There are tons of reasons that could put you off buying a garden room. Just like there’s hundreds of reasons that would convince you not to take a flight.
Having to pack your things into a 10kg carry-on case, being screamed at to take your shoes off at security, and the noise of the scary airplane flush are enough to deter you altogether.
I can easily see why so many people are sceptical about buying a garden room.
You don’t want random people in and out of your home for weeks on end, you don’t want to spend your summer holiday budget before the season has even started, and you definitely don’t want to get into a dispute with your local council over the height of your building.
I get it. But these horror stories shouldn’t stand in the way of you and your new favourite spot in your home.
There are ways that you can avoid all of these worst cases.
Just like you can avoid airport stresses by packing light, wearing slip-on shoes and holding it until you’re off the plane.
Enough chat about the airport — back to the garden rooms.
Let’s get into how you can avoid hidden costs, unwanted disruption, planning permission stresses and unreliability and secure the garden room of your dreams with minimal anxiety and bother (I promise!).
Worry 1: Hidden Costs
You see a price online, you’re drawn in, you plan your project. Then it’s time to pay your bill and the price has magically doubled. You feel too awkward to back out, and it would be inconvenient to go somewhere else, so you reluctantly go through with it. Then you resent your garden room until the end of time because you paid double what you originally wanted to.
Don’t let this be you.
How to avoid hidden costs
What’s included
When you first inquire about a garden room, get clarification on what’s included in the price and what’s not.
You might need to email, phone, or visit your garden room supplier in person to get this information if detailed pricing isn’t available online.
This stops you from being in the position where you’ve assumed something is included, but find out deeper into the project that it’s not. There are elements that you might assume are included but aren’t always: delivery, installation, VAT, the base, electrics, flooring, guttering and painting.
Once you get your final quote for the garden room make sure it’s fully itemised. Go through it and check that everything you expected is there.
Deposits
Avoid putting down any deposits, unless it’s a fully refundable holding deposit, before getting your full garden room quote and any additional quotes for landscaping or electrical installation. This way you can walk away if quotes are much more than you expected, and you won’t lose any money.
Inclusive Pricing
Be mindful of inclusive garden room pricing that covers groundwork and electrics. If your site has tricky access or is badly out of level, there could be additional charges for your base or electrics because your site is not the norm they’ve priced for.
Double check with your garden room supplier that there either won’t be any additional charges for your site, or that they’ll do a site visit to quote for the additional charges before you go ahead.
External Electrics
An internal electrical package is often included in the price of a garden room. If this is the case, clarify whether external electrics are included or not.
External electric installation involves running the armoured cable from your power source to the garden room. The easiest way to handle this, if the armoured cable is going into the ground, is to have your groundworks team dig the trench, so you’re not paying electricians’ rates for them to dig the trench.
Getting clear on whether external electrics are covered by your garden room supplier or if you’ll have to arrange it yourself means you can budget for it from the outset.
How we avoid hidden costs at G&M
At Gillies & Mackay transparent pricing is something that we’re very passionate about and pride ourselves on.
Our Garden Room prices include the building itself and the cost of delivery (within 40 miles of Errol) assembly and VAT, whereas flooring and guttering are additional extras. We publish detailed pricing information on our website.
Groundwork and electrical installation (internal and external) is part of our project management service. We arrange a Site Visit from our accredited trades so they can provide you with a full quote for each. Groundwork and electric quotes reflect your actual site and preferences so won’t change after you pay a deposit.
You’ll have a fully itemised quote for your Garden Room plus quotes for groundwork and electrics before you pay your initial deposit and get your delivery date. This way you know exactly how much everything is going to cost before you commit.
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Worry 2: Disruption
You don’t want the process of buying a garden room to take over your entire life or your home. Life is busy enough without getting stuck in a never-ending project that takes up all your time and energy.
But a garden room project doesn’t NEED to hinder your entire life, and it shouldn’t, so here’s what to do.
How to avoid disruption
Lead Times
When you first inquire about a garden room ask what the current lead time is, so you have an idea of when your garden room will be installed. A holding deposit allows you to secure a delivery date whilst you’re waiting on various quotes or planning permission to come through. Just make sure the holding deposit is fully refundable.
This means lead times won’t run-on whilst you’re in the planning stage, and is an especially good idea during peak times like summer, so you don’t have to wait 6 months for your garden room.
Important Dates
Once your delivery date is set, you need exact dates for groundwork, landscaping and electrics. Having these dates set in stone means you know when to expect people in your home and exactly when work is starting and finishing.
Double check which dates or times you need to be at your property for and when you can leave them to it, so you can carry on as normal for the most part.
Expectations
If you’re apprehensive about workers being at your home, talk to your garden room supplier about what the expectations are. Does the team need access to your driveway, bathroom, or a power source? This way you know exactly what to expect from the experience and can prepare, so the process is as seamless as possible.
