Shed-house

Shed Features

I wanted to build a shed/greenhouse on my new allotment using only recycled material. I was limited by 6x4 foot allowable sizing for allotments - you can have a 6x4 shed and a 6x4 greenhouse, so I decided to seek planning permission from the allotment committee to combine both into one building, reducing the overall size so it did not encroach on the plot. Permission was eventually granted (with some limitation on height). What makes the building special is that it is built entirely from materials that would have ended up in skips, and landfill. The only things I bought were screws, a bag of cement and some clear silicon to put the windows in. It took over four months to source the material, but I feel immensely proud that I have built a shed /greenhouse that has saved so much from landfill and functionally repurposed the waste materials.

Other Shed info

The blocks were from a neighbour who had demolished an extension, the paving was from another neighbour who was changing their garden patio to decking, the wood floor for the shed part was a neighbours old oak flooring and the glass was from a local window fitter who had an incorrect order lying in the corner of the warehouse. The framing of the whole build is the purlins and beams of a Victorian roof and old fence posts. The biggest gift was, a solid oak floor which was being thrown away, the feeling when I saw that on the drive ready to go into the skip was unbelievable. The solar panel was a final donation from someone who heard about what I was doing and thought that power for heated mats to grow seedlings in the winter and some lighting might be helpful.