16. Building an OFF GRID SOLAR HOME w_$3500 [ALL We Did in 4 Months]

After finishing the cabin we decided to build a workshop. We needed a cover space to help us continue building all the projects that we will build in the next years. We started four months ago with the goal to build a very affordable and well-designed space that could be built just by the two of us and that it can be moved elsewhere in the future. We started with the groundwork which we did all by hand. It was hard work but we saved the cost of renting an excavator. Then we poured our very first concrete slab. It was our first experience with concrete and as complete beginners we were very scared that day but overcame our fears and went for it. In the end it was easier than what we expected. Once the concrete was dry we started framing the structure which we completed in six working days. Finally we were able to install the solar panels at their final location after months sitting on the ground. Having them up high will help them produce more electricity and stay cleaner for a longer time. And in the latest episode we finished cladding all the exterior using translucent corrugated panels since we want this space to also work as a greenhouse to help us grow food during winter and to provide plenty of natural light to save on electricity. This week we will complete the exterior of the building. We will also be sharing all the total costs and finally after many weeks of working on it behind the scenes we released the workshop layout and structural kits so you too can build this workshop. All of this while celebrating that we have reached 100 000 subscribers all thanks to you. Today we're gonna be trimming the front door and the window. We haven't picked the camera for a couple of days because mainly it's been raining. We bought these pieces of metal that are bent on the side. So the idea is to put them here like this and attach it to the stud. That way it covers this gap that is between the exterior trim and the main stud. By the way I think we're gonna use rivets right Emiliane? Yes. Instead of screws just because they are smaller and nicer. There is a there's a property for sale here if you guys are interested. We believe it's better to leave the cut edge at the bottom so in case that it rusts the rust is already at the bottom and it doesn't go from the upside down. And to paint we of course leave the plastic so it protects the rest and it doesn't stay in any way. After nine I still wish you were mine Do the same It looks pretty damn good. I'm gonna go bring the actual door. Well not the door, it's the frame of the door because we ordered it also at the same time that we ordered the structure. So it was pre-cut and pre-drilled by blocking as you all know. And it's been waiting there on the other side of the property for a while now because we wanted to install the door after we did this trim of course. So I'm gonna go prick it up and probably assemble it today. I think we're gonna focus on the get it all finished and then move to the window. That's what Eugenia and I have decided. All right guys it's been a while without framing but it looks pretty straightforward. I think it goes like that. I didn't even look at the plan. I think we can figure this one out by ourselves. I'm gonna just start putting it together and probably screw it. Also I'm gonna clean it because it's been a while sitting there under the rain and it got a little bit dirty. I'm gonna start doing that. I am not 100% sure that it's gonna work out. This is the only part of the structure that I wasn't 100% confident that having it pre-cut was like a good idea you know because now I need to play with the hinge and make sure that I have enough room for the door swing to actually like open. That's why I wanted to wait until this moment to have the kit available so we could do our math and have it ready for you guys like with a possible mistake. But I don't know yet. It doesn't look too promising though. I'm gonna show you. This here is against the trim and then on this side I think we have like one centimeter a little bit more. It's exactly one centimeter. If I don't remember wrong that's what we asked for when placing the order for the structure so that's good and now I'm gonna just bring the hinges and see if it works because I mean hit the math based on the cabin and one centimeter sounds like a good number for me but I don't know let's see. Just started raining so we need to move fast to bring everything inside or in the shed. Rain is always good. Hinges let's see if they fit. I don't know man it looks like right now I'm not very confident that it's gonna work to be honest. All right guys so here is the deal. This time I'm gonna show you what's going on instead of just solving it and making it look that we didn't have any issues. This hinge as you can see has this cylinder. It does not fit there. That's the gap that we will have on the other side. I don't think we might. We might make it work and then I was here with Eugenia talking and it won't be that complicated to cut this so we can push this stud to that side but the biggest issue is we already have a cover for this. We need to try to make this work first without cutting and if that's not an option then with cutting as less as possible you know so we don't even need to cut the metal sheet because it's finished and it's very nice. See you guys later. I'm going to surprise Eugenia today. I got her a one-of-a-kind wall decor for the wall of the cabin from School Bliss and I hope she likes it. I have like 10 minutes to set it up before she comes back so I'm gonna try to have it ready for her so when she comes she can she can see it already assembled. School Bliss offers premium carved animal skulls as decor elements that you don't find pretty much anywhere else and they you know very