Comprehensive Service
Buying a garden room from a company that offers a comprehensive service or project management service reduces the amount of time you need to spend on the project. In this case your supplier takes care of things like landscaping, electrical installation, site visits and sometimes even planning permission so that you don’t have to.
How we avoid disruption at G&M
Our Radiata Garden Rooms are small and light enough that they can go on a slabbed base instead of needing a full concrete plinth. A slabbed base can be installed fairly easily and doesn’t require as much digging or equipment as a concrete base.
These slabbed bases usually only take two days to install and one day to set. This means there’s minimal disruption to your garden, minimal mess, and a quick turnaround.
We arrange for groundwork and electricity to be installed, and liaise with our accredited trades to set up site visits and installation dates, so you don’t have to chase any third parties.
Our delivery timelines are meticulously planned months in advance by Cara and Kieran. When you pay your deposit for your Garden Room you’ll be set up with the following dates:
- Groundwork dates
- Delivery dates
- Electricity installation dates
- Lining and insulating dates
This is communicated to you on several occasions so you’re clear on important dates and you’re never left wondering when things are going to start or finish.
Between groundworks, the garden room installation, and electricity installation, our Garden Rooms are complete with a quick turnaround. This means there’s minimal disruption to your home and life.
Here’s what a typical Radiata delivery timeline looks like:
Groundworks (carried out ahead of your delivery date)
Day 1 & 2: Slabbed base laid. Trench dug for armoured cable if needed.
Day 3: Slabbed base set and signed off.
Delivery, Assembly & Electrics (your delivery week)
Day 1: Our delivery team assembles the garden room. They assemble the walls, floor, roof, windows and doors.
Day 2: First fit of electrics. The electrician installs the armoured cable.
Day 3 & 4: Our finishing team lines, insulates and fits the laminate flooring.
Day 5: Final fit of electrics. Electricians fit switches, sockets and light fittings.
We have a detailed blog post that breaks down everything you should expect from your delivery, so you know exactly what we need from you, and how things are going to happen.
This blog post is emailed to every customer in the run up to delivery, but if you’re curious, you can have a read here: What to expect on your G&M delivery day
Worry 3: Planning Permission
Planning permission is the one thing everyone wants to avoid at all costs. Dealing with the council tends to be a long, laborious process no matter what, so it’s no wonder that planning permission is a big turn-off when it comes to buying a garden room.
You might even be worried that planning permission is going to stand in the way of your garden room dreams entirely.
But there are actually plenty of things you can do to dull the pain of planning permission, that’s if you even need it at all, which a lot of garden rooms don’t.
How to handle planning permission
Permitted Development
In Scotland, we’re lucky because the majority of garden rooms fall under permitted development rules. Permitted development is basically a set of criteria which mean you can put a garden room up without obtaining planning permission at all, as long as your planned structure meets these requirements.
Permitted development exists so that every little building someone wants to put up in their garden doesn’t need to be approved by the council — can you imagine the wait times without it?
Planning Permission Checklist
You don’t have to become a planning wizard with decades of experience to figure out if your garden room is permitted development friendly. All you need to do is use our trusty Planning Permission Checklist.
Go through each question, answering yes or no. If you get to the end without answering yes to any of the criteria, your garden room is unlikely to need planning permission, you can pass go, you can collect £200. But if you answer yes to one or more of the questions, your garden room probably does need planning permission.
Don’t panic yet. Let me talk you through what you can do next if your project does need planning permission. There’s two main ways to do things.
Preparing the application yourself
If you’re feeling up to the challenge you can submit a planning application yourself. Here’s a simplified version of what you need to do:
- Make a New Proposal on the ePlanning Scotland website
- Fill in relevant forms (you can fill out a questionnaire here to find out which forms you need)
- Attach location plans and supporting documents such as site and building drawings
- Use the fee calculator to find out your application fee
- Submit your Proposal via the ePlanning Scotland website
For more detailed information on submitting a planning application read ePlanning Scotland’s User Guide (fair warning; it’s 50 pages.)
Once you’ve submitted your proposal you’ll have to wait around 6 to 12 weeks to hear back from your local authority about whether your application has been approved.
Garden room planning applications are rarely refused in Scotland, however, some reasons for refusal can include things like being in a very strict conservation area, threatening root protection orders and having a negative impact on neighbours and the surroundings.
Have your garden room supplier submit the application
The other option is to have your garden room supplier submit the application on your behalf. This is a service that a lot of garden room companies offer, and it saves you the fuss of doing it yourself. Instead the job is handed over to someone who’s probably done it a hundred times.
When buying a garden room that needs planning permission, make sure that any deposits you put down are fully refundable up until your application has been approved. This way you won’t lose out, in the unlikely case that planning is rejected, giving you security and peace of mind.
