Unexpected Storm Derails Our Pole Barn Build

This week on OSRL. Work on the pole barn addition to our house build gets interrupted when we get caught off guard by an unseasonable storm. How's it going y'all? It is still windy out here. Windy like it has been and we've just been trying to work through the wind and just dealing with it as we can. Now if you're new here, my wife and I, we're building our own home off-grid here in the Arizona desert and if you've been catching our previous videos you know that we've been battling the wind for a while now. It's just it is what it is. It's springtime here in the high desert so it's just something we got to deal with. We got to deal with the winds. I got the rafters on the south side of our pole barn build but I still got to do the north side so I'm going to try and do that in between the winds but they've been wild. We've been getting the winds all last night and right into today. Today is just going to be full of wind but it's coming from the south so maybe it won't be too bad. I'm going to try and get some boards up here see how I can do. If the winds get too bad I can always go back to Cobb because there is a lot of Cobb that we need to do. Of course Yuvie is busy this morning. She's keeping guard. She's keeping something at bay. Since the winds had picked up yesterday and I really couldn't mess with the rafters I was helping Jess. Jess has been working on the Cobb whenever she can and she was almost out of dirt so I was busy sifting more dirt. I got a couple of cart fulls here that should keep her busy for a while. So like I said even if it's a little too windy for the rafters there's always something to do. Sifting dirt, working on Cobb, always enough to stay busy here trust me. It's a windy day. Very cool seeing you uh fly that kite earlier today. Usually you're just task after task so seeing you do something recreational like that was uh pretty cool. I was at the store and I saw these kites and I just got to thinking about when I was a kid and I used to fly kites and it was kind of fun. Yeah. So I thought I'd try it and you know it's been really windy around here lately. And uh flying it during that really windy day did not work out very well. No I was kind of curious to see what would happen. It kind of worked for a little bit but it was like a little too out of control I think. But it was fun. Remember when I was talking about how the weather is slowing down the progress on this build? Well there's no short of the delays. It has been raining all night long. And it was a rough night too. Like I think the rain, the sound of the rain was keeping me up. Then once I woke up I had a lot of things on my mind and I couldn't get back to sleep. Then leg cramp. Oh man and my leg is still hurting this morning. It was a pretty bad cramp and uh it's not feeling good trust me. But it's been raining all night and I'm kind of eager to see how much rain we got so far. Oh yeah look at this. So far we got almost seven tenths of an inch. Geez that's wild. Almost an inch of rain. Honestly I don't think any more work's gonna get done on the framing today because one it is a soggy mess but two I think it's supposed to be raining like all day. So there's no way I can get up on those ladders and work on the framing because it's just gonna be way too soggy out here. Maybe cop. Maybe I'll switch to cop. We're gonna see how this all works out. What a mess. What a mess. But uh you know can't complain about the rain. We had that big loss of water when our pipes broke and I can see right now it looks like the poly tanks are overflowing. Let's go check that out. So you can see with the overflow here the poly tanks are full. This water is going into the cistern. Absolutely fantastic. It's fantastic that we got a rainfall so late in the season because that'll will definitely help carry us over to the monsoon season. So this is absolutely fantastic. And really great news our IBC totes, the two by the hacienda, the one by the shed, they're almost all full. That's incredible because we have been using quite a bit of water. This should be excellent for getting us through the monsoon season. The crazy thing is is that this we might not be done yet. We might be getting rain throughout the day so we'll see we'll see what we end up with. I'm a little disappointed if we won't be able to get back onto the framing today but I'm very excited about getting all this extra moisture. This is fantastic indeed. Of course we had that big rainstorm last night and it's kind of raining off and on a little bit throughout the day but we're supposed to get hit again this evening and we're going to see what happens. Now it's a little too soggy out here to be working but if it doesn't rain then it might start to dry up a little bit and we might be able to get a decent amount of work done tomorrow. If it does rain then it's probably going to take a for all this to dry out and I might have to focus on the cob. All right so today is a beautiful new day. I love it. Now we did get more rain yesterday toward the evening and last night. Not a lot but we got a decent amount two-tenths of an inch. That's a decent amount for us over here. So things are definitely still pretty soggy which isn't so good for framing but for cob it's just about perfect. So unfortunately we won't have too much more framing done here but there is a lot of cobbing that needs to get done for this build so I might as well kind of work on that. Let me show you what's going on. All right so we're down in the root cellar and there is a bit of water down here. You know it's not sealed up quite yet but that's okay. It can get a little