The Building

This is the plot, at the bottom of my garden, bordered by the gardens of four neighbours' houses. The workshop will cover basically the whole area behind the tree, running 500mm from the rear boundary and 1000-1300 mm from the side boundaries. 

This is Jack - a ~300 year old copper beech. It's not protected under a TPO, but I didn't want to damage/risk it, so it's the reason for having to have an unusual foundation type - screw piles. Given the proximity of the tree to the Micro House build, a traditional trench concrete foundation would likely have destroyed 30-40% of the tree roots and potentially killed the tree. It also would've been vulnerable to being moved/cracked by the movement of the tree roots. The same is true of smaller piles - they would've been vulnerable to long-term movement.


In the bottom left of this image is the corner of my existing workshop - this will be demolished once I build the new one, to make way for the house extension.

This is the layout I'm aiming for.  The building is split into two separate sections. The left hand side will be my workshop, with a sink in the corner and worktops along the rear wall - headspace will be low here. The right hand side will likely be used as a gym for now, but has been designed to be big enough for a double bed and a small sofa. Off this room will be a full bathroom, with toilet/sink/shower. The last section in the bottom right will be where my washing machine and tumble dryer will be, for now at least, as they're currently in my existing workshop. Once the house is extended these will be moved inside and this will become a garden store. The only structural elements are the long walls, as well as a pillar in the end walls and the central wall, so the space can be changed in configuration in future.

The building will have four openings: