Veterans buy dirt cheap land to build off grid coliving homestead

You Kenny? Hello. Hi, it's great out here. This is, that's all you? This, yeah, this is our compound. We have eight acres. I co-own it with a older couple. I was on a bicycle trip. I was almost near flat broke and I kept on running into this couple from Colorado and we're so jazzed. It's like, wouldn't it be cool if we got some land and just built like off the grid? And it's like, yeah. And before I left, I bought land with these complete strangers. This is Michael and Danielle. Hi, what a fun thing you guys have here. I can't believe you just met. And then said, let's buy some land. We know each other. One day. Yeah. You know, we're like brothers. We disagree about building or something like that, but we always resolve to the logic. Whoever's got the better presentation of logic wins. And we're both okay. And keep in mind, it's our winter home up for all of us. And then we go sailing soon. So you came out here flat broke, but you bought land. Yeah. I borrowed $1,300 for my sister. So only $1,300 and you could buy land. We bought two acres for $2,600. Yeah. Very affordable. So you have a lot going on this week. And we can do anything we want. It's great. So geodesic dome. Yeah. This is the lightest, strongest structure in the world that you can create a geodesic dome. People was like, can I get on it? Is it going to be safe? It's not going to collapse. It's like, no, it's not going to collapse. This is going to be a dance floor. Fun. You can just play. That's what I call it. For me, it's all about the earth and the sun. And I just love playing with both of those. So we heat with the sun. We got hot water with the sun. We have power with the sun. It's amazing. And then the earth is still free. And that's what we build with. This is hyper adobe, earth bat. Our soil is kind of like a stilt loam. And it's got the silt and it's got a little clay. It's not the best, but it works. As long as it sticks and bonds, that's all that matters. Oh, and then it keeps going. So is this housing? This is Kiva. This is a guest house. My friend's staying in it. So a Kiva inspired by Native American Kiva? Yeah, definitely. When we were building, it's like, you go to Chaco Canyon, there are Kivas, those beautiful. So, you know, we grew up in all these rectangles and corners and all that crap. And so round is kind of nice. All of my structures, we step down. We nestle in to have enough to build up. So that's why I'm digging into that. And so I don't have to bring in material. I'm just building up. So you kind of go underground by a foot or two. That makes it easier? Well, it allows me to, it helps you stay a little cooler because you're getting nestling in and it gives us all the, all the subsoil to build the walls up. So this is, this is super adobe, continuous fat bags. Nice. Yeah, isn't it cute? It's funny how the outside, I felt like it was just going to be sort of like a little trap. And you come inside and like, whoa, this is built up. Like, this is nice. It's comfortable. And this isn't finished. The walls are not finished, nor is the ceiling. And you're much lower here. Oh, yeah. Where's the earth here, do you think? Oh, right here. It's like right there. So it's like at least two feet in here. This is all an earthen floor, which I love. That's why I'm barefoot a lot of times because the earthen floor. We mix it. So we add clay and then we add the straw and the sand. And then we pour it wet. And it's a process. This one we did in two pours. I'm getting more to two pours than three. I used to do three. And this is a completely round structure. Yeah. Yeah. This is only 14 foot diameter and it's 16 sided roof. I built small structures like this before, and I like having a loft. And under the loft, I typically make my kitchenette. So you walk in, you don't want to have your loft right there. This really works well to cool off the structure in the summertime. When the sun goes down, you just open this up. So to keep this cool in the summer, essentially what you want to do is block out the sun so no sun comes in. This is simple passive solar. And then when it cools off enough at night, you open up everything and then it cools the mass down. And then you button it up during the middle of summer. You think, why aren't your windows open? It's like, no, you got to keep this mass cool. You don't want to invite warm air in. But it's probably ideal is to crack that throughout the day so that that warm air that's rising has a way to get out. So for example, when it's 110 outside. In Kiva, it would be like 80 to 82. With no AC. No, I strive not to use. I like focusing on passive solar design. And that's building a structure that you don't have to heat or cool, but with the sun and lack of sun. So in the summertime, no sun comes in, all this mass stays cool. And in the winter, you invite the sun and it charges the mass and it warms you. I'm not a builder that likes to rely on having AC or heating when you can use the sun. And we got a little fridge that runs off the solar. And you know what's beautiful about this fridge? It only runs on 0.8 amps. So it's nothing. We buy them from Mexico. Because you can't get a fridge this small and efficient. 