He created prefab kit to self-build underground homes on a budget

It does have a long driveway. Is that new? Yeah that's new. Yeah okay she's building up. Oh wow. Super cheap. That's cool. That whole thing is new. Hi there. Hi. You've changed. I mean we see there's there's a new hole in the ground here right? Yeah this is when you guys you probably pull off that video and show the hillside last year. It was just like a hill. You asked me so what do you want to do with this? I said well I want to turn it into a hobbit village. The structure that I'm going to show you in here is 42 feet basically. This is how far it comes back right to here and then I'm going to be building four hobbit houses north east south west around that hill over there. So there'll be one facing kind of like each direction. This is going to be the biggest one right here and then you'll be able to go from this structure right here you'll be able to go from this structure to that one. So it's going to be connected like a whole tunnel hobbit tunnel. Yeah the big thing is is I wanted to create a hobbit type underground structure. You can call it a hobbit safe house. You could do it as a mother-in-law suite but what my goal was was to be able to create a structure more affordable and easier to build for people. I thought a lot about this because I did the Quonset hut so much. Now you see that we're underground inside a Quonset hut. Exactly. I got all the bedrooms. The Quonset hut's a little bit it seems easy and it kind of is but you're at the mercy of the people that supply the Quonset huts. Then you got to learn how to put them up and you know they're high and all this stuff and they're kind of scary because we put them up numerous times but for the average person I mean even us as construction guys it takes a good couple times to really get the feel but the the big key was I thought how could I make an easier structure because really the Quonset hut and this structure is just a form that you're going to spray on right. You can see what I how I created the structure it's literally the easiest thing you could imagine. These hoops that I made these arches I had these fabricated out of a 24 foot long piece of galvanized pipe. The size that comes out of a 24 foot with a full arch is actually 12 feet wide is what you get. So that determined everything for me because I want to have it fairly high so this is almost nine feet tall in here but literally when I poured this concrete that day I went and picked up these hoops that I'd had this company bend them for me. These are the arches I got 21 of these they are nine feet tall because I'm doing something that I've never done and I haven't seen anybody do I had to really really think it over. This is the receiving post these are going to go two foot on center into the concrete. These got to be level we're trying to make a fairly straight wall and while you're pouring the concrete you set all those posts in there exactly two foot on center when the time tunnel and then those posts are here so when you bring these big hoops over here you're just basically dropping them right onto those receiving posts and you're going like that and dropping them on and like a kid could do it. Me and Michael put them in in one hour and then we had a big skeleton basically at that point we just put these all on in one hour it worked out perfect these are all sitting on two foot centers and now we're going to screw metal roofing on top of this whole system so we're just laying these panels on and screwing them on we'll go all the way around it's going really easy like a half an hour only we got these three panels on maybe maybe 45 minutes to get all these four panels on we're going to work our way up to go over and play with it and then it took us another six hours to screw this metal roofing on so you were trying to come up with the probably a first pre-fab system for underground houses yeah if people want this structure they'll get my video program it'll come with engineered drawings of a structure I'll send you 21 of these hoops and then I'll help the person source out the roofing supply where I get the roofing it's nationwide and you'll know exactly what to do and you'll have every step all 10 steps on how to do this yourself so far me and Michael have 10 hours of labor in this structure basically 10 hours assembling this structure so we got all this completed and it's not that scary because the really hard tasks involved in here are for instance the concrete I had to hire that out myself the spray foam you hire that out by any insulation company does that so you know that was like day four really day four spray foaming everything this is the fascia so this is kind of like a retaining wall we'll end up shot creating all underneath here I also had to hire out the shotcrete for example that had to been done by a shotcrete company happening today four hours of shotcrete would be done those are the only three scary parts that people don't know how to do they don't need to know how to do that you hire the professionals and my idea is to get people beat to be their own contractor they don't have to hire a contractor which it ends up costing them double shotcrete is concrete with yeah it's just blowing through a pump just shooting it out there now in that we have that helix steel mixed in there so now that's a rebar replacement the rebar replacement's very important that people realize it's not an additive to the concrete to make it stronger it literally replaces rebar so you don't need any you don't need any rebar because rebar for people we've met who've done like dome homes rebar for a whole home it's taken like a year for them to do it themselves like it took a long time for the couple in Oregon we met I know this structure here we counted the actual days is under 30 from dig out you could actually do it faster I had other jobs going on stuff I was doing so I didn't make it all at once you know so this almost looks like a shipping container it looks kind of like a shipping container because