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Weevir · Garden Homes
We check your garden for free, design the home, handle the council and the certification, and place you with builders we trust. Modular, timber frame or block.
What it’s for
Both give you a permanent home with its own front door at the end of your garden. What separates them is who can live in it.
Route one
If rental income is the goal, it is a planning application rather than the exemption. It takes longer and permission is never certain, but you end up with a home that is yours to let. We will tell you early whether your site is likely to get there.
Route two
For family, the exemption means no planning application, just fourteen days’ notice to the council. The home stays tied to your house: it is for your household, and it cannot be sold or let separately.
The difference
Modular, timber frame or block. We measure the garden first, explain what each route means for your site, and you decide. Then we place you with proven manufacturers and builders to deliver it.
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Built in a factory, then craned in or flat-packed through the side passage, depending on access. Fastest, and the most predictable.
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Panels made off site, built up by hand in the garden. Warm, quick, and easy to shape around an awkward plot.
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Built from the ground up in block or brick. The one lenders and buyers understand without asking.
How big is it, really
It is more than it sounds. Even the smallest is a one-bedroom home with its own kitchen and shower room.
| Floor area | Typical footprint | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| 32 m² | 8 × 4 m | One bedroom, a living and kitchen space, and a shower room. The smallest the rules allow. |
| 40 m² | 8 × 5 m | Room for a separate kitchen, or a small second room for a desk or a single bed. |
| 45 m² | 9 × 5 m | Two bedrooms, or one bedroom with a proper sitting room. The largest without planning permission. |
Footprints are indicative. The 0.6 m to every boundary and the 25 m² of garden you must keep decide what your garden will actually take.
Since 27 July 2026
One permanent home in a qualifying rear garden, under S.I. 340 of 2026. Every condition has to be met, and the route closes at the end of 2030.
Where it usually falls down
45 m²
Counted across every roofed structure in the garden, not just the new home.
0.6 m
Minimum, on every side — and it disappears fast.
4 m / 3 m
Pitched ridge, or any other roof. It rules out plenty of stock units.
None of it shows up on a map. That’s what the free check is for — and where the survey earns its money.
Design · Certify · File
The exemption takes away the planning application. It takes away nothing else. A garden home is a new dwelling under the Building Regulations, so it needs a Commencement Notice, an Assigned Certifier, and a completion certificate registered with the council before anyone moves in. We have all of that in-house.
On site, with instruments, then the drawings, plans and specification for your garden by our building designer. Every dimension the exemption turns on, measured rather than assumed.
Our registered building surveyor acts as your Assigned Certifier: the Commencement Notice lodged on BCMS before work starts, inspections at each stage of the build, and the completion certificate registered before anyone moves in.
Drawings, the exemption notice, specifications, certificates, energy rating and test records — the evidence a lender, an insurer or a purchaser’s solicitor will ask to see.
Buy a unit first and sort the paperwork afterwards, and you may find there is no paperwork to sort.
See the full processWhy us
We measure the garden, draw and specify the home, lodge the notices with the council, and place you with proven manufacturers and builders to deliver it. They manage the build. Our Assigned Certifier inspects it and signs it off.
Exemption work is reviewed by a chartered planning consultant (MIPI), and every build is inspected and certified by our registered building surveyor as Assigned Certifier.
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For builders and manufacturers
Every garden home needs drawings, two council notices, an Assigned Certifier and a completion certificate. We handle that side across all your jobs, so you can get on with building.
Send us the Eircode. We check the garden against the exemption: side access, what’s already built against the 45 m² limit, and the garden left over. You don’t price a job that can’t go ahead.
Plans, sections and the specification for each site, by our building designer, ready for Building Control.
The exemption notice to the planning authority, and the Commencement Notice with full documentation on BCMS.
Our registered building surveyor acts as Assigned Certifier: the inspection plan, inspections at each stage, and the completion certificate signed and registered.
We check your models against the exemption before you sell them as garden homes: internal floor area between 32 and 45 m², the 3 m and 4 m height limits, and the certification a certifier will ask for.
Drawings, notices, certificates and test records in one file, ready for your customer’s lender, insurer and solicitor.
Building several units? Ask about partner terms.
Free check
Answer a few questions and you’ll see a first read straight away. Send it with your Eircode and we’ll check it properly and come back with a plain answer.
Your first read
Start with how you get to the back garden.
Indicative only, from what you tell us. It is not planning approval, a declaration of exempted development or a measured survey. Based on S.I. No. 340 of 2026.
Or call or WhatsApp 089 964 5873, or email hello@weevir.com
One Eircode. Free either way. Or just ring or message us.