Econospace Framing - step by step

Some very good workshops happened near Castlemaine this summer and I was lucky enough to catch one of them. For a long while I'd been wishing for the skills to build my own shed, houseboat or composting toilet, but the mystery of how to make walls and roofs stay up on their own eluded me. This changed after I attended Peter Cowman's Econospace framing. In one weekend, the construction of a small building had become something within my range of experience. What follows are my notes on how to build an Econospace - in our case, a 10 square metre structure.

We began with some theory: the principles of foundation and triangulation, the benefit of a good work bench and appropriate tools.

We quickly saw these principles in action. The foundations: basalt crushed rock under a brick foundation covered with ant guard. The floor is raised to keep it accessible to check for termite damage, which should be held at bay by the rock and ant guard.

The floor was constructed before our arrival. The framing was laid and levelled and beams placed across and attached to frame from below. The cross pieces tie it all together. The lip here where the frame joins the beams allows for the placing of insulation.

















Notice how the triangulating pieces run opposite ways at each end.

The basis of frame of the Econospace is the Peter post. The peter post is designed for exterior and interior cladding, with space for insulation in the middle.

We made up the peter posts on a jig and nailed them together with 75mm flathead nails.

One problem you can encounter with conventional timber framing is thermal bridging, where the timber provides a bridge - points at which wood can transfer heat inside to outside. The peter post avoids this problem, as no part of the wood travels all the way through from inside to out.

With our peter posts ready, we built the frame. Firstly, we made a temporary floor and laid out 4 peter posts, lining them up with the foundation and measuring the distances carefully. 4 sheeting rails were nailed across, with one laid diagonally along the top for the sloping roof.


A diagonal cross-brace was added, running in the opposite direction to the diagonal roof rail. Two bottom rails were added.


Bracing beams were fixed at a single point, to allow them to pivot. Then we raised the wall and braced it in position.


The front wall was constructed in a similar way, except that the wall sat on the floor joists when raised. It is essential to accurately measure the width of the peter posts relative to the floor joist to ensure it fits.



With all four walls raised, we secured them and removed the bracing.

Playing Music on a Bike - Outrageous!

I love this kind of outrageous gadgetry. When I was a bike courier, people would kit their bikes out with over the top suspension and mountain biking gadgets, which on city streets just seemed a bit much. This is kids doing what kids do best. Making weird but cool stuff.

Concord School Garden

Concord School is a special school in Melbourne's north that's seeking to feed the entire school with the produce from their school garden. The design brief was six beds, two sleepers high - a bed for each group of students. It was a fairly cramped space to work in, but the beds have been staggered to maximise space while creating interesting flows around the space. I made the most of vertical growing opportunities by placing garden beds up against fences. I was pretty impressed by the transformation. There's ample room for wheelchairs, wheelbarrows and two people to walk side by side around all areas of the garden.


We built it over the Easter holidays, so the kids came back to school to find a brand new set of garden beds to work with. The year 10 and 11 horticulture teams are working in the garden and managing food production and composting. As we worked, grounds maintenance were making mulch out of trees that had been felled on the school grounds to be put down on the pathways. That's the kind of cycling of materials you hope that schools can implement for projects like this one.



Concord School decided to do away with their tumblers and compost bins and do all their composting in a bay system. We set this one up which looks pretty damn fine! That's me. I'm feeling good to be body tired and covered in a layer of fine dirt after a hard days work.

Vegetable of the month: Kale

I've grown Kale before, but never have I experienced such culinary delight from a leafy green vegetable. Fry it lightly with some lemon juice...mmmm. I'm now determined to plant a 'new for me' vegetable every month. This weekend was a winter's garden delight. I couldn't get enough of coriander walnut pesto, and carrots were ripe for the picking too.

A Canadian organic grower told me that kale was always the last wilted vegetable left at the farmer's market stand. I love Kale, though I'm sure millions of Canadians would roll their eyes in disdain.

