you can work from all year round.
Built using the same materials and building techniques used in modern house building. Garden office designers aim to meet or even exceed the insulation targets set out for new houses, meaning that their buildings perform well, thermally speaking.
There are so many different types of insulated garden offices, and it can be difficult to compare the offerings from one supplier with those of another. A common misconception is that the thickness of the insulation offered is a good unit of comparison, but this isn’t so as some thinner sections of insulation outperform a thick layer of another type of insulation.
The way to compare insulation is by noting its u-value, this is the unit of measurement for the speed that heat passes through a material. Quality garden offices are made up of several layers of material, and all these materials combine to make up the u-vale of the section, whether thats the wall, floor or roof.
Many garden office suppliers publish the u-value of their buildings in the specification section of their website or brochure and you can use this to compare one building with another. If the figure isn’t published ask the supplier what their u-values are. When comparing u-value figures bear in mind that the lower the figure quoted the better performing the building, and in the long run the more comfortable the room will be on the hottest and coldest days of the year and the lower your energy bills will be!
High levels of insulation need to be paired with double glazing, it makes no sense to have a highly insulated framework and let all the heat escape through the doors and windows. Most garden offices come with double glazing as standard, but there are a few cheaper models which only have single glazed windows.
We talk about garden office insulation in greater detail in the Designing section of this website.