How to Make sure You Choose the Right – Sized Shed for your Needs

With the current state of the economy and the rising prices of real estate, construction and living expenses in general, prudence demands that homeowners be able to minimize their living expenses to live comfortable lives. Furthermore, acquiring land, especially in the residential areas in which most people, is much harder these days so one also needs to be methodical with how they plan their living space.

There are a number of variables that may come to mind when deciding on which shed works best for you:

Available space

The most obvious variable would be how much space you have to play with. Your back yard may be intended for multiple purposes such as gardening or install an outdoor alfresco dining area. Furthermore, if you have children then it may be worth considering that a bigger shed may limit your children’s available playing area. Worse still is that bigger sheds will serve as motivation for them to play in your shed further increasing the risk of them getting hurt while playing. Another factor may be community and legal regulations. Your local homeowner’s association may have a say in the size; some local administration may require you to register your sheds and sometimes large sheds might even require a building permit. There are quite a few factors that may determine which size of shed you may be able to install.

If you’re short on space, then you may have to be creative with how you structure your shed. Remember, the main sub – variable when it comes to space is the width and length of your shed. Since these two subs – variables are already predetermined then you’ll have to be a bit more deliberate with how you design your shed. For one, you could always add some extra height to your sheds. It follows that you should add a few over – hanging cabinets as well as shelves to offer that extra bit of “space” for you to put your tools and other items. This addition of height can help you add a faux “floor” to your shed and allow you to stack more items in the same cross – sectional area.

Extending the idea for over – hanging cabinets, another common feature is maximising on hooks and hook design to hang tools and other gardening items to maximise available space. Rather than place hooks equidistant from each other, it may be better to do a mix of wide spaces and short spaces. The reason for this can be seen when we compare tools such as a saw and a hammer. Typically, a saw would take up more space than the hammer. However, if all hooks are equidistant from each other then you might lose the excess space left by the hammer. So, it would be beneficial for you to have larger spaces for your larger (or alternatively, longer) tools and items. Conversely, you should have smaller spaces for your smaller tools.

Items to be stored

The second main variable will be what exactly you want to store in your shed. For those of you just looking for a place to store your lawn mower, some basic gardening tools and the like then you would not require such a large shed. A simple flat roof shed would work for you. For those of you who want to have space for large items such as ATV’s then you’ll need bigger sheds.

Purpose of shed

Similarly tied to the second point, the purpose of your shed may be used as a determining factor in deciding which size of shed you want. If the purpose of your shed will simply be for storage,then your best bet may be the relatively smaller sheds. However, if you want to do some significant work, such as carpentry, then you may need more space in your shed.

Design standards

Some sheds are naturally easier to offer more space by design. From a design perspective, there are 3 main garden sheds; the flat roof shed, the gable roof shed and the skillion roof shed. Just as the name suggest, the flat roof shed has a no inclination when it comes to the roof; the gable roof shed has the typical house structure of most homes. The roof forms a triangle – like appearance at the top when viewed from the side. The skillion roof shed has the ends of the roof at different levels, giving some angle of inclination. This gives the appearance of a trapezium when viewed from the side. Just by studying the sheds from a total volume perspective (space available), flat roof sheds offer the least space when compared to their peers. However, it is up to the consumer to decide which design they want for their sheds. Since none of the sheds is structurally superior to the other, it may be just a matter of one’s budget.