We Needed To Do THIS Before Building Our New Earthbag Wall

This week on OSRL. We are just about ready to build the final wall of our house, but when I encounter a painful situation, we have to ask, am I going to be up to the physical task at hand? How's it going everyone? Welcome back to the domestead. Now if you're new here, my wife and I were building our own home off-grid here in the Arizona desert, and if you caught our last video, you know I finished up the south side on the built-in greenhouse portion of our house. I'm very excited. Got all the vents in place. It's all painted. It's all looking absolutely fantastic. Okay, so pretty soon we're going to be starting here on the east side of our house. It's going to be a nice earthbag wall going here, and once we're done with this wall, we'll have all of our walls complete. Very exciting, but I'm going to need help for that. Jess is going to be out here, and we're going to knock this out together, but while I'm waiting for her to be ready to help build this wall, I got to get up on top, and I got to paint the top portion of our roof. Once I get that top portion painted, then I can finish putting up the roof. So there's going to be a lot going on here. Definitely no time to waste. Let's get to it. What do you want? Daddy's up there. Good morning. Well, got a lot of progress done yesterday. I got that whole side painted up. Got a nice coat on there. Now I got to get this side painted up. It's going to be a little trickier because I don't have a roof over here, so I'm going to throw a board up there, get on top, and that's how I'll try and paint from there, and then somehow I'm going to have to try and get that middle painted, but I'm going to have to act quick because we've been getting a lot of wind out here lately, and today is no exception. The winds are supposed to be pretty high, much too high to be up there trying to paint, so I'm going to try and get what I can get done here early in the morning. Wish me luck. Well, I was able to get some painting done. Not a lot. Not as much as I'd like to. You know, it's already kind of tricky being up there, but with the winds, I just don't think it's very safe, so I'm going to have to take my board down and that's it for painting today, unfortunately. The winds have just been too crazy, but you know what? Spring is almost here. I don't think it's too bad to get a little start on some spring cleaning, so there's definitely always something to do around here. So I got a lot of plastic down here. I'm actually now in the underground bedroom, so when I've been working on putting those panels up for the greenhouse, I kind of strip them of the plastic coating and just toss it down here, just to kind of keep it out of the way from the work area. But since it's so windy outside, I figured I'd take some time, get some of these plastic drinking bottles, stuff them full of this plastic, and then we'll make some bottle bricks. So we don't actually use plastic drinking bottles. We go strictly on rainwater over here, but sometimes we collect these from family and friends, and then we can use it for our builds. I'll put the label in there once it falls off. You gotta stuff that down nice and tight, and it's ready for the next piece of plastic. All right, first bottle brick done. Real nice on the top, real solid. Down here, it's a little squishy. So it's my first time doing this in a while. I probably could have got a little bit more down here, but otherwise, nice solid brick. I actually used up quite a bit of material. Might not look like it, but I used quite a bit of material, and I stuffed it all in this one bottle. Honestly, a few bottles and this might all be gone. All right, well, I'm happy to report that the bottle bricks I've been making lately have been turning out much, much better. All the way solid, that's what I like to see. But what an excellent thing to do on some of these windy days when it's just a little too windy to get some work done outside and get some work done inside. I am on a mission. Jess was out earlier today, and she saw some windows and by the side of the road. She thought that would be an excellent addition to maybe pick those up. So that is what I am doing right now. I'm headed out to where she saw those windows. I'm going to see if they're still there and try and pick them up. So wish me luck. So I got the windows, and you can kind of see them back there. I'll show you them later for sure. But man, they are some almost back home. Nice little score. All right, so I'm back with those windows. Man, there were five windows out there. Two really large ones that I just did not think would fit in the back of here, or they might, but like that's it. So I opted for the three smaller ones. And by smaller, I mean, they're still pretty big. I'll just kind of show you real quick. I mean, those are some decent sized windows. And I was thinking after I picked these up, maybe I could go back at the larger ones, but those were already gone right away. Someone pulled in right after me, picked up those windows. So the fact that we got these, incredibly fortunate. I am definitely grateful. Don't mean to be greedy. If someone else needs those other ones, they can have them. That's fine. We're lucky we got these. So I'm happy. Hey, Yuvie, off. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. It's a very low wind day. So yesterday was crazy with the wind. Today, very calm, as you could tell. But tomorrow, the winds are going to pick up again. And it would be a really good day to get up there and do some painting. And I will, if there's time. But right now, I want to get ready for laying earth bags. That's really the next big important thing. So I'm going to start building the forms for the doorways so that when we start laying bags, we can just go right into it and we'll have space for the door. So that's what I'm going to do right now. Watering time. Now it's feeding time. Be careful. That's a goldmine you got there. All right. Good morning. I got a couple of my boards made. I need to make a couple more. I'll be doing that today. I was going to set these up right away, but I don't think I'm going to. Today is going to be really windy again. I just don't see the point of putting up the forms if they're just going to blow right over. So I might wait till tomorrow to do that. But I'll get them built and ready to go today. I was really hoping to start on the bags. I don't know. We might still be able to do that. But we'll see. The wind's definitely holding us back. You know, sometimes you make real good progress out here, but sometimes just the weather conditions, they can hold you back a little bit. But we'll see. All right. I got all my boards assembled. Everything's looking real good. Now I just got to put them together. Then they'll be ready to put up when the wind dies down. All right. Well, I'm getting some