Planning a small garden office pod (about 14m²) to work from home full-time. Trying to decide whether to go fully off-grid or run a hybrid setup with a grid connection as backup. The pod is about 30m from the house, so trenching a cable is doable but adds cost — probably £400–600 just for the groundworks.
Current thinking is a modest solar setup: maybe 400–600W of panels on the south-facing roof, a Victron SmartSolar MPPT, and a Fogstar Drift 24V 100Ah LiFePO4 battery. That should cover lighting, monitors, a laptop, and a small fan heater on low. Heating is the worry though — electric heating is a real battery killer and the UK winters are grim for solar.
Has anyone actually run a garden office setup like this through a full British winter without grid backup? Wondering whether a small wood burner or propane heater is the sensible middle ground rather than leaning on the battery for heat. Or is the hybrid approach just the obvious answer and I'm overcomplicating it?
Also curious what others are doing for internet — running ethernet through the trench if you're trenching anyway, or just using a 4G router in the pod?