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- Hacker News
- Author, if you're here, there's a typo. > I was planning on insulting the office myself
What did it do to you that you needed to insult it?
- It was cold in the winter and hot in the summer. How dare it do that to me. Clearly the only option is insult.by snohobro
- I’m glad I’m not the only one who found this amusing!by saaaaaam
- by learn_more
- Great link, thanks for sharing
- As I write this from my backyard office shed that my dad and I built together. All told we put about $3k in. If you want to do it much cheaper:
- A Tuff shed is a bit overkill. For a small shed (anything under 8') you should really be pretty comfortable framing it yourself. There's no fancy cuts and it comes together fast.
- Concrete foundation is definitely overkill. Unless you're storing a tungsten collection in there, simple post blocks are more than adequate.
- Windows and doors! You can save a ton of money by finding secondhand fittings at Habitat for Humanity or Marketplace. You have the benefit of being able to design around what you have.
- Forgo drywall altogether on the interior. Wood paneled walls are easier and cheaper (it doesn't hurt that I designed mine around a "British pub" theme.
- A split system is WAY overkill for a space like this. Just leave a cutout in the wall to mount a decent window unit heat pump.
If you know what you're doing, or have someone to help, you're looking at about 2-3 days of work.
by legitster - Looks awesome, but I would have run single-mode fiber between the house and the office. Eliminates any issues with lightning strikes taking out equipment or other electrical gremlins, not to mention providing opportunity for expanding bandwidth in the future by just swapping out the SFP modules on each end. Pre-terminated fiber from fs.com is inexpensive and easy to work with - just measure and install.by ipython
- What do you use on the house and on the shed side to convert to CAT6?by veverkap
- Im jealous of the Tuff Shed or prebuilt being an option. Where I live we have incredibly high snow loads, so any structure ends up needing to be custom built to meet our requirements (even out buildings). I've found plenty of pre-fab units that claim to handle "high snow loads" that will not meet code where I am.
I'm still planning on building out an office/studio, but it will be a much larger investment despite being able to DIY much of it.
by eysquared - Sounds like Tahoe.by jtbaker
- What if you just put heat tape on the roof? These sheds have small roofs, shouldn’t be prohibitiveby dalyons
- This is a problem with the people and ideology that are concentrated in your jurisdiction and the resulting rules that come of that. Even the snootiest "Barack Obama is my neighbor" zip codes have permitting and code exemptions for various sorts of small sheds.
Structurally a wet fart will hold up plenty of snow when we're talking spans on the order of 10ft. A garden shed that can literally roll away in a tornado is only a few hundred dollars of material different from one that can't.
Of course Tuff Shed (or anyone else) isn't gonna make a special product line for one town in CO or wherever that wants to de-facto outlaw the construction of shed by people less than a certain wealth level. Those people can have their stuff built from scratch at great cost. Of the dozen lost sales they were likely some of the most problematic anyway.
- Heya I'd love to help you bring it to life and DIY it. I'm working on https://myhomecat.com/ - which lets you design a code-compliant version and you can fiddle around with budget, needs, etc. I've helped other folks with step by step guides after they've created a design they're happy with.
Can I ask you how you're designing it right now? I could whip up some designs for you for free.
by dearilos - DIY via https://buildfreely.comby learn_more
- Boy things are different in Portland where you pay people to insult sheds…
But 8x10 for $20,000 just goes to show how expensive USA is for construction. There’s a point where I would review coworking space cost (not as convenient, I know) to just living and owning property abroad.
by rootsudo - Theres a baseline cost for work to be done, the OP decided to build an 8x10, but easily could cost a similar amount or a few thousand more for a shed 4x larger.by turtlebits
- For reference, ~2 years ago I did a 8x12 shed for under $3K, DIY. It is not insulated or finished inside. Footer and slab were under a grand, I used some reclaimed 2x4s and bought the rest, sheathing, roofing, flashing, self-made windows were around another $1,200-$1,500. Paint was the real surprise at almost $300.by linsomniac
- > But 8x10 for $20,000 just goes to show how expensive USA is for construction.
Labor is expensive. You could probably close to double the size for an additional $10,000, you’d need another yard and a half of concrete for the foundation (6” depth*80 sqft = 40 cubic feet) and more material for the building, but not twice as much material, or labor. Electrical service could stay the same.l and the mini-split wouldn’t have to be much bigger.
