Frugal Energy Renewable power and aquaponics, built frugally

The Shanty

Building it

A roof over your project site does not need to cost much or take long. Here is how mine went up.

Backyard area cleared and cultivated, with a compost tumbler, large rocks, and corrugated steel raised garden beds -- previously compacted ground from chickens and bamboo
Site preparation: hired a soil cultivator to break up heavily compacted ground left by chickens and bamboo. Getting it level before the posts went in.

What is a skillion roof

A skillion is a single-pitch roof -- one slope, going one direction, no ridge. Think of a lean-to. It is the simplest roof you can build, and for a shanty it is exactly right. Rainwater runs to one end (the low end), so you know exactly where to put the gutter. Panels on a skillion already sit at an angle, which is most of what solar mounting is about.

The structure

Mine uses eight uprights with a roof structure across the top. The posts are set into the ground (or into concrete footings if you want the whole thing to be more permanent). On the high side the posts are taller, on the low side shorter -- that is how you get the slope. The difference in height between the high end and the low end sets your pitch.

I built mine over the top of an existing small shed that was already on a concrete pad. The pad gave me a solid base for those posts, and the rest of the ground area I covered in cheap gravel. Gravel is the right call for the floor: it drains, it stays dry underfoot, it is cheap, and it does not crack like concrete does over uneven ground.

The roof

Corrugated steel sheet is the standard frugal choice. It is available from any rural or building supplier, it is light enough to work with alone, it is durable, and it is cheap per square metre compared to almost any alternative. You screw it to purlins (horizontal timbers running across the top of your frame). Overlap each sheet by at least one corrugation so rain does not come through the joins.

The screws matter: use hex-head roofing screws with a neoprene washer under the head. They seal themselves as you tighten them and do not back out over time the way plain screws do.

Crane truck delivering timber to a suburban backyard, with wrapped bundles being lifted over the fence
Timber delivery day -- crane truck to get it over the fence and into the backyard.
Builder in hi-vis gear guiding lifting straps on a crane truck during timber delivery to a suburban backyard
Guiding the load in. A crane truck makes light work of getting materials into a tight backyard.
Two builders in hi-vis working on the shanty post and frame structure, with gravel and concrete pad visible
The frame going up. My brothers and their crew -- I handed things up when asked.

Posts and timber

We used metal post stirrups set into concrete footings rather than burying timber in the ground. The stirrup holds the post up off the concrete so the timber never contacts soil or standing water -- which is where rot starts. It also means you are not wasting a third of each post underground. The stirrups outlast the timber by a long way, and if a post ever needs replacing you pull it out of the stirrup and drop a new one in without touching the footing.

For everything above the stirrup -- posts, beams, purlins, cross members -- H3 treated pine is fine and is the cheapest structural timber you will find. Check Marketplace and Gumtree before you buy new; structural timber from demolition jobs comes up regularly and is often heavy hardwood that will outlast new pine by decades.

Size

Build it bigger than you think you need. The materials cost does not scale linearly once you have your posts and frame worked out, but the usable area does. A shanty that feels big when empty will feel exactly right once you have tanks, tools, a potting bench, and a worm farm under it.