Installing A Summer House

Installing a summer house requires some planning and the help of a friend or ideally two. Due to a summerhouse being much larger than a shed, in general, the panels are heavier than one person can safely move into place and hold in place with one hand whilst screwing in place with the other. So never attempt to assemble a summerhouse yourself unless the panels are particularly small, and even then I really would advise not trying to build it on your own.

Firstly whatever you do ensure that you get your summerhouse supplier to deliver the summer house never, ever collect it yourself. This is because not only are they extremely awkward to collect, even a large van will not pick one up, you will need some form of flat bed trailer, if you pay to have it delivered it will be insured in transit. Whereas if you collect it will almost certainly not be covered under the insurance for whatever trailer you use to pick it up. Often you can get free delivery or pay a nominal sum to get the summerhouse delivered - this is well worth the money.

Prior to your summerhouse arriving there are quite a few things you need to do. Contact the supplier and find out exactly what tools you will need to assemble summer house when it arrives, as there is nothing worse than not having the correct tool to hand and having to stop and drive to go and buy one.

The next key thing to do is ensure that the area you are planning on placing your summer house on is perfectly level and flat. This is because if there is the slightest deviation in the ground then you could find that it causes undue loading stresses on the walls after some hair is causing them to collapse. So whatever you do ensure the ground is flat and level! Also it is much better to dig into the ground to level it up than it is to build up the soil. Given the weight of the summer house it will compress the soil and thus could make the whole structure unstable.

Also when siting the summer house then you need to carefully think about making sure it faces the sun for most of the day! This sounds silly, but you would be stunned at the amount of people that have spent hours erecting a summer house only to find that it doesn’t actually face the sun so don’t let that mistake happen to you.

Lastly measure the proposed site out and make sure that your summer house will actually fit in the space that you have set aside. Allow a weekend with two people working on it to install your summer house.

By Richard Allen -