Why I did THIS to my Garden Pod Office!

For little money, I used this radiator reflector foil and packaging from Hello Fresh to heatproof AND soundproof my Garden Office pod. 
BUY RADIATOR FOIL HERE! (Amazon commissions earned)
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Why I did THIS to my Garden Pod Office!



TRANSCRIPT: (CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE)

THIS IS THE TRANSCRIPT - CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE!

The trouble with garden offices is that in the summer they can get really hot, and in the winter, obviously, they can get really cold. This is the Happy Hut. I'm Neil. Welcome back to the channel, where we try new things to make your family happy, and the thing I'm trying today is to fix the Happy Hut: make it weatherproof, also maybe soundproof it a little. 

So, I'm going to share some of the things I've tried this year. Uh, winter's approaching—you can see I've just got the last few apples on the tree—and, uh, we've had a really hot summer, and I'm going to show you how I've been coping with that here in the Hut, just in case there are any ideas here that might help with your insulation. It's not looking good in here, and I thought, "I've got to fix this today." And why not, why not film me fixing the Hut and also share some of the other things I've tried? So, I've just seen... Casper is really going for it out there. I've got—you can see me, I can see you... 

"Casper, stop digging! No digging, no digging!"

I know it's looking a bit of a mess, but I think this is going to work, even though it hasn't quite worked so far. So, I've got some heat insulation/sound insulation. I... I... I've got a fix for that, which I'll show you in a moment. Look, look, Casper, do you want to come in now? Come on then, good boy. 

But the thing that has worked is up here—the chimney. This was a barbecue Hut, and the problem with the barbecue Hut is that it's got this massive chimney in the middle, and in the summer, this big black tube just heats up and radiates heat in here. So, I... I... I had an idea when we tried out... we did a trial with the HelloFresh food. They're not sponsoring this, but, uh, I’ve managed to get something from the Hello Fresh trial. This is the bit I need. Did we get any food on it? Oh, it's a bit wet. That's okay. Don't need that, we need this. 

I am using Velcro to stick the foam to the chimney, and I actually got this Velcro from a sewing shop in town, and I thought I was doing this really nice thing of, you know, supporting a local business, but they... they charged me more than it said on the packet, and it cost a fortune. This... this cost me a lot of money, and it turns out that this is the wrong Velcro as well. It's just too thin to support something this size. But anyway, this helps me to at least cut the foam to size and get it up on the chimney, and I'll do the fixing later. 

I'm putting a strip around the bottom of the chimney and then using that to guide the foam into place so that I can put another ring of Velcro to hold the top of the foam. I'll put in extra strips on the side to hopefully get the whole thing to hug this cylinder. And the strip of foam from the HelloFresh box isn't long enough to make it all the way around the chimney, so once I've put this in place, I then have to measure and cut another piece of foam to fill in the gap. But that will be behind where we can see from the front door, so let's just get this big bit of foam up first and then worry about filling in the gaps.

Next I need to cut the self-adhesive Velcro into strips, and once again, this is just far too thin. Even with longer strips running across the foam, that wouldn't be enough. But later on, I managed to buy on Amazon some Velcro that's about three or four times the width of the stuff that I'm using here. Anyway, let's get it up and all measured up and stuck to the chimney. I... I wasn't to know that it wasn't going to work in the heat, and... and I'm putting some extra tape on the sides to run down the edges of the foam so that it makes a really tidy cover all the way around this black chimney that just radiates heat directly from the sun hitting the chimney on the roof outside the Happy Hut. 

And the soundproofing? I haven't noticed the difference, but if I go down here... it all helps, doesn't it? So, this is what it looks like now. I think that looks really good. 

Now I need to work out how to stop more sun heat getting into the Hut, and I came up with this completely hare-brained scheme. It all began when I bought a huge roll of that insulation that you can buy to put behind radiators to reflect heat into the room. For the last two years, I've been putting giant white sheets up onto the roof of the Hut to try and reflect the sun back out away from the Hut. It never works because the sheets just fall off the roof onto the floor. So, then I thought, what if I cut this foam foil into panels and make giant square reflective sheet that I could use to basically put over the hot spot on the roof? It's a bit like a Bond supervillain's terrible scheme, but do you know what? I think this might actually work. 

All I need to do is figure out a way of fixing this giant panel of foil onto the roof of the Hut. 

I'm feeding a rope through the chimney, out down the roof, and then lashing it to the top of the panel.

I've cut a special hole for it, and all I need to do is go back inside the Hut and pull the panel into place. 

That's the plan in my head. Let's see if it works out. 

Sun's gone in now, but I think it just about covers what I need it to cover. 

Uh-oh, need to weigh it down somehow, but that's pretty much the coverage I wanted... Oh man, the wind's going to take it. It wasn't windy yesterday. I need some way to fix it to the bottom here. I don't want to tape it because I'd have to tape it every time. 

So we go into the Hut... ah, the rope comes from up there. 

If I give it a little pull... tie it off on one of these lamps, which isn't great, but it'll do for now.

