Our Next Build Is Unlike Anything We've Tried: The Lavacrete Utility Lodge BEGINS

Good morning. Our friends from Wilcox Rock and Sand are here. He even has a cat in his lap while he's getting on his tractor so we'll see if it stays with him. Alright, today's the day. We're getting this land cleared and ready for the Lava Creek Utility Lodge. This is all happening pretty quick. We only have a matter of two weeks to get this site totally prepped and ready for the poor so that the poor can cure for two weeks before we start building. It's all happening so fast. April's going to be here before you know it. This is going to be a really cool workshop and pretty excited about it but first up we're going to try to save a couple trees. Hopefully we can at least transplant two. We'll see if they're successful. It has a very low chance but we're going to try anyway. In all the years that we've been here we've tried so hard just to build around trees or look for openings to where we wouldn't have to clear so much of the land. I think this is by far the biggest area of decent sized trees that we've moved so it's a little sad. I'm pretty sad about it but we tried to transplant the nicest one so hopefully that will take. We're going to do our best to water it and make sure that we give it the best chance. And one more thing, where this Utility Lodge is going is actually where we first put the Airstream here on our property when we pulled in almost six years ago so it's kind of cool that a building is going to be in that spot but it's also just it's kind of sad. Why am I having such a hard time with it? Oh my gosh, snap out of it. This is what our property looked like right after we parked the Airstream back in 2020 and so much has happened since then. These were the concrete foundations from the very first version of our shade cells when the Airstream was parked here. We dug them up when we moved the Airstream and started working on the septic. This post was part of our original fencing project. After we bought the additional acre to the east for the legendary goat burn container we restrung the fence and it's been out of use ever since. And this used to be our front yard. After some leveling and compacting of the native soil where the Lava Crete Utility Lodge will go, we needed to mark out the foundation so that Wilcox can raise, level, and compact the area with AB mix. Seeing this area cleared brings back so many memories of our first days here on the property. The blissful solitude, the kids playing and laughing, the crushing heat, and the dangerous storms that we weren't ready for. We had no idea what we were doing or what we were in for but we were on a grand adventure. And sometimes to stay on that adventure you have to embrace change. So farewell Airstream front yard. We will miss you but we are glad that you'll provide us with power, water, and comfort in our roundhouse for years to come. Today's video is actually sponsored by Quince and I'm so excited about that because last December I actually bought Adelaide some new bedding from Quince because she was like I really want some really great bedding. So I was like you know I've heard of this brand called Quince let's check it out. Ordered it, she loves it. So I ordered us new bedding and a rug. This office needs a little spruce up. It's almost spring. We're going to put fresh bedding on. I've got it hanging out on the line already. It is so pretty. I can't wait to show you but first let's get this rug down and then we'll bring in the bedding and hopefully get it on the bed before Jonathan gets home. Now for those of you who don't know Quince is the place to shop for home goods, clothing, accessories, and it's all at really affordable prices which makes me really happy. They work directly with manufacturers so by cutting out the middleman they're able to offer the quality at a very low cost. So you get the goods, you get the bedding, you get the bedding, you get the and you don't have to pay an outrageous price for them. Now the sheets that I chose are actually a clay color bamboo. If you've never slept on bamboo sheets you are missing out. It almost feels like silk. They're so soft like I'm so excited about this because we had bamboo sheets at one point but they were not this high quality. These feel incredible and Jonathan's gonna love them because they are super temperature regulating. They feel cold to the touch. I think he's gonna be so excited and he's gonna sleep so good tonight. Hopefully he doesn't mind that they're a little bit pink. It's clay color. We'll just tell him it's clay color. This is the new quilt. This is 100 cotton hand stitched. Oh the quality is just so happy. It's ridiculous how happy sheets make me. Okay he just got home so if you guys would like to try out some new bedding from Quince just visit the link in the description below or scan this QR code and you too can surprise your partner and have amazing bedding shipped right to your door. Free shipping and returns on any order so there's nothing to lose. So guys go ahead and grab yourself some bedding. Let's surprise Jonathan. Whoa that is a huge rug. Do you like it? Does it fit? Yeah I like it big. Yeah that means we don't get stuck on it all the time with the chair. It's gonna be nicer for my yoga room. Wait till you pull this. Go ahead come over here. Okay. Put your hand in there. It's a sock. Nice. Bamboo. Fancy sheets. I know they're so fancy. All right final compaction and then he's gonna scrape it off to where everything