important for us and no animals are harmed during the process. The skulls that they use are actually byproducts of the local Balinese agricultural industries and they turn these otherwise waste products into detailed artworks through a process that pays respect to the life of a beautiful animal. They started in Bali and they still continue to work with Balinese artisans so I'm gonna set it up and see if I have time to put it on the wall if not when she comes back I will ask her where to put it because I think we're gonna put it on the right side above the couch and I think it's gonna look nice. I think it was a success. I love it. I never thought that we would have something good enough to hang inside the cabin. And the size is perfect right? They have bigger ones but I think for the cabin that's the size right? All right should we put it? There? Or higher? Perfect. I think we are ready to install the door. Let's see if it works. I have made a thin piece of wood that I have installed behind the hinges and it's just basically so the hinge can open fully without hitting the door trim because if not the hinge wouldn't sit flat. Out of a nine millimeter plywood I carved down five millimeters I have left four and that thin piece of plywood is going to be in between the hinge and the door trim. I think we might need to cut the door for like two three millimeters only but um this is the closest that we can get to the door opening without you know adding any any extra layer and without cutting the door. So we have two millimeters. I don't think it's going to work but I mean I'm not gonna cut the door without knowing 100% sure that I need to cut it. Well we tried no? It looks good. Of course it doesn't close. Virginia you're leaving? It is just for we need to cut six millimeters. I don't know I mean we tried uh it looks pretty pretty good. It works well. It's a matter now of figuring out a way to cut this prefab panel. It's not gonna be easy and it's a pity because you know this this panel is perfectly square it's done in a computer you know and now I will need to cut both bottom tracks push this right the stud and then figure out a way that I can trim this diagonal so we can we can have it perfectly square. Found the lock. Almost. Almost. Do you guys think will it work? Have a try then. It does fit as you could see. It's a little bit lower than what we needed to and so you need to push the door a little bit down. No big deal because I'm gonna fix it now. All right guys we just received these two packages they contain a tool that we are very excited about because it will mean that we can do so many things that it's still we couldn't we couldn't do I mean we couldn't even design this type of structure on this type of furniture because we didn't have the tool to actually make it happen you know. So I'm gonna open it now show you guys it's a welding machine very excited about it we bought it from Adriana our friend Adriana you know his website from apmmachinaria.com or apmmachinaria.com or apmmachinaria.com he's a good friend of us and he has helped us in the past I don't know if you remember but um he has the best prices and if you're planning on buying a welding machine it's your guy. Look at this look at this little tiny thing man I mean it's like a purse man it's so small so nice very excited about it because we're gonna start building some structures and furniture and things like that with the steel and you know screw connections are fine for structures and then if you want to leave it exposed for like a furniture it makes no sense we haven't ever used a welding machine so it's going to be a learning curve with 120 amps you can easily weld four 4.5 millimeter stops we are going to be using this machine with our solar system it makes no sense to buy a machine more powerful than our system in this case this is around 3100 watts like at the full 120 amps we don't know exactly how it will perform connected to the inverter it's an electronic mask that will will protect your eyes when you start welding and when you are not welding then you can see I have tried welding once it wasn't any any good the main problem that I had is that the mask wasn't electronic so I couldn't see anything you know I know when you get used to it it's easy for you guys professionals out there you guys excited we accept bets and what we're gonna be building with this morning guys it's been raining for like three four days straight so we haven't actually done much work here today it's raining a little bit but I think we're gonna go inside and try to cover this door so we can have this waterproof you know because right now it's raining inside from the door and through the window we also have been working inside the cabin editing videos and I'm working on another project that I have in California so it's been good it's been a good three four days but today I think we're gonna try to cover that door we're gonna see what we want all right guys we finished the interior I was double checking some dimensions now I need to remove this pencil mark here so I'm gonna go find a rubber but it's looking I mean it's looking so good look at these guys now we go for the exterior but before that I think we're gonna take a break wow it looks so good it feels so solid man Eugenia what are you doing oh man I lost you already she has like two minutes attention span for me and once I I missed her for a few seconds that wasn't me that was the wind nothing happened I think all right I'm gonna leave the camera because it's very windy and I don't like our brand new door hitting things there is one missing here what do you eat? Who ate it? tea homemade bread strawberries with sugar and orange juice right only orange juice you're lying coffee for her because if not she doesn't follow me has been passed out here lolita you judge for