Ruby Saltbush

A bushfood. You can eat the berries. These are in season at the moment, so I'm snacking wherever I find them. The fruits are sweet with a slight saltiness, they taste lovely though there's not much flesh to them. Apparently you can make a sweet drink by soaking them in water.

Things are usually harder and better than you imagine.

When I headed off to my Indigenous Bushfood Community School Garden project earlier this year, I thought I'd be posting regularly about permaculture successes, community renewal, breaking new ground in engaging young people in the politics and joys of growing their own food. I was full of big ideas and big energy, which kept me going through a first term of impending school closure, unbearable workplace politics, wild kids and boys who would greet me with challenges like, "I'm going to make your job impossible," and "You won't last a year here," and "Are we the worst kids you've ever taught?"

Our forays into the garden involved most of the class shouting, "I'm not walking down there...It's too hot...It's too cold...How come those other kids can just walk off?" Building projects involved groups of boys focused one minute, and the next hurling hammers into gum trees. Everything we planted died over the school holidays.

This term has been better. I cracked through the cement-like soil and planted some fruit trees with the little kids. Some of the seniors have been getting into throwing soil around and we're slowly creating beds. A bunch of them love jumping in the bus and heading to the hardware store for things we might need. This week, I found some street trees loaded with olives that we can harvest on our bike ride tomorrow. So we're chugging along.


Mostly what is getting better is that I'm getting to know my students and I really like them. The tough ones are really softies at heart, and a couple of them stand out for their beautiful openness, willingness and creativity. We've been on two trips to Melbourne and after a four hour train ride we ran around Melbourne after dark, exploring the Yarra, the Art Play playground, and finding things I would never have seen, was I not being led by a bunch of excited teenagers.


We've talked about suicide and families and how much it sucks to be a teenager and not have control of your life. We've visited Lake Boga and photographed dead carp on the dry lakebed and sunk in the mud of a salt lake while chasing each other around. They are a fun and funny bunch.

When the boys give me the finger now, I do this. They think I'm weird but it seems to be working. Flipping the bird doesn't seem quite as cool anymore!

I'm understanding very clearly why schools get me in to build the gardens for them. It's hard to be a teacher and create things with kids that take time and hard work and planning and that exist outside the known, understood classroom. But I'm persisting. I think some of them are starting to see growing and harvesting food as something I value and are willing to give it a try, simply because I'm into it. And that feels good.

Gravity Force Kitchen

Dateline recently featured a story on school meals in India. I particularly enjoyed the piece on Akshaya Patra's "gravity force" kitchen in Vasanthapura. Hare Krishna restaurants have done a fine job of feeding hundreds of people each day in this city, and are now shipping school lunches to feed 820,000 pupils a day in India.

The kitchen is truly something upon which to marvel. Dry foods, like rice and dhal are kept in silos on the roof and are fed down chutes into cauldrons on a floor below. There is also a food chopping level, where the food is also chuted down to a lower level for cooking. The cooked meals are then chuted a further level where they are wheeled in trolleys to a waiting fleet of vehicles to be delivered to schools within a 50km radius of the kitchen. This kitchen is like something I might have invented in my wildest 10 year old dreams. Except I might've added some employee slides as well.

The school lunch program seems to have successfully combined centralized and individual solutions to feed thousands of hungry school kids. Not every school can employ staff to cook fresh lunches each day. Nonetheless 820,000 kids are eating fresh, healthy meals that would put most Australian school canteens to shame. As Madhu Pandit Das, a Hare Krishna Missionary says, "We definitely feel that there is a divine touch in the food that comes out of these kitchens."

I must say I'm spoiled at my workplace. All school lunches are freshly prepared, and 3 times a week we are served stew, pasta or shepherd's pie with damper and johnny cakes. For the very reasonable price of $2 a meal.

Image from Akshaya Patra: Unlimited Food for Education