Garden Office Electrics: What You Actually Need

Power is where garden office plans meet reality. A workspace needs light, a laptop, a monitor or two, and a heater in winter — none of which demands much electricity, but all of which needs getting electricity down the garden safely and legally. There are two routes, and the right one depends on how you'll use the space.

Route one: plug-and-go

Our pods come pre-wired with a 16-amp socket connection. In practice that means the internal sockets, switches and lighting are already installed and tested when your pod arrives — you connect it to power much like a caravan or motorhome hook-up, and you're working the same day.

• What it runs comfortably: lighting, laptops, monitors, Wi-Fi kit, a panel heater — a normal office load, in other words.
• Why it matters legally: because nothing is being hardwired into your house's consumer unit, there's no notifiable electrical work under Part P of the building regulations for basic use. No electrician, no certificates, no waiting.
• The honest limits: if you're planning power-hungry equipment — a kiln, welding gear, a bank of gym machines — a plug-in connection isn't the right tool, and you should price route two.

Route two: hardwired supply

The traditional approach is a dedicated circuit from your house consumer unit, run through steel-wire-armoured (SWA) cable buried down the garden, into a small consumer unit in the garden office.

• When it's right: heavy loads, multiple high-draw appliances, or if you simply prefer a permanent installed supply.
• The rules: this is notifiable work under Part P — it must be done or certified by a registered electrician, who'll also notify building control and issue the certificate you'll want when selling the house.
• What it costs: it varies with distance and ground conditions, but one of our own customers reported paying around £500 to have his pod wired into the house — a fair real-world benchmark to budget against. Trenching a long garden or crossing paving pushes it up.

Questions to ask any supplier

Whoever you buy from, get specific answers to these: Are sockets and lighting included in the base price, or extras? Is the building pre-wired and tested before delivery? Can socket positions be customised? (Ours can — we'll put sockets and hook-up points exactly where you want them, inside and out.) And if the answer is "you'll need your electrician to fit it all out" — add that cost to the price you're comparing.

Our approach

Both the Garden Office Pod and Garden Office Room arrive pre-wired with the 16-amp plug-and-go setup as standard, with custom socket placement included. Most customers plug in and start working; those who want a permanent supply have their electrician make the final connection. Either way, the wiring inside the pod is already done — which is one less trade to book, and one less week to wait.