yourself tripod Eugenia waiting for me to stop doing the silly here it's not waterproof all right guys it's raining like crazy I just put the plastic back on the camera hopefully it's good enough today it's window day but Eugenia is taking care of her plants Eugenia we need to finish the window waiting for me or taking care of your plants are they growing and what is this this one this is strawberry strawberries and then we have tomatoes right tomatoes are going big window day we're gonna start window day we're gonna start trimming the whole window and then we're gonna be custom making a windowsill well windowsill pan we're gonna be using a leftover profile that we had from the which we knew that we were going to use so it's not leftover anymore lolita so now we're wondering two questions we're gonna be making the seal pan out of a 10 centimeter l angle if we put this the 10 centimeter from here because Eugenia and I want the window flush to the inside that means that the seal pan will end here which is not ideal you know it will end somewhere here which is not ideal because then the whole purpose of the seal pan is to get the water out and ideally it would be like cantilevering a little bit out so all the water that hits the seal pan goes out i'm gonna show you guys something very interesting this l angle has been sitting over there something like this you know like in the middle of grass and like plants and water and everything you know and as you can see it's very dirty and it's been sitting there since we built the cabin a year a year and a half and no rust whatsoever just showing you because sometimes i i read comments and i don't want you know i don't want people thinking that this thing is going to rust in like a year and a half because it does not this is the proof if this is covered there is no way water will get to it that is this thing won't rust anyways that's why i wanted to show you guys getting ready more plants i have like a 10 minute period if i don't pay attention to her like for 10 minutes then this is what happens you told me that i had this free time to have the sail ready because you didn't need help for the seal pan all right guys this is looking good this is what you call a straight line done by hand i will not recommend you to try this at home but if you do remember that it's possible the camera just died while i was saying this so if you are gonna attempt to do this you get used to it or i do and what i always recommend to people when they ask me in person is uh sounds silly but um i close one eye and then i make sure that i go the other way around so i can show you i close one eye and then i make sure that the disc is in line with the line that i drew and then just go little by little and then and then once the disc goes inside and it's been cutting for like a few seconds it gets really hot and it's super easy to cut it's like butter and some people laugh when i say it but uh if you close one eye then and you are seeing in 2d which is kind of crazy but um like if you try to close one eye and you know try to touch something that you're seeing not here you know because i cannot do it my hand is if i do like this to close one eye and try to touch this there is no way i mean you can of course at the second time but the first time is very complicated and that's because you are seeing in 2d you need both eyes in the right angle to see perfectly in 3d so if you close one eye and look from above you are just seeing in 2d and it's very easy to follow the line pepe's tip here the idea here is this is the seal pan right now it's just an L and the idea is to somehow bend this over there so if the water hits here and somewhere here it goes out then this corner we we will seal it ideally you can get these seal pans done in a place that like bends aluminum and things like that by the way we don't have any shop close to us so every time that we have to do this is so it's either do it ourselves or i don't know i don't i don't know where can i go in here in portugal to to get this done i know in los angeles but not here anyways i will try to bend 1.9 here and in order to do that i will do a cut 1.9 inside or a straight line and in order to bend it i will flip it cut like i don't know like very little like half a millimeter so the the steel leaves a little bit of room for me to bend it hopefully it holds in the cabin i was able to do it so i think i'm gonna be able to do it here it is very tight but i tried before and it kind of fits so tighter the better because less water is gonna go in i put the membrane underneath and then a line of silicon over there just to have double protection and i'm gonna try to put it in i'm gonna wait until i'm gonna wait a little bit until the paint dries on the edge that i just cut before installing it now jenny just told me that the lunch is ready so i'm gonna see i wish you guys could smell through the videos we have salad from the garden and then i've been cooking this morning chicken from one of the neighbors it's been cooking for like four or five hours while we were working Evgenia has made potatoes and now it's refilling the soap which we really don't like this soap dispenser from ikea Asten you want to say hi man you want chicken you want some chicken Evgenia you're putting way too much there the next project this is not working out as we expected when we ordered this from Bloken i requested it like this because i thought that this would be strong enough but it is not it's super wiggly as you can see and then it doesn't hold the rectangle shape because these screws they actually work as rivets they don't work like a like compressing the both layers of steel they just stay there like a rivet which is great for structures but it's not so great for a window i mean being honest these profiles are not designed to build windows