Garden Office Security

In my experience, the majority of garden offices and studios are situated in a location distanced from the main house or dwelling. This separation often functions to keep domestic and commercial life separate as well as to not block off the view of the garden from the house.

However, this deliberate distancing can sometimes bring about issues of garden office security. Considering the various functions of garden offices and buildings, you will often find lots of valuable items kept within them from confidential papers to expensive laptops and because of this, it is imperative that your garden building is completely secure.

Here are some tips to take into account when thinking about garden building and garden office security:

• Place any valuables out of sight when the garden building is not in use.
• Alarm your building back to the house.
• Install double glazed windows and doors.
• Install high-quality 5 lever insurance approved mortice locks or go for UVPC as the espagnolette locking mechanism for doors and windows is superior
• Preferably choose inward opening doors so there is less likelihood of hinges being attacked and the door being lifted out.
• If possible have your garden building built so it faces towards the house. The last thing a burglar wants is to be seen and will not want to risk being spotted from an occupant.
• Install a simple P.I.R at the front of the studio which will trigger a light (even during daylight) when movement is detected.  Our attention is drawn to a light appearing and most P.I.Rs can be set to trigger during daylight as well as at night.
• For less than £100 you can buy a camera with a mobile sim card in it that will call and text you, wherever you are in the world, when the alarm inside your studio is triggered.  On this device you can go online and look at live images from the camera to check if it is a false alarm or not. Additionally, if the camera does record a burglary, you can use the images to identify the intruder making it much more likely to catch them. There are more expensive versions of this type of technology that have battery backups so any power cut will not affect them. However, they all use the mobile network so they are not rendered totally useless if the power is cut.

Extra Rooms security

With this in mind, as standard, all garden buildings supplied by Extra Rooms include the following garden office security measures:

• Keyed locks on our timber windows (we also offer UPVC windows as an option – there is no extra charge for windows but UVPC doors are a bit more).
• Glazing units that are security glued into the casements
• All doors toughened double glazed.
• All windows fully double glazed.
• Security locks supplied as standard. Insurance approved 5 lever locks and all opening windows have keyed locks.

In addition to this, all our studios are lined with plywood, not plasterboard, though it is plastered after the addition of a special adhesive, so this makes breaking in from the rear or sides extremely difficult as plywood is so much stronger than OSB or plasterboard, which can be breached too easily by removing the cladding in many other studios but is why extra rooms are such strong rooms.

Author: David Fowler