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UK Log Cabins - standard or custom garden buildings

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Composite decking

Composite decking – anti-slip, maintenance free and rot free! All the benefits of traditional timber decking but without the hassle of maintaining it. This is the perfect material to use for your log cabin veranda or summerhouse deck. Add that extra outside area to your garden cabin.

Our composite decking has 2 face sides –

  • A textured woodgrain effect on 1 side
  • Deep grooves on a flat colour on the other side.
Woodgrain or deep grooved composite decking
Woodgrain or deep grooved

Plus 3 colour choices as well –

  • Natural
  • Grey
  • Black
Composite decking in natural colour
Natural
Composite decking in grey colour
Grey
Composite decking in black colour
Black

Composite decking is resistant to algae growth – no more mulch on your deck and therefore much less chance of slipping like you get on timber decking in the winter. Just sweep it off with a broom every now and then…..and that’s it!

Composite material for a long trouble free life

WPC (Wood Plastic Composite) is a composition to replicate the natural beauty of wood without the maintenance and hazards of normal timber decking. It comprises of 45% timber fibres + 55% HDPE plus some additives.

Unlike timber, this man-made decking does not deform or warp when exposed to extreme temperatures or humidity, it stays where you put it.

Unlike timber, composite decking does not produce any splinters either nor any knot holes – you can walk across this decking in bare feet without any issues. Even the fixings are hidden – no screws or nails will be sticking out (or even visible).

Full range of matching composite accessories

As with most things, the finishing details are what really counts – our veranda decking stands out from the crowd.

  • Concealed clips to fix the decking down – we don’t fix through the face of the decking.
  • No bare ends of the decking boards are visible with our edging angles for a very neat finished edge
Our composite decking is very neat with all edges and fixings neat and tidy

How strong is composite decking?

The decking itself is really hard wearing and strong. However, like most load bearing products, it’s strength also comes from what supports. Our raised timber decks are ideal for this purpose (we use recycled plastic posts which we concrete into the ground for a rotproof and dampproof course ,dpc, all in one) – they are already so strong that we can build log cabins on top of them! The only difference with composite decking is that it needs support every 300mm, so we can increase the amount of joists accordingly to accommodate for this.

Additional decking items worth considering

We also recommend “decking tape” which is a bituminous tape that sticks along the top of every joist to protect them from rainwater sitting on top of them. We can also supply (and fit if required) a “decking fascia” which caps off all around the edges down to ground level (in colours to match the deck boards).

Composite decking fascia board
Decking fascia
Protect your timber joists from weather

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uPVC fascia boards

uPVC fascia boards can transform one of the most vulnerable parts of garden buildings. The roof edges can be a troublesome part of garden buildings. We offer maintenance free, fix-and-forget options. Timber fascia boards and barge boards around the edge of the roof can need more maintenance than anything else on a garden cabin. But of course, being the hardest part to maintain, they are the least likely to be painted and maintained. They are exposed to all weather conditions. Timber only lasts a limited amount of time under these harsh conditions. Whereas you will only need to wipe the uPVC ones with a damp rag every so often to keep them looking pristine.

Rot free fascia boards installed on garden cabin

Log cabin fascia board construction

The method of roof construction for log cabins means the barge boards are a 2 part construction. There is the main barge board which finishes the roof edge off neatly. But then there is a secondary part to it. This other part is the barge cover fillet. This plants on top of the barge board to form an L shape. This then covers over the edge of the roofing material (commonly felt shingles). The function of this is to stop the wind getting under the roofing material and blowing it off, or blowing rain under the roofing material.

Replace timber barge boards with uPVC fascia board for a long life
Typical barge board construction for a log cabin. The top cover fillet is constantly exposed to the weather and has a limited lifespan
Timber fascia boards have a limited life - uPVC last for ever!...No more maintenance
It is common for leaves and pine needles to collect against the timber which makes it more vulnerable as it stays wet for longer
L shape barge board for log cabins
uPVC barge boards are L shaped and have an integral cover fillet

Colour options for our fascia boards

The answer is to use something that doesn’t rot and ideally keeps it’s colour, and therefore is zero maintenance. This is why we offer uPVC fascia boards and barge boards as an upgrade for all of our log cabins, garden rooms and garden cabins.