is perfectly level. Then we're gonna be doing the trench work. Everything's gone really good and really quick. I'm always shocked at how fast these guys can do this. One day we'll have a tractor. I know we won't get this quick and this good but you know we could take our time into it. Anyway almost done. Well we had to quit early. We sprung a leak and uh one of the hoses sprayed hydraulic fluid everywhere so tractor got loaded back up and hopefully we can get somebody else out here at the beginning of the week because we have a lot to get done. But you know sometimes these things happen. I'm just a little upset because my pants are covered in hydraulic fluid but everything's fine. Could be a lot worse. Well we have a wet rainy day today and I've already put my winter coat up so I'm gonna freeze and Wilcox Rock and Sand is here to finish digging the trenches and getting the forms up for the lava creek build. So let's go check it out. Now while they're working on getting the forms up over there I thought I'd come and check on Bailey's babies and oh my goodness if Arlie isn't pregnant we're gonna have an issue but pretty sure she is. Look how big this girl is. We've got Faye back there and then Sorrel and then holy cow Arlie you're a monster. There's gotta be like 10 babies in there. Bailey is here with her babies. There's two and then there's a little guy over there. This little buckling is my absolute favorite goat we've ever had. He's so cute and so so sweet. All right back to the forms. Okay so the forms are in place and the guys have left. The only thing left to do well there's a lot left to do but next week they need to come back and put the rebar in and get ready for the pour. So that means we only have a few days to go get all the materials and dig a bunch of trench and put them put the pipe in. It's a whole thing. We haven't ordered any materials as of today so that's what I'm headed out to do is get our list and see if we can get it all here so that we can keep moving on. It's a little cold today. Well we made it. Oh hey it's me. If you're like 12 minutes into this video and you're like where is Jonathan? What is he doing? Jonathan is busy editing videos. For some reason Jonathan decided to do a hyper w safety and design class a three-hour class and then to turn that into an almost hour-long video and then to make a 50-page pdf out of it and then the week after to do the whole what is lava creek introduction video which was like the culmination of months of researching and planning and interviews and visits to different locations and shoots and for some reason I decided those both should be like a week apart and so I have just been stuck in front of my computer editing like crazy. Also on top of all that there's the whole lava creek utility lodge right and so Ashley's been out there focused on sort of the foundation work getting the area prepped for the concrete pad but I've been doing all the actual planning for exactly what is going in and out of this building what pipes we're going to use to make that happen and then where we can actually get all those parts because we've got to find these parts and some of them are weird parts some of them are weird. So I'm going to step you through real quick what is going into and out of this building because we have to know all of this now and we have to go dig it and put it in and have it all closed back up so they can come back and actually pour this pad in a very short amount of time. So we talked about this a little while ago I'm going to get a little nerdier and just get you caught up to make sure you understand what all is happening here. The reason we cleared this area over here so we can put the solar panel array the water tank the building and then there are going to be all these different things that go into and out of the building some into the house some into the septic some into the water tank so let's zoom back in here. The big trench the sort of main event here is that we're going to have a bundle of three conduits that run from this side of the wall underground under our driveway up into the hyper adobe roundhouse into the utility room in there not the utility building this is the utility building the utility room is over in the roundhouse which you can see there utility room right there see it based on our power usage requirements we should not need more than a two gauge wire running underground and it's going to be a bundle of four right because it's going to be 240 volts so you have two hots a ground and a neutral and so we're going to have that big bundle of wires so that needs to be a two inch conduit for easy pullability then we have a small one inch conduit for fiber we're going to run fiber into this building and then underground into the house just a one inch conduit because fiber is really small and then we do have our water our main water line is going to it's going to come in from the tank here which we'll get to in a second but then it's going to get pressurized and filtered and it's going to come out and go into the building now because it's the main water trunk line it needs to be at least one inch which means that we need conduit at least two and a half inch if we're going to be able to pull that much pex through so those are some big pipes and honestly that two and a half inch diameter is what i'm finding to be the most difficult thing to source on short notice so that's the main trench other than that we have two smaller trenches here we have our water lines so