0.8 less than an amp. Oh my gosh, it's so efficient. So here you see you have an oven. This we bought in Mexico too. They're really cheap. They're non-electric. And they're only 20 inches wide. In the States, this is $1,500. In Mexico, it's $350. You still have four burners, but it's just way smaller. Another thing is, I totally do not recommend anyone doing this. Unless if you have abundant resources financially. We always build out of pocket. I didn't have all the money to up front pay for this. But over time, over a handful of years, it was very easy to do. This is Solar. This is the main house. This is the first structure that we built. This is the mechanical room. And the truth wall. You can see how we built the bag work. This is individual super adobe. The other was hyper adobe. It's all earthbag to me. The super adobe is a heavier weave. It's more plastic. And then you need four-point barbed wire in between the layers. So it doesn't shear. It locks it. And you know, barefoot builder. I don't want to deal with that. So once I saw hyper adobe, it's like, oh my God, that's what we're doing. Hyper adobe. But those bags, Michael and Danielle filled them all up. And then I or they would package them. And then I threw them all down. And they weigh about 65 pounds. Wow. So you stay in shape. Oh, yeah. The building. Oh, yeah. So you see here the buildup. So you dug and then you pulled it to the side. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Around the whole structure is piles of dirt. Like in the desert, if you want to cool, going into the earth makes perfect sense. I mean, a lot of my friends now, they're all going into the earth like really deep. OK, so no AC? No. And right now in the wintertime, we're getting a lot of sun in there. It's it works too well. It works too well. Cooking out here? Yeah, yeah. This is done. This meal is done. It's just. Oh, nice. Oh, it's steaming. I keep it in there just to keep it a little warm. You know, I just love playing with the earth and the sun. So we cook with the sun. And then again, we built that house with the earth. And this again, step down. Yep. Every structure has a step down. So we're sunken. By nestling in, you're tapping into the mass of the earth, which is 57 degrees when you get down low enough. So the coldest it got this year, when it got down to like the mid 20s, it got down to 64 degrees. It's so easy to keep it warm. But it doesn't feel earthen. No, but all this is earth back low. All this is all earth back. The kitchen just it was a simple design. It's like, OK, we'll have the center area be communal and then the wings can be our bedrooms. This is Michael and Danielle's room. My co-owners. Oh, you actually share a home? Yeah. So you became friends? Yeah. My friend, my friend thought I was crazy. Like, what are you doing? You don't even know these people. But you decided it made more sense to build a home rather than too small home. You know? Oh, yeah. Because then we could focus our energy together and it would have taken so much longer. And I'm comfortable. They're comfortable staying in the same house. We have our rooms if we need privacy. So it's really it's co-living. Oh, yeah. So you have it two bedrooms divided by the kitchen. Yeah. It only made sense. And you played a little bit here. Yes. I mean, it's a blob. It's supposed to be a tree. Learned a lot. And for me, it's harder to build alone and it makes it way more enjoyable. And the cool thing is this is all a cob wall. So it's all can and cob and then conventional framing over there. And then this wall is earth bag, too. This is earth bag and the other wall that partitions two bedrooms are earth bag walls. You know, the funny thing is this is a new finish. None of this is finished plaster. Yeah, I know. Everyone thinks it's done. No, no, we never did. That's the beauty of earth, right? Yeah, it looks finished to me. It does. But if you look a little closer, it's like, huh, that's kind of weird. But, you know, no one notices. So I just pointed out this is my space and this is another earthen floor that I love. It's so it grounds you and it relaxes you. I've been earthing myself for so long. When I get on concrete, it's like I'm irritable. It feels good in here. How long have you been going barefoot? 10 years. I have a hard time tracking my shoes sometimes. Like if I put them on and I take them off, I forget to put them back on. It's like, oh ----, I left my shoes at my friend's house. And this floor, what did you do in this? Same thing? I probably poured this in three pours. The key about these is they get sealed. You get penetrated four times with linseed and mineral spirits. And then you have to beeswax it to waterproof it. And then I bring up the line of the seal. So when you mop, you're not eroding your earthen walls that aren't sealed. It's nice how the floor is earth, walls are earth. There's a lot of earth here and you see it outside. And look at where the earth is outside here. It's like right here. So we're sunken. So that's going to affect what? So in the summertime, all this mass stays cool. And in