Hortons offer 3 different “standard” colours of uPVC fascias –

  • White (flat white colour)
  • Light oak (natural wood colour with grain effect)
  • Black (flat black colour)
uPVC colour choices for Hortons Log Cabins

However, we can supply many more colour options if you want to colour match them with your garden cabin. Green, different shades of grey, various shades of woodgrain effect brown, etc. Although more expensive at the outset these uPVC options will actually save you money over the lifetime of the building.

Maintenance free options

Modern garden rooms are far more user friendly these days. We offer much more than maintenance free fascia boards. All of our buildings can be zero maintenance if supplied with our upgrade options –

  • uPVC or aluminium windows and doors (Guaranteed for 10 years but expected to last more than double that)
  • EPDM rubber roofing (guaranteed for 20 years with a life expectancy of 50 years)
  • Composite cladding (Hardie Plank is guaranteed for 15 years with a life expectancy of more than 30 years. And it’s Class A fire rated as well!)
  • uPVC fascia boards
  • uPVC plastic guttering

Of course the above options are only worth the expense if your building is constructed properly to start with! We offer various damp proofing options. Unlike many companies, we offer a damp proof kit with all of our buildings. Our floor construction is made specifically to invisibly “wrap” the whole floor. We don’t just lay a flat damp proof membrane (DPM) or strips of damp proof course (DPC). This is because rain can simple get on top of them. Which means that the timber bearers end up sitting in water as it cannot escape. Our system “dresses up” all around the outside of the bearers, so everything remains dry even if the area floods. We then cap it all around the outside with a timber fillet. This protects it from UV damage and mechanical damage (strimmers etc).

All of our log cabins for sale have the option to upgrade to the uPVC fascia boards – just look under the “Roofline” option and tick the colour you require.

We have more options if you would like more information on maintenance free garden buildings.

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Garden cabin column corners

Garden cabin column corners help protect the most vulnerable part of an interlocking cabin – the corner joints. Regardless of the type of joint used and how tight the joints are, a driving rain will penetrate these joints to some degree. Even tight joints can be vulnerable to capillary action.

Hortons carry out repair work on log cabins all the time. Nearly every log cabin that we repair has some deterioration around the corner joints. The worst being at the bottom as these are much more likely to catch rain. And also be vulnerable to rain water bouncing back up off the ground. This is quite often 2 fold –

  • Rain purely hitting the ground next to the cabin and rebounding against the cabin walls.
  • Rain water running off the roof, hitting the ground and rebounding against the cabin. This is a concentrated amount of water and will have a big detrimental affect over time, especially if there are hard surfaces around the cabin. An over-sized base or pathway running alongside the cabin, for instance.

Adding guttering will make a huge difference to the long term life of your cabin. This will stop the water cascading from the roof.

Column Corners

However, you can take other steps to help alleviate this. The easiest starting point are our column corners. This “boxes” the corners in to stop the weather getting to them to start with. Column corners need to be fixed using sliding joints as log cabins rise and fall through the seasons. Therefore we use slots to still allow the logs and cabin to move up and down. If you build your cabin in a very exposed position, column corners will help to protect them. Driving rain will penetrate into the joints. Painting your garden room regaularly will definitely help. You should makes sure that you work multiple layers of stain or paint into the corner joints as a minimum. Not weatherproofing your log cabin corner joints means it will start to show signs of damp in the corners.

This is a standard log cabin corner –

Standard log cabin corner joints

This is the same cabin but now fitted with column corners and guttering –

Column corners fitted and protecting the corner joints

As you can see, the column corners now protect the end grain (another vulnerable part of a log cabin), which will make the cabin last much longer. Note the slotted fixings at the bottom to let the cabin rise and fall through the seasons. We quite often fit these to log cabins that we are repairing, such as this Twin Skin –

Twin skin log cabin fitted with column corners

We also fitted uPVC windows and doors to this cabin as well as painting it.

It is more obvious with older cabins that they require column corners because there are signs of dark wood. These dark areas are generally a symptom of damp penetrating into the corners from outside. This then shows on the insides of the corners. Another tell-tale sign are dark patches on the skirting boards….

How to solve damp corners in a log cabin

These dark patches might not be very obvious if you decorate the cabin walls inside, as this masks the discolouration. However, if there is the slightest sign of damp showing through the paint then rest assured, damp is getting through.

