Electrical spec for garden office installation
Below is an extract from current building regulations explaining that it complies for you to employ a local electrician to do the final connections and the part p certification on the whole garden studio installation.
Many of our customers use Rob Booth (Alex twin brother) for all of this work as it's simpler.
Rob charges £960 including VAT up to 40m for mains connection and this includes part p certification. This assumes that no trenching is required.
If trenching is required then a full quotation would be required. You can email photos of the "journey" from your house fusebox to your studio site with measurements and Rob should be able to give you an accurate quote.
Many electricians are not allowed to issue part p certificates since they need to do a course (which costs almost £4000 and then there is an annual fee of about £700) - so make sure your electrian is qualified to do this aspect. If your electrician can't issue part p certificates, Rob charges £400 to issue a part p certificate on your electricians work.
(Please note that having 2 rcds in line is not advisable due to nuisance tripping. Sockets need to be inspected and cables tightened and an insulation test on the whole studio - a pre energised test and an energised test. This should take about an hour on most garden studios.)...
Rob also charges £540 for getting the internet to your garden studio. He does this with an independent cable so it is more reliable than say, a TP Link.
The chart below details the thickness of armoured cable required. It's helpful to show your electrician this chart...(revised Jan 2015)
Alex and I discuss the garden office consumer unit (fusebox) in this video...
Alex and I discuss how the armoured mains cable attaches to your garden office here...
Iain discusses a "Fused Spur" socket in this video...
AIR CONDITIONER SPEC...
This is the specification of the air conditioning unit (max room size 16-30 sqm or max 15 sqm for conservatory. We install this AC in 95% of cases and its a fantastic unit, "A" rated for efficiency, but some larger garden studios may need the more powerful AC spec which is also listed below)...
This is the larger air conditioner spec - 24 - 45sqm room or 25 sqm conservatory...
The air conditiong is "A" rated with a heat output of 3.5kW and actually produces roughly 4Kw of power for every 1Kw of energy used. This is far more eficient that a normal electric fire where 1Kw of power only gives you 1Kw of heat...
The large air conditioner has a heat output of 5.8kW...
Iain here.
In the video below, I explain how to work out if your garden studio windows are north facing. If they are north facing, you probably won't need the cooling aspect of an air conditioner in your garden office...