the winter, it warms you. You know, mostly what I'm doing is I don't want to bring in dirt to build up. So I'll dig down to build up. When the earth is still free, why not just work with what you got on site as opposed to bringing something in? What's your water set up then? We're capturing all the water off of this roof, off of this roof. It goes into cisterns and then the cisterns you can see right behind here. So the water is all held in those three cisterns. And then it goes through a little filtering and then it gets pressurized. And then you come into the house, you have water. And pretty decent water pressure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. This is under pressure. Here's our hot water. So it's a lot less pressure because there is no pressure. It's gravity. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can get evacuated tubes and get them under pressure. But we went for the cheap version. This water is going out into those. We did a renegade before the county came in. We did our own septic. And it's just two stacked 55 gallon drums mimicking a septic. So this is a modest bathroom. It's just a five by eight conventional shower and toilet. Oh, yeah. Not composting. Yes. We don't even poop or pee in this toilet. But some people will like if someone's sick. We'll talk about ours later, though. So this is conventional, but you don't want to waste the water. No, we save the water. We even like it takes a little while to get the hot water. So we save our water in a bucket and then we water the plants outside. Right. And this side you see now that we now that I know that this is kind of semi buried. Now you're seeing it. Yeah. Yeah. We do a vapor barrier around the whole perimeter. So any water that falls and it comes down to the ground, there's plastic under there and it sheds away four feet. So it moves the water away from the house. Because when you have like an earthen floor, if you get water penetrating through your wall into your floor, it's going to fail. And then this is the crazy hot water. These tubes in the front is where the water falls in that are kind of like facing south. The sun hits that. And then being that it's dark, it heats up with the sun. And then the warm water, hot water rises and it fills into that tank. And so when it gets cooler, it will drop. It heats up and goes right back up into the holding tank. And it's not under any pressure. It's just gravity feed. That's why we have it up here. It wouldn't work down here unless it was pressurized. And this one's not. It's a real cheap one. We bought that down in Mexico. It was a hundred and sixty four dollars. This whole thing is full, overflowing from this little roof. This is overflowing. These are like these twelve hundred are at like not maybe a thousand right now. These are a lot of tanks and this is all just off this one roof. We want more. When we go away, they overflow. So I want to put another fourth one in here. Because you just get a lot all at once. Yeah. There's our black water, gray water. There's two systems here. This is ours that we made and there's a leach field here. And then the county made us do this one that the state approved. So it's exactly the same system, but repeated twice. Because they wouldn't allow that. These are stacked. So it goes down pretty far. So there's two stacked. And then it's just mimicking a septic where the first one is all the solids. And then the liquid overflows into the second one. And then it comes into a leach field. We have a leach field right here. So I don't know if you want to see our human ore. So this is our house. This is where we poop. I've been pooping in a bucket for 28 years. That's our luxury setup right there. And then this is the end product. This is dried up human ore. And then what we've done now is we close the loop. We cover when we poop in the bucket. We cover it with the human ore, the dry human ore. And this is how we are storing our poop. So we have one that's filling up right here. One that I have to dump out sometime soon. For a household of like four or five, we'll need like six to seven of these buckets. And then what I do, you have to drain. So you can see that is the affluent right there. So this is the active one. It's filling up. When I do now dump, I'll cover it with just with this. And it just leaves. And it speeds up the breakdown. And it's not just poop. We're putting our veggie scraps in there too. There's our, I call it hyper green. It's a hyper adobe. The front is a greenhouse. We just got the polycarbonate on. Changed everything. These will all be operable auto wax vents. We're going to have four auto wax vents up high too to let the hot air out. Since we put it on the low temperature now, if it freezes, 58 inside the greenhouse. Even when it's freezing outside. And it's still warming up because we just started charging it. Then again, we're sunken into the earth. We're going to have raised bed planters. And I'll tell you why. Two and a half here, three feet here. And then in the middle, we're going to dig down. We have to penetrate through our hard pan. So we have a conglomerate, a caliche conglomerate. That's what dictates