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Maintenance free garden buildings

We all enjoy our garden rooms, but they all need maintenance, which most people don’t enjoy! If only there was an affordable maintenance free option for garden buildings! Please read on……

There are 3 areas of a timber garden room that generally require ongoing maintenance –

  • Roof
  • Walls
  • Joinery (windows and doors)

Garden building roofing

There are many types of roofing materials used on garden rooms, the most common being shed felt. This has a very limited lifespan and can easily be blown off by strong winds. We recommend using either –

  • Felt shingles (for apex style roofs) which come with a 10 year manufacturer’s warranty (and an expected lifespan of up to 30 years)
  • EPDM rubber roofing which comes with a 20 year manufacturer’s warranty. Unlike most garden building suppliers, we use uPVC edge trims and not timber strips. Timber strips will inevitably rot after a few years.

Walls – Maintenance free options

Most garden buildings are clad with timber boarding. This, of course, requires regular maintenance with preservative, painting or staining, and possibly replacing any rotten timber cladding boards. Even with regular painting, the walls will look tired where the sun will bleach the paint or stain. Not forgetting that the timber could possibly warp, bow, expand and contract through the different seasons.

There is another, no so well known, reason that timber may not be the best solution. UK Building Regulations state that any garden building measuring larger than 15 square metres internally AND closer than 1 metre to any boundary must be constructed of “non-combustible” material. Timber is definitely combustible!). This therefore limits the useable area within a standard garden building. It is not always practical to build a garden office, log cabin or even a large shed that far away from a boundary. Building into the garden wastes all of that spare space behind it.

So what’s the solution to resolve the above wall issues?

There are a couple of different types of “non-timber” cladding –

Composite cladding (made from a mixture of recycled wood fibres, recycled plastic, and bonding agents)

This resolves the maintenance issue (as they are maintenance free) as it comes self-coloured in various colours and just needs hosing or wiping down every now and then. However, it doesn’t resolve the combustibility issue. This type of cladding only achieves Class C or Class D according to the strict rules applied by “EN 13501-1: Fire Classification of Construction Products and Building Elements”. Only Class A is defined as being non-combustible, everything else is classified as being combustible to some degree….

EN 13501-1: Fire Classifications for building materials

Hardie Plank cement fibre cladding

This option resolves both issues, meaning it is “maintenance-free” (it comes in many colour options and has a guarantee for 15 years) AND has a fire rating of A2-s1-d0, which is the highest possible fire rating for a coloured facade/cladding product. This means it’s non-combustible AND won’t contribute to fire spread.
Here’s a more detailed breakdown:

  • A2: Indicates the reaction to fire and behaviour of the material (as shown above).
  • s1: Refers to the smoke production.
  • d0: Classifies the material in relation to flaming droplets/particles.

What does the “S” relate to?
The “S” part of the classification refers to smoke emission (or release) during combustion: S1 is classified as the quantity/speed of emission as being weak. This is the highest classification available.

What does the “d” relate to?
The “D” part of the classification relates to the creation of flaming droplets when exposed to test conditions. Test data reported no flaming droplets within a 600 second test period.

Trouble-free, fully compliant maintenance free garden buildings

Our range of framed garden buildings clad with HardiePlank (cement fibre boards) achieve everything you want from a maintenance free garden building. You can be build it anywhere in your garden (as long as it occupies no more than 50% of your garden) and fully comply with the 2 very important regulations that you need to commonly comply with….

Joinery (windows and doors)

Windows and doors are the most vulnerable and time consuming part of a garden room. They are moving parts and they are very time-consuming to maintain (painting etc). We offer the ultimate solution for this – uPVC windows and doors. They require no maintenance at all other than a bit of a clean every now and then.

Easibuild Garden Buildings

Our range of framed “Easibuild” garden buildings (garden workshops, summer houses and garden offices) all have optional upgrades for the maintenance free options as listed above –

  • HardiePlank cladding.
  • Different roofing options.
  • uPVC windows and doors.

See how our maintenance-free timber building walls are constructed:

Hortons garden building wall cross section clad with HardiePlank

Our framed buildings look great when using HardiePlank cladding. The wood grain effect looks like a natural timber board, but without needing ongoing maintenance AND with the fireproofing built in!