this metal itself has a contour that replicates a shipping container but what it is it's actually 24 gauge metal roofing and this piping is normally used for greenhouses yeah greenhouses and it comes in all different kinds of thicknesses you are using products for other things and you are just coming up with something that is like a prefab system for hobby houses well you know I thought a lot about this because I did the Quonset hut so much and you can imagine how could I do this thing the same way I don't know how I even just all of a sudden thought well you know I think I saw one of those garages that have metal pipes in their square tubes and they got joints and they're all screwed together and there's like a big mechano set and then they put all the metal roofing on it so I thought well why don't I do that but I want to have the arch because for one thing it's the strongest structure to shock create on and it's the more dirt you put on it it becomes just super strong right but I don't like the idea of the straight wall and then all that weight it doesn't distribute it balance like nature does in a circle I mean that's what I was going to ask you because we've done stories with people who have buried shipping containers structurally I mean does that make sense no it doesn't make sense because you're burying a shoe box and it's so funny because the guy that owns this surplus place he goes Dave we tried to bury a shipping container last year because I wanted to do the same thing like have a man cave he goes we got it half buried and it just crushed into nothing it fell in so the only way to bury a shipping container properly is to shotcrete it spray foam and shotcrete it and why did you pick these materials is that because this is a really affordable material it's because it's just a standard roofing it's a standard roofing and I also picked this high profile so I could slide all my conduit in there it gave me a nice big gap I ran all my conduit behind that post in these gaps right I got a pipe here that's just a hot line my actual water coming in from outside it comes in behind this pipe as well I do have it plumbed in this back corner for a toilet and I have plumbing for here for a shower once this is no longer a shop it'll become a little apartment or something right but essentially how I'm going to do my hobbit houses is I'm going to stick with about this size and then I'll have essential I have another tunnel right beside this one about six feet apart wherever I want to put a round hole through here run tunnel I'll walk into that other structure and that'll be say the kitchen now I stayed in a hobbit house in Washington and someone had made one and it was plenty big and it was only 30 feet long so and it's very similar to the same height and everything so you've created an affordable underground hobbit prefab right put it this way somebody could build a house for a guest house where they could build something like this but it's got some great value because now you have a place to go let's say if you're in one of these tornado villages you're in any sort of like natural disaster area and you are now out of harm's way from a fire for example you can also use it as a root cellar because this structure is going to stay about 65 degrees all year round so if you've gotten used to the whole rounded thing I mean you have a lot of rounded structures right could you go back to a square home no I don't I don't like them the insides really changed because I did finish it the last time you guys videoed in here the whole upstairs was under construction it was a big mess oh yeah oh it's done when I first got this place they had straight walls in here I built this kind of serpent wall I call it because it's kind of shaped like a snake you know like that it's got a full circle on the inside of a six foot radius that accommodates this six foot staircase and then I built this upper deck up here and then I'm like okay I got to make the upstairs to accommodate my kids when they come here there originally that was just storage upstairs so this is all new this whole curve I have going on in here this is the the corridor of the whole area to where you have access to that other stairwell you got access to this bedroom here and the other one here and then the doors are done yeah it's kind of interesting how this works is it goes like that it acts like regular door and then the whole thing slides out of the way you know and the reason I did that is because you can't slide the door this way because you hit that right and you also can't open it like this because it hits right here so I was toying with the idea and I thought well how about I just do that and figured a way to make it two different styles of doors in one and then you can see what I did with the staircase it's like a tunnel going down there it does feel like a tunnel it's tiny yeah it's only 28 inches wide I wanted that greek feel they got these little tunnels and these little places to go and it's kind of like this is all concrete you know so that's the feel I wanted you know very inviting going into a curved area it's a bit of a hobbit staircase yeah it is yeah and then come over on this side wow look at that yeah this is my daughter's room are these doors yeah I built bunk beds out of doors they're naughty all their doors are really cool so she can have her friends they come over they go up here they climb up there and they have enough for one or two kids on each of these bunks I wanted to utilize this highest point for the walkway because once they get to that point they can almost walk up there in this little area it comfortably sleeps five kids right and then they have a bat pool here they slide down you want to come out they slide down this can you get up there well it's difficult for an adult because in order to get up there you got to go through this space so the kids crawl up there no problem it's very easy and then actually my daughter and her friends they they actually climb up this pole and they use this as a ladder and