Well, then. As I said in my introduction thread, it's workshop time.
A quick overview:
Garden is ~8.5x10m. It rises away from the house - the far end is about 320mm higher than the house end.
I'd like a workshop, and need a small shed for my + other half's bikes, the lawnmower, buckets, etc.
Original idea was to build something 5x3m internal floor area in the bottom left corner, with an internal wall separating shed from workshop and separate external doors - a semi-detached shed. However, I think it'd be too imposing and actually give too much space over to shed stuff, so there's a new working idea:
The workshop will be 4x3m in the bottom corner of the garden. The shed will be adjoining, and be 1.5x2m on the front corner of the workshop. This will allow for a compressor and/or dust extractor to be put in the shed in the future and piped in through the adjoining wall, if my interests grow beyond shop-vac extraction or into air tools.
So the constraints: This will be about 400 from the boundary on two sides - that's the smallest gap I reckon I can squeeze in for maintenance, and I can store ladders there locked to the fence structure. Therefore, total finished floor area under 15 sq m to keep out of Building Control's interest.
I hope to be able to dig out and essentially terrace the garden, with the left side dug back to the level of the patio at the house, reatinaed close to the boundaries and by sleepers to the edge of the new lawn down the centre of the garden. This will gain me an additional ~320mm height to play with, taking me to a max building height of 2820 but still under permitted development as everything I can find says that height is measured from the highest natural ground level adjacent to the building.
From here on I'm less certain - I know I'd prefer a duopitched roof - I think they look so much better. I assume EPDM is the way forward, I'd love (eternit) slates but I know I haven't got the height for the necessary pitch. I'm hoping with the guidance of Mike G I can use a structural ridge beam and end up with no joists and therefore gain as much headroom as possible, with a roof that still looks sensible at about 12 or 15 degrees pitch or so.
I'd want to do the same on the shed bit - a duopitched roof of the same pitch, with no joists - and I'm unsure of how to avoid a messy detail where the shed ridge meets the workshop verge.
The general construction will be "Mike's way" and as I said before, I plan to get a local builder to do the groundworks and to build a plinth wall, and I will do all the carpentry and fit out myself. I can get electrics finalised and signed off by an electrician at work, so no problems there.
This whole small estate is built within the footprint of a former factory, and under a thin layer of topsoil the ground is very poor - probably a result of putting the old factory floor slab through the concrete crusher! Luckily, nowhere near the clay and former brickworks.
I'm sure there will be more questions as I think of them, but this post is enough of an essay already!
Finally, here's a drawing of the proposed shed/workshop, additional slabs and garden works etc overlayed on the existing garden and levels:
The back of the house is across the 5295 dimension at the bottom, the dog-leg with the gate in it is at the end of the drive adjacent to the house - access is easy if nothing else!
I'll take a couple of photos in the morning and add them in.