wet. You don't want it to get extremely wet. So you can see right here and this is one of the areas where I want to get that cob in place is there's a big hole right over here where one of the posts is going through the floor and it's sitting on top of the earth bags. So I'm going to get a bunch of cob and I'm going to fill this cubby. Kind of what I'm calling it a cubby. Probably dating myself with that terminology and I'm going to get that cubby filled and get that post sealed and cobbed. As you can see a bunch of water probably did get down through that hole then hit the bags and kind of ran down that wall. So I'm going to get that filled and sealed and if I have time I'm going to hit this wall as well because this wall is actually unfinished. There needs to be a lot more cob that goes into here. So this is another secondary area and as you can see a bunch of water got in through here and started running down that wall and you don't want that either. Now eventually there's going to be a whole building on top of this thing so it won't be even be an issue after a while but it still needs to get filled with cob and it takes going to take a lot of heavy rocky cob to fill it so I might as well do it. Jess has been down here doing a lot of the fine detailed work and she's really getting these walls pretty smoothed out. I mean the work she's doing here is fabulous but when it comes to quick heavy cob that's where my strengths lie. It's been a little while since I've been dealing with the pile here. This is the root of the problem right here. So the stuff I sifted for Jess is perfect for doing that smooth detailed work she likes. This stuff right here that I got is full of rocks and it would be really good to make a nice solid mixture to fill in that cubby. A lot of good size rocks. All right let's get to cobbing y'all. It's cobbing time. So as you can see I've been shoving some of that cob actually in back of that board so it's been more cob than I intended but that space is almost full and then I can finish flushing this out. I feel like you now. This is almost what you do. Now I gotta come in here and fart and then leave. Is that what I do? Yeah. Oh you're gonna start gassing it up. Well you're welcome to fart. You peeping? What's going on? I thought you're gonna put these in a vase. I've got some nice springtime flowers. Nice yeah. This one smells really good. Hyacinth and a couple of tulip plants. The garden soil pretty soft with all that rain? Yeah it is. Looks beautiful. I'm starting some wildflowers from seed and I kind of made these little I don't know you might call them like cloches but they're just glass bottles to kind of protect them from things digging because we had some birds kind of digging around in the mulch in here and it was disrupting things and this protects the seedlings. It also kind of keeps things moist and warm so it's working pretty well. And our chafe tree is starting to get some leaves too which is exciting. That's usually one of the last things to get the leaves. I think spring has sprung. Almost done. Yeah so for this dryer mix I barely used any water just like a splash. Farted. Achieved my goal. Okay can I leave now? Yeah get your other goal. Yes. Is it a better day for kite flying? Yeah. Look at that. That's going now. Dang it's really going. She's enjoying the kite flying too. She's keeping an eye on it. Okay so that is looking fantastic. Yeah I think it looks real nice. It doesn't look real nice but it's filled in real nice and tight. Looks very solid. I'm sure Jess will come in later as she's going around the wall and kind of smooth it out and make it look real nice but that's that's kind of what she does. That is packed solid tight. One thing checked off my to-do list. The cool thing about that is that's all done with water that was collected in that mixing tray in the bucket. So just from the rain that we got that landed in that tray I was able to mix that cob and get that packed in. Kind of cool. Well what a beautiful day and it doesn't look like we got that rain even though it was kind of threatening. It was threatening some rain but it didn't come. But I feel like I feel pretty good about what we did get. About an inch of rain. Yeah which is really unseasonable for us. Very unusual for this time of year. When you were growing up did you ever hear that rhyme April showers brings May flowers? I have heard of that. And that's true in some areas. Not so much here. No not here. But it's usually pretty dry. Very dry. Kind of the start of the dry season here. Yeah and that usually lasts from like March until the summer rains come which is usually like mid-July. So this was a nice surprise. Yeah we'll take it. So definitely a delay with the framing but that's okay because like I said uh perfect time to do some cob. So if you can't do one thing jump and do another thing. Yeah a little bit delay on the framing. We got I got a little bit done but it is what it is. We did get some water. Those poly tanks are full again. It was nice to see them overflowing and then I got some other things done that needed to get done. Got that cubby filled. That was very important and uh things are looking pretty good. I got a start on that wall that uh was unfinished so I got some cob in there. It should be dry in another day or so and then we'll be back out there getting that wood up there. So I'm very excited for that. Sometimes you get some delays but you know it's important to just get right back out there and keep on chugging along. All right y'all uh we'll catch in the next video. Bye. I'm surprised she hasn't collapsed to the ground yet. If you take the leg away she'll just fall.