get up in there you know so this was all your design you wanted to have a five person bunk bed well one day when the kids were over here I just had an open room and I said girls I'm gonna make you bunk beds above here and this one girl she's like Dave can you put a bunk bed over there too and one over there and one over there and then can you put a zip line here and I started laughing I'm like yes I'll do all that so then I thought that's actually a good idea she gave it me the idea of putting a bunk bed there as well and one there and one there you know so it just kind of kept on going you know and I could do more but so far it's good enough I love it I've never seen anything like it yeah it's very simple but it's strong as hell because this one pipe holds everything up the rest is screwed to the wall so it's super strong and then actually this four by four actually supports that whole bed and this side this one beam right here but as you can see that beam is actually connected to this post so it's super strong this one's cradled into the wall here this one's cradled into that wall it's not finished quite yet what made you decide to use doors for bed framing for one thing they're already really strong the only other option would be to do plywood or to do slats like two by four slats and then put the beds on there and you kind of look through but when I started thinking about that you know I got those two doors I think that would make the best bed because doesn't it look cool right it's they're actually made out of naughty alder like just like these are and I get those from that surplus place I was telling you but I get these doors if you ordered an audi auto door like that you're looking at like 700 bucks I get them for like 100 bucks every one of the doors I have upstairs is this door but I put the door going with the slope of the dome that's how I decided which way to hang the door on each location they all go with the dome you know but these doors are actually insulated windows somebody ordered these doors but they made the wrong curve so basically they're a $3,500 door but I bought them for 300 bucks each and I wanted to get away from trim so I made these openings fit exactly the door size so I don't have any actual trim on these doors if you notice and they're perfectly cut so when the door is shut you don't really hardly have any gap in here now the last time you're here the staircase was this wide so I built this wall on top of the staircase in order to accommodate a bathroom in here so this bathroom is what you call a wet bathroom the whole thing can get soaking wet see this door has got tile on it oh wow the whole thing yeah so this whole thing can get wet in here it's a very big procedure to make this thing 100% waterproof it's got two shower heads in it and it's don't you love this it looks kind of like a storm like a beautiful the clouds you know this tile is just beautiful cool door look at that shape you had to though because the dome right yeah and I made a compound miter here so literally when this door shuts it actually seals it seals because the angles it's tight so that door doesn't even leak because of that angle which is important because it's a wet bathroom yeah but you can see how you need to be able to do your own building and designing because you have to deal with like these weird shaped doors and angle look at the angles on the dome yeah I know it's it's tricky and and that's what this this actually is very involved this bathroom because there's so many different angles to tie into these walls it's tricky but you know if I didn't use the staircase I would have the wall here and you couldn't use it by me using this 16 inches of the staircase I was able to get this extra height here it's the only way to really do it you don't stop building you're designing right oh yeah I got I got a lot of other stuff going on too do you just like to always be creating this is where I build a tiny house on my spare time I always like something going on somebody asked me recently to build them a tiny home just because I built that for that friend of mine yeah I really liked it so then when I was done I'm like I cleared out this whole area here so I could put a tiny home up on blocks and then the trailer comes in and backs in there and the trailer lifts up and drives away it's like a little barn structure yeah it's a barn style but I like that because that's why I can put that curve in there oh so you have some curve to it well not yet oh and the inside is where you'll put the curve the inside's roof so what I do here is I do a curve all the way like this a skeleton it's just plywood but essentially it looks like a perfect arch I just cut them there I use a template and there's only two pieces of the curve there's one the bottom one on the top and you use the exact mirror image on that side so you're basically replicating about 40 pieces that are just two different sizes and then you put the tongue of groove on I wanted the height here I wanted the height here it's got six foot five here but I also did I also wanted the height in the upstairs too so by doing this system here it's a lot more strength than having a four by four you got a lot of strength with this these arches the way they are it adds strength but it still gives you the height in both locations you know just the final on the tiny home just going out today the one I did for that friend of mine she loves it it has a u-shaped kitchen in here gotta put the glass in once I get there in those cabinets living room area nine foot five by eight feet here and then you got stuff there about five feet so there's enough room for a big couch in there really got the loft upstairs now we got the bathroom there so this is what they call a barn door bifold and interesting I never seen one until just recently but anyway here's a bathroom this is what you call a wet bathroom the whole thing can get wet you got the drain there and the floor in essence you walk through the shower to use the toilet but I asked the girl I said