with them you know this is something that we're doing because we are gonna save money but i don't think anybody else out there is building windows out of this type of profile we need to figure out because we were planning on putting glass but glass won't cut it because i mean i don't want to have the glass doing the reinforcement of this movement you know and so we're gonna be searching for plexiglass should we look at the plexiglass guys we have a very important question to ask you should we put this or not yes or not i say no but uh for the outside no way that the circle is just 100 perfect i wouldn't put it like like look from afar a little bit more and it's so clean without it isn't it do you like it with i like both oh it looks so clean the circle man we love to hear your thoughts about it let us know because we really don't know like we are fighting and you and i are fighting and we need you guys to go in between punching each other or punching each other no we are anyways we are disgusting you are the point i know i know the people get the point we don't fight we don't hit each other we're discussing whether to put it or not and i say no and she says yes there is only one though if i mean if we have two maybe we could do both like both sides i would say yes but just one i don't know man maybe in the inside that's that's that's what i propose middle ground yes but on the inside this is the next day and find a supplier for the plastic that we need for the window we already made the purchase and they're gonna be cutting it to size so we're gonna go pick it up and also we need to buy more material for the cabinet that we're going to be building next the cabinet and electrical pretty much complete the workshop we're excited because yesterday for a moment i thought it was going to be very complicated to find the plastic for the window but um it was easy it's where we're going now new day guys look at this sky it is crazy you can see it let me see it's like orange i think there is like a dust storm or something and it reminds me to when we went to canary island for like three months in the van to surf that were good times and they have these kind of storms coming from africa they're called like kalima i think is their code and it was like this even worse for like two weeks straight good memories man anyways we're gonna offload everything that we bought and start with the window very exciting times because once we finish the window it means that we have finished completely the workshop on the outside we can start working on the inside all dust from from the sky i mean it happens something similar like a couple of months ago but it wasn't that bad and then the whole roof is like dirty hopefully it rains and cleans the whole building off everything is already uploading i have her with me today yeah you're excited as peng is also ready he thinks that we're going to travel every time that we open the door this is where he is like all right are we going to the beach or what look at these colors man they're like fantastic we're in the middle of the desert look at this this is not like color corrector or anything it's like this is how we're seeing it it was home for a while we also bought these two wooden sawhorses for eugenia or like a temporary thing to put all the plants so i can get back my brand new sawhorses that she stole from me no i just said that i could use it so this is the plastic that we bought is metacrylate and it has two faces this upper face is treated for the uv rays so it doesn't go yellowish with exposure of the sun can you imagine her working here i mean i can you know plants are growing did we get anything yes we got one here already sprouted there are more little plants here and that has been only what three days no two three days many of you have been asking about why didn't we cover the inside and i mean that's the whole reason why we're not covering the inside and this workshop is going to be a workshop and a greenhouse in order to let light in we cannot cover the walls and we designed the structure to look good exposed from the inside you know there is a design behind it if you want to build this workshop and you won't be using it for growing vegetables like we are then by all means i will cover it you can just put like cement boards or like drywall or anything i mean it's a structure of a house so you can finish it like the cabin with osb or plywood you name it you can do anything but i really like the transparency of the exterior panels and i really like seeing the structure in the inside i mean covering this would be like a crime so if you are gonna cover it if you buy the workshop and you're gonna cover it please do not send me the picture like if you build the cabin and you don't make it black please do not send me that picture i mean you can i will appreciate the picture coming cannot be white white is for like an industrial building you know like white metal i mean like gray desaturated green wood designing building and sharing this workshop with you has been an amazing adventure that we will never forget and be forever grateful for all the love and support that we have received from you during all these months to make you realize that a project like this could be built by yourself while being affordable we wanted to take a moment to share all of our costs with you we spend a total of 3500 us dollars in material around 3255 euros divided in 630 dollars in the concrete slab 1450 dollars in the steel structure which could have been less if we would have ordered it in standard length profiles and 1400 us dollars in all the exterior finishing we still have plenty of work to do in the interior and are very excited to show it to you all we hope this helps and inspire the many of you that want to build something similar but don't know where to start