wood cut so I can put these panels together. And the wind is pretty strong today. It actually blew out one of our greenhouse panels. As you can see here. Now, I mean, it's pretty fortunate. I think I'll be able to fix this. But you can see that's why I added these other anchor points over here to really keep these panels locked down. And it's working really well. Obviously, I missed an anchor point. I probably could have put one here. So we'll have to get this fixed when the wind dies down. But it's kind of crazy because, I mean, it was locked in along the bottom edge here and the side edge. But if these aren't anchored down with screws, I mean, they will fly off. Good morning. Good morning, UVA girl. You got me. You got me. All right. Good morning, everyone. Well, as you can see, we survived the winds. And today should be a lot less windy. So I'm really excited about that. We could go ahead and finish up some of these things we got going on here. So I want to put together those forms. Now that I've built the walls, I want to put them together. Maybe we'll install them right away. I got to fix this panel and brace that up. Definitely got to get that done. Then we'll be in a good spot for laying bags, which I'm really excited about. All right, let's get this done. So I want to see if I can just kind of push this back into place. I'm sure it's probably not going to be that easy because nothing ever is. But we'll see. And hopefully I don't need to replace the panel. Hopefully it hasn't done too much damage. Nope, I feel like this is not going to work. I have to get it in the slots on both the bottom and the side. And there's no way I'm going to do it. I have to pull this off, get it back into place and put the screws back in. All right, I think we're in place. I'm just going to put the screws in and that should hold for a bit and then I'm going to prep a couple more anchor points. Can you look with your lady eyes? What exactly? Never mind. I found it with my man eyes. I can find things too. Anchor this down and don't have to worry about it flapping around anymore. It'll stand up to the toughest winds. I'm just kidding. Please don't test that out. Our normal winds are fine. All right, this is going to be a two person job. I got Jess out here with me now. What's up Jess? Oh yeah, it's the star of the show. All right, flip this up. The real star is coming. The real star of the show. Yippa girl, I got something for you. Yuffie, want some fruit? You want that? All right. Okay, not a fan of fruit today. All right, good morning. Man, I am really excited we got these forms built and put together. It's all ready to go for when we're ready to start laying bags. Now, I want to give a big shout out to Jess for helping me get these things put together, for helping me move those windows. That was fantastic. I'm really grateful. She's actually dealing with quite a bit of pain right now. Her leg is really hurting her. She's probably got like a pinched nerve or something like that. And it's just shooting pain down her leg. So she's been dealing with that for quite a while now. And it's causing her to lose a lot of sleep. So she's got it kind of rough right now. But I'm thankful for her getting out here and definitely being able to help me with all the stuff going on. If y'all could, just let her know your support down below for having her get better. Hopefully she gets better soon and then we can start laying those bags. But there's still plenty to do to prepare for that. And today I want to get out here and I want to just start moving some dirt and just closing in some of these gaps around here. Just filling in some of these basins. Like I said, I want to fill this in a little bit. Whoa, birds coming out of here. I guess birds like it in here. A lot of organic matter that I can break that down and get this filled in a little bit over here. And I just want to get some more dirt in these basins just so that makes it a little easier for bringing dirt around and filling those bags. So we're going to be starting on this final wall here pretty soon. All right, well these are exciting times. Man, I am, I'm excited anyway. We are about to start earthbagging again. So crazy. So definitely getting things prepared. Obviously the forms are ready to go. I will put those in place right before we start doing earthbags and then we'll be ready to go. It'll be fun. You ready to start bagging again? Of course I got a couple of missions. I got to keep moving that dirt and try and close in those basins. They're a little too close to the house, so I can't have them that close to the house. For right now, all I really need is just to be able to have enough space to be able to move around so that I can bring any carts and wheelbarrows in order to fill those bags. You know, and then I go horse. I got to still keep painting and make sure that this roof is ready to go. So when we're done with the bags, I can put up the roof panels and we'll pretty much be all closed in. But I'm glad you were able to make it out here. How are you feeling? I'm doing better. You were talking about your health in the last video. I guess this is kind of my health update. I've talked about in the past like some issues that I have sometimes with my muscles. I feel like this might be related to that. So I tend to get very tense muscles and that creates pain sometimes and other weird symptoms. It's like your body's constantly clenching. If anyone remembers, if anyone's been watching our videos regularly, you had issues with your jaw and you discovered that you're grinding your teeth at night because you're just getting so tense at night even. And so it's like that all over. Yeah, really like my whole body gets like that. So I'm trying to be more mindful of that and just taking time to stretch my muscles and kind of try to keep things loosened up. So I think that's where the pain is coming from in my leg. I think it's like the sciatic nerve. I've been doing special stretches for that specifically and it is feeling better now. So I'm gonna have to probably keep doing that. Keep doing all kinds of stretches because we got earth bags coming up. So how do you think you're gonna be for that? You think you're gonna be ready? It's been a while since we did bags. Yeah, I guess we'll see. I think I'm ready. Ready or not, here it comes. Well, I'm excited. I can't wait. Are you pretty excited about laying bags again? I am. She's excited about for when it's over. Yeah, especially because this is our last wall. The last wall. So I really, I would like to get this done. We saved the toughest wall for last. Well, the most physically challenging wall for sure. So very exciting. Thank you for coming here and watching me shovel dirt as always. And we'll catch you guys on the next video. Bye. You driving somewhere? What are you doing up there? She's in the driver's seat now. Is that where you live?