do you like it she goes I love it Dave she goes because I like the fact that the toilet's hidden in the back that door a little stair system to go upstairs here we go and we got a little simple railing system and we have a round ceiling which you know how much I love that it's a little extra work to do a round ceiling but it's worth it it really changes everything you know the thing as people say oh you're so creative but the reality is is everybody is creative if they knew how to build stuff then you can kind of go oh I can build anything and once you can build anything yeah then you can be like you can be creative yeah but you have those skills so for you it's pretty easy to yeah I mean I've been building since 1990s you started with like a parent or no I actually went my wife and I when I first got married and we moved to a place in Canada on a lake there her parents were building a little cabin so I'm like I want to build mine so I built a little cabin for my wife and I and that's where it all started my building in 1990 and then I actually ended up building cabins because I really loved building I ended up building cabins for a lot of people on the lake over the period of seven years I became really good at it yeah okay so what I'm planning on doing this is my existing tunnel right here then when I walk through that round circle I'm going to have a long tunnel that goes all the way to this opening on this side it'll be big round door here I'll have the other tunnel on that side and the other one on that side they'll have their round windows on it and then this is going into the existing structure and then there'll be five tunnels that access a bedroom got an extra bedroom it could be an office then you got the bathroom and there's a kitchen here's a bunk room here's a master bedroom so did you when you bought the property were you thinking I want to make a hobbit village no but I always wanted to build a hobbit village it was it's been a dream forever but I couldn't find the property ever since I've seen the movie I thought man I'd love to build that because I like building stuff like that and plus remember I built the undergrounds so I'm like if I build a hobbit village like that I already know how to do it I know how to make it waterproof super strong ventilated all the stuff you need we've got some you've got the sprinkler on there oh is that the sprinkler is that right yeah come on okay now now come yeah yeah on that hill over there the four that I'm having I'm actually not putting the entrance on the on the end I'm putting the entrance here in the center you have bathroom bedroom on this side and on this side is kitchen and living room that's the exit eventually so you already have the hole cut out yeah I planned it this way because when I go to when I go to dig up to this building and pull away them I don't want to have to try to cut through that much shotcrete so what I did was I made a cold joint here essentially so this is a metal band of eighth inch steel goes around so that's going to be exact same rough coat as that I built those two things I had the same company bend me these half circles out of a 24 foot piece of pipe and then I also have this vent here which is my convection air system which is natural pulls air in from the front of the structure and goes out there circulating air continuously in here they'll have guillotine vents on them that they'll shut down if you don't want to have as much air in my undergrounds if you remember I had those bags of plastic they were always moving you would think there's a mechanical fan sucking air in but it's not it's because the structure is warmer inside it's sucking in the cool air from outside and it's evacuating it through the higher side these structures are kind of hurricane proof fireproof well realistically for one thing you have a very good concrete structure that is strong as you can get and then it's covered with five feet of dirt earth you know so there's nothing that really can get that I mean if you had a ridiculous earthquake maybe you know something might crack it a bit but wouldn't you like to be in here if you had a tornado instead of in a house you can't pull that out of the ground I mean obviously you got to be aware of the water level if you've got flooding going on you make sure that you put this on the highest part of your land you got to make sure you know how to do the drainage really know how to get rid of that water on my I have two layers of different types of waterproofing and then I also have an umbrella of a pond liner over the whole structure two feet below the earth I got three layers of different water protection long story short in my case it cost about 40,000 between 40 and 45 and that did everything and that even did my sculpting of my land up there and all the all the the sod that I put on the grass so everything's there this little setup I'm just making for a simulation each arch will come in four pieces there's two straight ones at the bottom that's where they they go in and then these are the two center ones that'll create the arch so just screwing these in here I just drilled some holes real quick I'm just using some self-tapping screws that just drills right in there so we got the first one people me and Michael are very excited about this because you're gonna see how easy it is okay you go ahead put your slider in there look at that that's what we're shooting for right there now this is how simple it is I'm saying when you're putting up another type of structure called a quonset hut it's way more involved like you need a crane you know this this way is very simple I'm in slide her down buddy get foot out of the way for these sort of prefab for hobbit houses are you gonna try to patent something I've had a lot of ideas in my life and I've tried to patent and did some patents this time last year there was a hill there and I'm like you know what people just do what they want to do I'm not after that I have a really good idea that people can learn from me how to do this easily