UK Log Cabins framed building clad with HardiePlank

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Log cabin videos

Log cabin videos plus summerhouse and garden office videos (including installations and final walk-around videos of completed buildings)

This page contains our full library of log cabin videos. It shows a whole range of things that may help you either decide on what building you require. Including actual construction videos and further videos of more specific things that you may find interesting.

We sell a whole range of different buildings, so we have sub-divided this page into different sections as follows…… 

  1. Section 1 = Installation videos of Hortons log cabins (single skin and Twinskin)
  2. Section 2 = Walkaround of completed Hortons log cabins
  3. Section 3 = Hortons Easibuild framed buildings (garden offices,sheds, workshops and garages)
  4. Section 4 = Lugarde summerhouses
  5. Section 5 = Bertsch Holbau pergolas and gazebos
  6. Section 6 = Miscellaneous items to help you build and maintain your garden building

Section 1 (timelapse videos of the installation of Hortons log cabins)

If you are going to build one of our log cabins. Please view these videos in conjunction with our log cabin installation guide

  • Log cabin videos of a Twinskin Basildon 7.5m wide x 4.5m deep log cabin. A concrete base, as shown here, is best including our damp proof membrane (DPM) kit. Plus our Kingspan insulation kit to the roof, walls and floor. This gives all round insulation making it usable throughout the year – ideal for a warm garden office. Click here to view prices and available options for this large log cabin.

1 minute (really quick) version –

OR this is the longer version (9 minutes) so you can see more detail –

  • Single skin 35mm 4m wide x 12m deep large log cabin with 3 rooms. The video shows the building of this cabin in our display ground near Horsham, West Sussex. This log cabin assembly video of the Stroud log cabin  shows just how easy our log cabins are to build. Nearly all the parts are ready to just slot in (for the walls) or fix (roof & floor). With just a few items that need cutting on site (skirting boards, fascia & barge boards). Click here to view prices and available options for this large log cabin.

Section 2 (Hortons log cabins)

More log cabin videos

Section 3 (Hortons Easibuild framed buildings)

  • Our Easibuild heavy duty garden workshop shed is quite unlike any other sectional building you may have seen before. The construction is half height panels making it easy to lift as the panels are lighter. But it is still heavier than other so called extra strong workshops! This also means that you can easily take it through a house or garage if neccessary. These are all made to order to the nearest millimetre at no extra cost. Click here to generate your quote including many different options available for our strong workshops.

Section 4 (Lugarde summerhouses)

  • 2 videos of the Lugarde PR17 summerhouse which has the feature bifolding doors. This is a very popular choice and always attracts customers walking around our showground.
  • Video 1 is a timelapse of the construction process (installing in our showground)
  • Video 2 is a walk around of the finished summerhouse.
  • The Lugarde configurator link on our web page allows you to change the size and configuration to suit you, updating the price accordingly. Click here to open our PR17 summerhouse page and use the configurator to see the many different options .

Section 2 (Bertsch Holbau gazebos)

  • Bertsch Holzau Helena 3 – 5mx3.5m octagonal gazebo installation

Section 6 (Miscellaneous)

  • How to remove / change / replace a pane of glass in a Hortons log cabin door
  • How to reverse the door latch for Hortons Log Cabin door locks
  • How to fit Hortons tilt & turn window handles (with hidden screw holes)
  • How to fit Hortons double doors with sidelights

These log cabin videos are to help our customers understand the products that they show an interest in. Please bear in mind that we can modify, customise or change any aspect of any cabin to suit your requirements.

Our log cabins are designed with easy installation in mind, whether you will be installing the cabin yourself or using our installation service.
Our experience means that we have developed our cabins over decades ensuring stability, functionality and longevity. There are many of our cabins over 20 years old and still going strong!

About Us

We supply high quality log cabins and wooden garden buildings. With experience providing outdoor timber structures to customers across the South of England and the rest of the UK, we are happy to provide you with any advice you need.

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Contact Information

01403 888 222

Visit our contact page:
Click here

The Log Cabin Showground
Handcross Road (B2110)
Plummers Plain, Lower Beeding
Horsham
West Sussex, RH13 6NX