There are a few options to consider when deciding how to power the electricity in your garden office. You may choose to connect it to your home’s power, run separate lines so it can have its own power, install solar panels, or use a wind turbine. Each method comes with it’s own pros and cons, as well as costs associated with their install. Read below to find out more about each way of allowing power in your garden office.
When running power to your garden office it is usually required to have a building inspector to look at the work to make sure it is within housing codes. This is required by most city governments and is also needed when getting insurance on the building.
You can gain power by having an electrician wire the garden office into your home’s electricity. This is probably the most cost effective method to gain power in your workstation. The only downsides to this is paying the higher power bill and, if this is a business that you are running, you will need to distinguish between the power your house used as opposed to the power your garden office used.
If you own a home business, running separate power to your garden office may be a better option than attaching your garden office to your house because you will get a separate bill. Funds from your business can be used to pay the power bill for the garden office. This is an expense that can be included when tax season arrives, so it is important to keep it separate from your other household bills. The same would work for a water bill, if you had a bathroom installed in the office.
This inexpensive solar-powered lighting kit uses a 12 Watt solar panel to charge a 12V rechargeable battery. The kit comes with a 4 Amp charge controller, which provides overcharge and discharge protection. The kit comes with 2x 1.2 Watt 12V DC LED lights that plug straight into the battery unit. You are also provided with a 3V and 6V output switch adaptor for other low voltage devices.
This is an affordable and simple power system for your garden office. This kit is ideal where you only need a small amount of extra light since you typically do your work during the day.
This lighting kit is available to buy at Maplin.co.uk.
Solar power is a good alternative to using power from a power company. Solar power costs more to setup, but it will make your garden office environmentally friendly and you will never have a power bill. You will need to place solar panels on the roof and a battery in your office to hold the power that the panels capture. The battery will power your office whether its sunny outside or not. Be sure to select a large enough battery that will hold enough power to keep your things working throughout the night.
When setting up your garden office for solar power, you want to consider the surface of your roof and how many electrical items you want to use in your office, such as a refrigerator, air conditioner and anything else that requires power. You will also want to figure up how much sunlight reaches your roof during the day. Using this information will help you determine if you can use solar panels to power your garden office.
Wind power is another environmentally sound choice to power your garden office, but it will cost more than the solar power alternative. Also think that the sun shines more often then the wind blows. Using a Wind turbine would work well if you live in the plains or in a very flat area where there’s a lot of wind. Again you will have determine whether this type of setup will work for you like you would with choosing solar power. It works the same way, you have a battery that stores the energy from the wind to run your electrical items inside the office.
