With shed designs to be considered, plans and documents created for council, contractors to be engaged and much more, it is easy to overlook something vital and when you are spending what can easily amount to a very tidy sum, a mistake can be costly or something that you might have to live with for some time.
To help guide you on your way to the best possible outcome with your shed buying experience we have assembled what we believe to be the 5 most common mistakes made when purchasing a shed and how to avoid them.
#1. Not Getting what You Want
Many people make the mistake of buying a shed based on an off the shelf design or straight out of a catalogue because they believe it will be cheaper buying a Standard Shed than designing their own.
These days the competition for your dollar in the shed industry means that it is usually just as cost effective to go into a shed dealership and design the shed to suit your needs as it is to just buy off the internet or out of a catalogue. Keeping to a few simple parameters like
maximum bay sizes and the like, your custom designed shed will be just as cost effective as
one out of a box and be more like what you want.
#2: Price vs Service
Quite often people will choose the cheapest shed they can get that just meets their needs. Usually this is often achieved by shopping over the internet with people who do not have a local agent, display or accreditation.
Internet only based businesses can sell a shed for a few hundred dollars cheaper due to low overheads of not having to maintain a display office or provide quality after sales service.
Often the same price can be achieved locally by your local shed seller if they are consulted or given the opportunity to compare quotes. Internet based shed businesses can get away with poorer customer support as they are not locals who depend on local reputation to maintain a good business.
Often net based sellers are retailing sheds of a little less quality or materials that are a little thinner based on the fact that you cannot inspect them before buying. This does not apply to all internet shed sellers but is typical of the ones where the price is low.
#3: Planning Laws
The most costly mistake we heard about is when someone purchases a shed and then discover that they require council planning approval and then due to planning restrictions they find they cannot build the shed or cannot build that type of shed or the shed is not rated high enough for local environmental conditions. This can result in owning the materials to build a shed but not being allowed to build it.
#4: Failing to Future Proof
There are two ways to future proof your shed. One is to think hard about what you might be considering purchasing in the future like Caravans and boats and building the shed to accommodate these items now. The other and possibly better way is to make sure the shed that you buy now is suitably engineered to be easily extended or can be extended with awnings or annexes.
Cheap sheds usually do not have the ability to be extended or may not be engineered with the strength to support awnings and annexes.
#5: Building a shed that is too small.
This can refer to all 3 dimensions.
If the shed is not tall enough then you may not get the car in when the roof rack is on it. The new tractor may not fit? Air-con on the Van?
If the shed is not deep enough then the idea of a work bench in front of the vehicles may not work or the boat trailer may not fit or the spare wheel on the back of the Caravan may spoil things.
If the bays are not large enough the roller doors maybe too narrow and you might be forever fixing rear vision mirrors.
