Skylark 200 for Garden Buildings - how much glass can I get away with

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Hi folks - a quick question for you.

We’re in a very sheltered wooded site (our garden is basically a mini national park) and wind doesn’t tend to be a worry. We’re putting in a one story rectangular block effectively, floated on a simple pad (we’re trying to figure out if screws or a concrete pad is better for what we need).

The area we’re going to use is in a back corner by our boundary - two sides of the rectangular block will sit by hedging, so they can be solid and clad simply/cheaply/durably. The question we have is on the two sides that’ll face the garden.

It’s a lovely mature woodland garden, and we get a lot of wildlife there (ranging from birds to deer wandering through), so what we’d like to achieve is a really transparent connection with the site - ideally using glass, such as simple sliding doors on the two garden facing sides. Just a simple box with a flat roof and as much glass as we can manage on those two sides.

(We don’t need services - just the electrical supply that’s already in place - an old summer house sits there and it’s set up for radio equipment for some reason.)

So - with a Skylark 200 - how much glass is actually OK on a non-windy site? Is it possible to (say) include two sets of sliding doors on the long side with another on the shorter side? Or would that cause issues?

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Hey Roy, this sounds like a great project!
Short answer: I think it is feasible but it depends on the size of the sliding doors.
Long answer: If there are no wind concerns (even if it is always good to assume at least a minimum amount of wind pressure to be on the safe side), then you might be limited by span that the lintel needs to cover above your sliding doors. In other words, I would make sure that the lintel above your sliding door is stiff enough so it does not deform excessively over time under gravity loads (and the stiffness depends on the span). This is to make sure that the lintel does not interfere with the frame of the sliding door. Do you have any structural engineer in your area that might help you with some calculations? To work out the actual numbers engineers rely on historical data of snow and wind for each area (here is an example Eurocode snow zone in UK - Lisa.blue), and can estimate the actual deflection based on the span.
Hope it helps!

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It does help massively Gabriele, thank you. And we do have an engineer in the phone book (we investigated the prohibitive cost of off grid services at an earlier stage). I’ll investigate! Thank you very much.

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