I, uh, don't really want it in the background of my videos. Let's just, uh, put it there for now.

Oh, where'd it go? 

Oh, it's blown over there. Completely useless!

I think I need to anchor it down here. 

I figured out a fix for this, and that is to put a second rope onto the side. So all I need to do is somehow cut a hole into the side and reinforce it with some tape so it won't tear, and then lash it to the side of the dormer window here.

I'm hoping that between the two ropes, it should hold it in place at the exact angle for where the maximum sun hits. 

So, I think I've done it. Doesn't look great, but, uh, I've just lashed it to the side there, and I've put a bit of reinforcing tape there because, if I zoom in up there, I can see my next problem is going to be that the rope's going to tear the top of the silver foil. 

So, when I bring it down tonight, I'll probably reinforce that with some tape, if it lasts the day.

But I'm hoping that's just going to deflect the worst of the sunshine this week because it really does heat up this area. 

And I've got these boards for soundproofing, but it's cool here and hot here, and I'm not sure that's a good thing—to have the wood not being able to dissipate the heat. 

So, if I've stopped the heat hitting the wood in the first place, it should hopefully cool this down.

Already, these boards... they're hot, they're really hot to the touch. Now I've got the foil blocking the sunshine, and I have the foam stopping the chimney radiating heat into here. It hopefully should be just a bit more bearable in here.

It is three months later now, and the chimney is working really well.

This has really helped stop radiating the heat, and I'm hoping that it will keep warm.

But now I'm in the... the... starting to be cold in October. It's, uh, 10°, 12°, there. You can see that my experiment with the Hello Fresh foam on the walls, the kind of ceiling panels, they've not worked at all, at all. And I've used the same thin strip. It's fixed to the wall beautifully. It's not fixed to the foam beautifully at all. 

So, I've bought this Velcro.

It's not actual Velcro, I'm using the brand name as a noun, which I know everyone loves, but I've actually got something a lot thicker, and I know that if I put this onto the foam panels... well, let's just start doing it in time-lapse. Here I am putting the Velcro onto the foam panels.

Oh no, I put the wrong stuff on! 

I thought... I've not got much of this. I've basically put the soft stuff on the wall, and now I've put the soft stuff on the foam, when actually I should have used the crinkle stuff. So, I've just wasted about 3m worth of fake Velcro.

ADHD...! 

So now I've got to remove it.

I've just rendered all of this completely useless. 

Oh, I wish... I'm actually watching videos about ADHD and how it affects executive function. 

I can't believe I just did that.

[Music] 

Right, so now... now I've done that, I don't have enough for any other panels, but at least if I can get one panel up, it will just prove to myself and to this video that this might actually work. 

Let me just readjust over here, and we'll do a little timelapse. I'll probably start with the top one. I've got to take off all of these strips that just didn't work. Well, it was worth a try, it was worth a try.

Someone asked me, "Why don't you use double-sided sticky tape?" And that's a really good question.

I just thought, whenever I've put double-sided sticky tape up, it has left a completely permanent residue. 

I've never been able to remove double-sided sticky tape from walls, so I thought at least with the Velcro, if I had to take something down like this... so, this is, you know, absolutely case in point why I was probably right to go with Velcro—because it's taken me several tries to get this right.

Have a look at this. 

This... this is the wreckage of just putting a bit of Velcro on some free foam. 

As well as keeping the heat and the cold out, these panels will also help my Happy Hut Studio. This garden office is my YouTube studio, so having these panels in place will keep it a bit warmer or a bit less cold, and also it should improve the sound recording in here.

It's time to go up the ladder. I do this twice a year. 

The reason I do it is because this was a barbecue Hut. This was the big chimney—I was going to say extraction fan, but it's not, it's just a hole in the ceiling—and it has lots of vents around the chimney as well to let all the smoke escape.

So, I've made this... I've made this homemade insulation.

So, I've got joggers and a pair of jeans with loft insulation inside.

I'm just going to... I have to open this hole here, so that actually goes out to the night sky up there. And every year, about this time, I tuck it back in and try to insulate for the winter.

Winter is coming, and I have to remember how I've done it each year.

I'm just going to fill up every last gap because anything that is open will mean heat loss in the Hut. 

The finishing touch—oh, bang my head—the finishing touch is to put this, uh, chimney bung that I made myself up the chimney, and it stops the spiders and nesting wasps coming down. 

Just put this up, and it's actually quite tricky to make it airtight, but that... that does quite a good job.

And then I've got a second cushion here. I was thinking of getting a proper chimney bung.

Tell me in the comments if you've, uh, if you've used anything that's worked for you.

But this padding seems to work through the winter. I'll just keep it up there and just hope that it doesn't, you know, fall on my head in February. 

I'm calling this a Dad Delivers success!

Thanks for coming with me on this journey through the seasons. I... I guess I'll be doing this all over again in April. 

Thank you for hitting the... the thumbs up. Thank you for hitting the thumbs up or the subscribe button. It really helps us to keep this channel going. Really appreciate it. And right here is what YouTube knows you are going to love watching next!

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