TG Escapes Blog

Beat the weather with energy efficient Garden Rooms

by TG Escapes | Oct 17, 2014 | Blog, Residential

After our great summer, which culminated in a wonderful September (the driest on record), autumn seems to have arrived with rather a jolt. As the nights grow longer than the days in the Northern Hemisphere, the temperature contrast between the Equator and the North Pole increases; the Jet stream speeds up and the weather becomes unsettled. No kidding, right?

Early this week, the first of the autumn storms struck in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and northern England resulting in school closures, power failures and difficult traveling conditions. Then it was the turn of the South and the East of the country with the Met office issuing numerous yellow warnings from Cornwall to East Anglia. The combination of heavy rain and high winds, exacerbated by the trees’ sudden and voluminous shedding of leaves, inevitably lead to unpleasant driving conditions and delays on the rail network. And as if that’s not enough to strike dread into every commuter’s heart, the clocks are about to change in less than two weeks’ time meaning that most of us will be leaving for and returning from work in the dark.

Perhaps it’s time to think about spending a few more days working from home? One of the original motivators of The Garden Escape's founders, was to design contemporary garden offices, built from sustainable materials, to encourage working from home thus avoiding the wasted hours and energy inherent in a daily commute and improving the quality of life. They also knew that the space in which you work has a significant impact upon how you work. A garden shed is unlikely to get you springing out of bed on a blustery autumnal morning! On the other hand, a stylish and elegant building, bathed in natural light from huge windows and sun pipes, is likely to prove a much more alluring and inspiring prospect.

Conservation of fuel and power is a fundamental design element of our buildings, including the high insulation values of every product used such as our double glazed, Low-E glass. Intelligent, site specific design will ensure maximum penetration of natural light into your workspace but when the sun’s not up to the job we have a range of energy efficient lighting to choose from (including smart controls) to ensure you have perfect lighting whatever the weather or time of day. Likewise, we offer a choice of low energy heating options, including an ingenious air-source heat pump (which doubles up as an air conditioning unit on hot days) which extracts heat from the atmosphere, rather like a fridge in reverse.

So you can sit in perfect comfort, watching the storms rage and use those extra minutes, or possibly hours, not spent in traffic jams or spent on wind and rain swept platforms to catch up on that backlog of emails.

About the author

TG Escapes
Providing net-zero timber frame buildings since 2003. As a gold member of the Structural Timber Association we are fully compliant to design, manufacture and build giving us full control of the quality of all the timber components in our system.

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