we're going to have this water line that connects to the actual rainwater tank right so we have to pull the water in here and then we pressurize and filter and push it into the house so that's going to go underground it is the same one inch line so it is also going to be two and a half inch conduit so here we're also going to run a line out and it's going to go under the driveway over to the cactus garden so we can irrigate over there so we have access to water there we'll either do a half inch or a three quarter inch so that means the actual conduit we're going to pull it in is going to be an inch and a half now both of these here these are just going to be sort of temporarily set so they're going to go under that footing up into the building and then they're just going to go underground and pop up here and we're going to dig back down and hook into those when we're ready same thing with the fiber it's going to pop up here go underground and then pop up here and we'll access it later for whenever we bring fiber to the property this way from our front gate then you also have probably seen these but these are going to go through the wall because it's a solar shut off and a generator shut off those just have physical disconnects on the outside of the building so they're just going to tunnel through the wall and when we do the lava creep we'll put conduit in for that the last thing is the plumbing i'm going to switch views because this is not a good representation this is very simplistic the big idea is we have a sink shower and a toilet and all that has to go to the septic which is up here so that all has to be correct we're going to need a drain here a two inch drain here three inch drain here two inch two inch vent and then a two inch overflow drain in case anything in the pump house decides to to leak or whatever and then that main trunk line is three inch and it's got to go all the way out to the septic that by far is going to be the most difficult because we have to dig all of that out of the already compacted ab mix area does that sound familiar to you it sounds familiar to me it reminds me of the house and i'm not looking forward to it but that is kind of going to be the next steps so i'm putting together a parts list of all the two and a half inch two inch one inch and one and a half inch conduit all of the plumbing all of the fittings and that and ashley is going to go head to the store and hopefully get all those picked up so that we can start this as soon as possible oh and one more thing we are using the concrete foundation of the lava creek utility lodge as a massive oofer ground so that we don't have the same grounding problems that we've had in the past so there's going to be a big four gauge copper wire that is tied into the rebar and is stubbed up out of the concrete and that is what our grounding from our solar system is going to connect to there's probably more things that need to connect but for now we have to get the pieces so we can get it done so we can pour the pad so we have enough time for the workshop speaking of the lava creek utility lodge workshop that is coming up very soon don't forget it's april 6th through 11th and we're going to be building the lava creek utility lodge in six days we've got guru das from awareness ranch coming to run the workshop we've got paul schwamm the architect who has been pushing this technology forward for the last 30 years he's going to be on site for a few days and we're going to learn not just everything about mixing and placing lava creek into the forms but how to build those forms how to build the corners how to do the foundation how to connect it all together how to work with doors and windows as far as i know there are not any other workshops that are going to give you such a full start to finish learning opportunity for lava creek specifically it's still a very under the radar building technique and so we're really excited to get to bring this to a new audience of people and get people some hands-on experience with it also we just opened up daily signups so if you were looking at this and you're like man i cannot come all six days i either can't afford it or i just can't get off work well now you got more options you can sign up for however many days you want just pay the daily price and come hang out with us you can camp on site we're going to feed you each day and you're going to get to learn from the pros plus you get to hang out here you get to see the roundhouse beautiful cactus garden come hang out on the bench see the glass bottle wall all that stuff it's going to be a really good time we're super excited about it so like i said we still got spots open tinyshinyhome.com events we hope that we will see you there so i'm here in the back seat of our truck in the parking lot at Lowe's because i thought you know what before i go get all these supplies how about i stop and get a drink and then on the first sip i realized that the lid wasn't on all the way so my pants were soaked so i sat in the back of the car and let them dry for the last 30 minutes so now we can finally go into Lowe's and go get our supplies hopefully it's less traumatic all right got everything picked up but i think this is the very first time that i've gone to Lowe's and not gone into the plant section and it's really hard to just drive away and not go in there i'm on the spending freeze though this building we gotta get all the supplies and then maybe later i can have a plant budget but it's not this week free