Setting Up Your Garden Shed Office
A garden shed office sounds a bit grim, we like the phrase ‘garden office building’. But at the end of the day if you have decided to work in your garden shed office, you want it to be as good as working in any other office. Here are some tips to get you started.Mains electricity is a must have: a qualified electrician will be able to bury the necessary cable, feed into your shed and provide a small consumer unit in the shed itself, similar to what you would have in a caravan for example. I would suggest that socket boards with at least 4 outlets are used wherever possible, as the modern business usually requires multiple mains connections to computers, printers, phones etc.Having the Internet in your office is essential for most businesses these days. Most families will have one ADSL modem/router in the main home, which you may want to hook into. You can either do this with a wired or wireless connection. My preference is always a wired Ethernet connection between the home router and a wireless/wired router in the office. The cable can be a normal CAT-5 Ethernet cable, but I would suggest the superior CAT-6 cable which is more durable and less likely to lose signal strength over distance. Having this cable connecting to a wireless router means that you can run multiple computers from it in the office and also have the ‘shed office’ wireless network, for use with laptops and smartphones. The alternative is to have a dedicated phone line for the garden shed office and have a second modem/router in the shed. If you are going to rely only on wireless, try and chose the hardware which uses the 802.11n protocol. 802.11n is vastly superior to the older 802.11g and 802.11b protocols.For the phone, you can either run and extension out from the house, have a dedicated phone line, or use a wireless phone. If you chose the latter option, the DECT technology works best. You may also like to look into various options provided by internet providers which give VOIP (Voice Over IP) phone calls, which are invariably free.If you use a FAX machine, you will either need a phone line or chose one of the internet to FAX services, such as eFax.Most importantly you will need a nice comfy office chair and a good quality desk, just because you are working in the shed doesn’t mean you have to miss out on comfort! Your neck and spine will thank you for it in future years too.