- It was about $9k for the shed and the foundation, poured and installed. The other $11k was for everything else making it a living space and not just a shed. Not so bad in that context.by fckgw
- In this day and age, where material stuff is so cheap, isn’t 20K for a tiny shed crazy? Clearly it is because it involves so much work, and work is so expensive, but I can’t help but think there should be a technical solution to this. Or buildings are just not automatable? I’m amazed.by xixixao
- For the author, I really like the way it turned out. Your choice of the larger windows does change the game for a space like that. You gained useful space on your property that can be reconfigured later if conditions change.
I did notice that you mentioned soffit vents. From the photos I am having a hard time picturing how those vents were installed on that shed since they are designed to allow airflow from the soffit to the ridge. Knowing that you had a ridge vent cut in it makes it likely to me that you used baffles to allow the airflow between soffit and ridge and then insulated between the baffles and the interior space. I don't see that in the photos though so I apologize if this makes no sense.
I like the way that you finished it all out. It looks very functional. I have often considered something similar for our property but have been tied up in so many other projects that it never seems to happen.
Good job for having a plan and making it happen.
- > In Portland, I didn’t need a permit for the building because it was under the size threshold
You still need a structural building permit, beyond any electrical or plumbing permits, if it's both heated and used either as a living space or "for a business".
The city added the "for a business" wrinkle in 2024 and is very squirrely about whether using it as a work-from-home office counts as "for a business". It _does_ include working from it without bringing employees or clients into the buildling, but the way it's written implies that it's for people running a business out of their home address and not working for someone else's business.
It's a gray-enough area that I hope you got some solid legal advice. We ended up getting the permit to cover our bases in case I had to move to freelance/consulting self-employment.
by starkparker - Author of the blog post here. That new "for business" line was added in 2024, a year after I completed this build. It's good to know now though in case we sell and I want to do another build like this.by kslambert
- Thanks for taking the time to make this detailed write-up! You got a beautiful result, and I appreciate the spirit of sharing what you learned and helping people who are considering similar projects.
I'm glad you measured CO2. I've recently noticed I tend to get headaches when working or sleeping in small poorly-ventilated spaces, and I'm surprised how often I encounter new structures without ventilation. I guess tightly-sealed buildings are still a relatively new idea.
In the PNW you could probably be comfortable >90% of days with a cracked window, fan, adjustable shades, and a little electric radiator, but if I was doing this project I'd probably opt for the modern heat pump / ERV combo as well.
by titanomachy - There isn't really any clinical evidence for CO2 levels impacting stuff beyond so called "sleep efficiency," where the effect is small (above 1000 ppm is 5% reduction in sleep efficiency) and it has the counterintuitive effect that less efficient sleep is sleeping longer, which is usually what people want. That said, placebo effects are still real.
- Mini split + ductless ERV [1] would probably be cost efficient and effective for this home office. No need to get a full ducted hvac setup.
[1] e.g. https://www.pioneerminisplit.com/products/pioneer-ecoasis-50...
by porphyra - I jumped to the end and saw $2.3k for the mini split and couldn't believe it. I've installed mini splits on two homes and the quotes were always in the $15-25k range for 3-5 head units, so $2.3k for a head + outdoor condenser unit sounded implausible, but then I saw he found a surprisingly good deal:
> I got a ton of quotes for installing a mini split. They ranged from $4-$7k, which was higher than I expected after researching the cost of a quality small unit and knowing this would be a tiny job for an HVAC contractor, especially because I had my electrician prewire the electrical. I was considering installing a DIY system (Mr. Cool DIY system with pre-charged AC lines), But found an HVAC contractor who would install a system for a much lower price than the other quotes I received (and he had great reviews on Thumbtack). In the end, I got a Daikin Mini-split, a common system with many replacement parts. The installation took about 5 hours, and my tech did a great job. I am glad I researched and got a lot of quotes for this one.
by mtlynch - Really? I paid ~1500eur for a Mitsubishi mini split including installation. Not quite sure why your setup would be so insanely expensive.by elric
- one thing about discount DIY mini splits: they're sometimes/often the same model, with a hodge podge of similar but not identical components. it can be very difficult to get a repair person to work on these - they stand a lot to lose if they try to operate on it and make it worse. they really prefer consistency, and - they also seem to harbor a bit of a distaste for diy systems. Actually, I was educated by one serviceperson's opinion and by the end of their complaints, the experience cost more than the cash, injury wise. But I think relaying this, has some value, because I suspect it's common.by digitalsushi
- I DIY'd two mini splits for $3,000 that cools about 800 sq ft in Texas summers. Fifty year old house with awful insulation. 27,000 BTUs of cooling capacity. And I'd wager 30% less would've gotten me normal wall units, but I bought the new-ish slim ceiling cassettes that recess into the ceiling so you don't see much more than the grill. The big ass boxes that sit on the wall, my wife wasn't having any of that.by KPGv2