How we handle planning permission at G&M
At G&M, we offer a planning permission service for a fee of £696.
With our planning permission service, our founding director Grant will prepare and submit the application on your behalf. Grant is a planning wizard, who has drawn up and submitted hundreds of applications over the years, so you’re in safe hands.
In the unlikely event that your application is initially rejected, hope is not lost.
We recently had a planning application rejected for a Workshop we were putting up in a conservation area. This didn’t mean the customer couldn’t have their building though. Grant, Kieran and Cara went back and forth with the planning officer to come to a compromise over the building’s design and materials so it could go ahead.
If your Garden Room does need planning permission we give you a delivery date at least 12 weeks away, with the assumption that the planning application will go through and be accepted in that time.
To hold this delivery date you’ll pay a standard 30% deposit. In the unfortunate circumstances that the planning permission application gets rejected and the project cannot go ahead (which is extremely rare) you’ll get your 30% deposit back, and only be down the £696 fee.
Worry 4: Unreliability
There’s thousands of garden room companies out there. It’s overwhelming and everything happens online so it’s hard to know who to choose and what you’re actually getting.
This is a difficult one because you’re never going to know for sure whether a garden room company is reliable until you’re actually dealing with them, but I do have some green flags that you should look for.
How to avoid unreliability
Reviews
You can get an idea of how reliable a business is by looking at their reviews. Do they stick to dates and timelines, do their garden rooms hold up over time, do they rectify any issues?
Reviews don’t tell you everything, but they can be a good place to start when trying to choose a garden room company that you can trust.
Longevity
Once you’ve got a feel for their reputation, it’s worth digging into the history of the company. Looking for a longstanding company is also a way you can stack the odds in your favour.
I’m definitely not saying that newer companies aren’t reliable, but with a company that’s been operating for over a decade you have more evidence of their work and practices to base your decision on.
See for yourself
Don’t just make up your mind based on other people’s opinions though. If you can visit your garden room supplier in person this will give you a feel for the company and for the garden room itself.
Seeing the garden room in person will give you a better idea of quality and how it will look compared to looking at a photo online, and meeting with your supplier in person will give you an impression about whether they seem reliable or not. Trust your gut on this one.
Guarantees
Once you’ve found a company that feels like the right fit, check what’s actually backing up your purchase. A garden room that comes with a comprehensive guarantee will give you some peace of mind that if anything goes wrong, you’re covered.
Always check the terms and conditions when it comes to guarantees because some can be misleading marketing tools rather than a genuine guarantee. It’s always best to check what your guarantee covers, how long you’re covered for, and if there are any maintenance requirements that come with it.
Aftercare
Hand in hand with the guarantee is aftercare advice. A garden room company that gives you instructions on how to look after the building after installation is a good sign that they care about longevity, and are invested in how the structure holds up beyond their involvement.
How we ensure reliability at G&M
We’ve been in business for nearly 40 years so we definitely have the longstanding thing down.
We’re also a family business that spans three generations (I’m Gen III). It’s very important to every team member to carry on the impeccable reputation — if I do say so myself — that founders Grant and John worked so hard to build.
Gillies & Mackay has a 4.9 star rating on Google. Though, we’ve been making customers happy since well before Google Reviews were a thing.
We are dedicated to doing the right thing for our customers and being there for them well after the buying stage. The experience we’ve gained over the decades and our dedication to our customers is why we offer a 30-Year Guarantee on each of our Radiata Garden Rooms.
Our guarantee covers defects in both workmanship and materials. If anything goes wrong with your garden room you know that we’ll be out as quickly as possible to rectify the issue.
The 30-year guarantee hopefully gives you peace of mind that your building is built to last, but also gives you a safety net in the unlikely situation that anything does need to be fixed.
We work with the same accredited trades on our Garden Room projects week in and week out so they know exactly how to work with our buildings, and work to our G&M Standard. This means you always get a service that you can rely on.
On top of our 30-year guarantee is very detailed advice on how to look after your garden room. Every customer gets sent our Aftercare Guide via email and a physical copy in the post, to cover all bases.
And if you ever have any questions about garden room care, we’re only a phone call or an email away.
What should you avoid when buying a garden room?
Don’t let all the things that could go wrong stop you from getting on that plane. Don’t let your dream garden room become a distant memory. Take the first step. Squash your anxieties with action — and a bit of education from this helpful blog post.
Buying a garden room doesn’t need to be a stressful, never ending process. Now that you know how to sidestep hidden costs, disruption, planning stresses, and unreliability, there’s nothing standing between you and your new space.
You can take control and have a seamless, enjoyable experience, and of course the best bit, secure a garden room that you can enjoy for years to come at the end of it.
For more advice on buying a garden room, check out our Radiata Buyers’ Guide. It’s full of more brilliant tips like the ones in this blog post.