where we stop digging in. We hit the hard pan. So we can't dig in, but we're going to have to do raised bed. And then we're going to dig about four holes throughout here. We're going to bring in banana, papaya, and citrus. And this is the kitchenette right here. So it's not just a greenhouse. It's also a guest room too. In the back is a guest room. Why not? Can you imagine living in this little guest room? And then you walk into this jungle every day, anytime you want. Then you pick food off of the plants. And another earthen floor. And then we have a shower here in the bedroom. I mean, you have a greenhouse. You might as well, I guess. Somehow I can water the greenhouse. Yeah. Oh yeah. We're utilizing this gray water for sure. So a lot of this water is going to feed the big plants out here. The gray water. Playing with the temperature here and the humidity when we have plants, it's going to be so fun. But you can totally regulate the temperature in here by whether you have this open or closed. In the summertime, I'd probably keep it closed a lot. And that's going to be the coolest house on this property. Because I learned from all the other experiences, and I don't have a huge window on the east or west. And then all these windows will be greenhouse operated. So when it warms up or auto wax vents, they'll open up. And when it cools off, they'll close. Growing food, it should be real easy. Back in the day, I used to have my own greenhouse. And I fully automated it. And I'd plant in the wintertime. And then I'd go away for six weeks. And I'd come back to a forest. Because it's all automated. We're transitioning from building to growing food. OK. As a lot of people out here are. We did structure. And now we're ready to go to food. What do you have here? Do you have some buckets? Yeah, I was watering that one tree. That's our largest tree on the property. And we have abundance of water right now. Oh, it's insane. Because of the last two storms that we got. So I was just figuring it out. I have nine cisterns. And six of them are overflowing. So we might as well use the water while we've got it. Once you start bellying it out, swaling it to hold the water, you start giving them water. They thrive. Is there a little one there? Yeah, it's a little mesquite. Those are our prize trees here, believe it or not. This is a sumac. The berries are edible. So what I've been doing out here, we're slowing down erosion. And all we're doing is filling in certain areas. And then this is a little arroyo. Once you start slowing it down, then you start getting all this veg in here. And it's just so amazing. And then it's just, it's like, wow. So this is an arroyo that's filling up. It's a little mini drainage. And what's happening is like, you can see right here, look at the organic material that just stays. And so this is slowly getting built up. And then what happens is you get all the seed in here and then you've got a forest over here. And it holds the moisture and the seeds. And then it just starts growing in them. So instead of eroding, all I'm doing is I'm putting in these little dams and it holds the water and then it fills up and then I'll keep building. So we're reclaiming in 5-10 years, all our arroyos are going to be like riparian crazy jungles. One last piece. So this right here is our cultivated soil that we're going to use to fill our raised beds. We're creating it on our site. So this is being deposited on our site. Pretty decent. It's a good base soil. And we're cultivating it on this property. And this is for growing? Yes. And we don't have to pay for it. It's not like we have to transport it. This is an arroyo. One of the larger arroyos, drainages coming through here, right? So we built this up and we created what I call a weir. So a weir is a dam? Yes, it's a control overflow. This was all filled up with that dirt over there. And I just brought up the trailer and bucketed it out and then brought it down to the greenhouse. But next year, this is going to fill up again. And, you know, ultimately, we'll probably be selling soil off our property. So it's all coming in? Yeah, right behind you. Just this little arroyo. You can kind of see it. And again, when you start slowing things down, vegetation just takes over. It's really wild. And then the soil keeps coming down. It's like moving the soil for you, really. Yeah. Yeah, the sediment comes down along with the organic. So when I was shoveling this out, I was hitting all these black spots. It's like, oh, that's good. Because what it is, and you can even see it, like this is it here, too. It's just got more organic material in it. It's really interesting. And then the black spot is like all the veg deposited. And then it gets wet. And then it starts breaking down. And then that's what you want. We want to bring in the organic. So all this got dug out and we transported it over to the greenhouse. Yeah, we're just playing. I call it our fort. This is our fort that we're building. I just started realizing it's like, oh, yeah, we're building forts. We're adults building little forts, you know. As kids, that's what you do. You go in the woods, the fields, and build forts.