Leaves rat race, digs himself remote earthen home with underground rotunda

Sam? Or is it Sammy? I go by either. You go by either, okay. From the road, I can tell this is your house. I mean, you notice it, right? Right, even though to me, I do kind of consider this the ugly side. Right, this is where the chickens are, and it's like the utility side. My chickens are like, who are these people? So all of it is still under construction, right? Like, it's just there's so much to do, and I am just one person. This is where the house, large parts of it come from. And the plaster, all the plaster in the house bill, it's all made out of this. So what will you use for this pit? Can you make an underground structure? Yes, this will be a walpini. Underground greenhouse? Yes. So I've got a couple quarries, but the first one was the house, right? The hole that the house is in. The north room, the dome, is underground, so. So this is partly underground, so you dug, how far did you dig? The hole was six feet, but where it is now, finished floor, it's about five and a half. So I'm totally just playing, right? That's what living out here is, is like having a playground. Like, we all played on piles of dirt and climbed up sand mountains and stuff when we were kids. It's like, I get to do that in real life all the time now, and have awesome rewards for it. So this dome here, that will be a bedroom, or what do you make underground? This all, everything we see here is done. Okay. So the longhouse is done with the kitchen, and the bedroom is done, yeah. Okay, let's check it out. Hi, Lucky. Wow, you do feel how cool it is in here, because you're not getting any sun. Right, that was all designed intentionally. The sun comes in here in the winter, and it really cooks this floor in the winter, so it makes, you know, there's radiant heat coming off of the concrete floor. But now that the season's warming up, the sun is tilting to the north, so now, because of the size of the windows and the eaves, you no longer get the sunlight coming in directly. Should we look at the bedroom? I'm intrigued by that drop-down. Yeah, I wanted no interior doors, so that's why there's just a flap. I wanted this tight, small opening. Like, this is perfectly sized for me to fit through. I like the idea of it being tight, because with this curtain down, there are differences in pressure and temperature that I could control between the longhouse and then the sunken rooms. There is huge pressure changes here in the desert. I leave this door open pretty much all the time for my dogs to come in and my cats, and, like, it's just nice weather. So there was just lots of reasons not to install the door. So great. Like, I'm almost fitting, but I'm about six feet. But it's like you built it for yourself. Yep. So you can still see the shape of the earth bags up there. Yeah. So this is where you first started digging to get dirt for the house. Yeah, so it really does kind of just, like, dig a hole and put your house in it, right? Yep. And it is funny, like, you dig a hole, and then you put the dirt back in the hole, but, like, in a fancy way. You know, like, I'm so curious. All right. So how far down are you now from the... Well, the ground is, like, just a little bit below these sills here. So I'm about four and change underground here. Yeah. But it stays significantly cooler down here. It's cool. Yeah. Yeah, so that's basically it. It's like the wall temperature down here below ground is always 65 degrees. 65, 70 degrees always. So, like, in the winter, that feels warm. And then in the summer, that feels cool. 65, 70 degrees is kind of the sweet spot, right? When it's 20 degrees outside, you're loving it down here. And then when it's 110 degrees outside, you're loving it down here, you know? So you kind of get the best of both worlds. And these are cooling tubes, too. So you could open these, and they would let cool air in. You know, I could open the top up, and it pulls the hot air out, and it draws the cold without any electricity or anything. Just draws the cold air right through it. So those run underground for about 100 feet, and then they come up. So it's geothermal, really, right? It is geothermal, yeah. So then when I'm actually laying in bed, right, I am totally underground. You know, the lights and everything was all... Put those all in. Anyway, it is totally underground. So the grate is, like, just below the windowsill there. And that was intentional. You wanted to be sleeping underground. Yep. But everything changes, right? Like, so long-term, I don't know that this will be a bedroom. I kind of want to add a different room to be a bedroom one day and kind of turn this into, like, a game room, a lounge or something. Where you spend more time. Right, because I've noticed I don't spend any time down here other than to sleep and maybe watch an episode of a TV show. And then, you know, as soon as I wake up, I have no reason to come down here again. And I host a lot. So I could see myself moving my bedrooms somewhere else one day. Well, you do have a bed up top, too. You could go up. My wife just doesn't like to climb the ladder, which is fair. And that's another thing that needs done, right? The ladder is just that aluminum ladder. Like, I would love to build a ladder and make it feel like a real Kiva in here, like the Hopi have. There's just lots of projects, man. It's like, where do you put all your energy? And you have an intricate floor. What did you do there? So when you're laying earth bags for the walls, inevitably you have cutoffs. Not all the time, but the bag is typically too long or too short. So when it's too long, I just had a big bunch of cutoffs. So these are the cutoffs from the wall. So some of them are, like, you know, smaller, and then you get big ones. Like, that's why they're like that is because they're just whatever was left. So it's kind of a no waste. Yeah, and it makes it look like stones. Right, they're cobbled together, cobblestones. There's no cement in that. So that's another, like, the floor Niko's standing on is cement. And I would typically have my shoes on where he is, but I'm barefoot down here. And bare feet on metal or on concrete, it doesn't feel good, right? But this feels good to walk around on, on my bare feet because it's so soft. It's hard enough to walk on and put furniture on, but it's only about 300 PSI, so it has more give in it. Like, whereas the concrete's like 4,000, you know? More than 10 times as hard. So you could really feel the difference when you're walking around on it. It feels a lot better to walk on on your bare feet. So you've done, I mean, there's a lot of details. You're thinking about how you use it, and you like to be bare feet and barefoot? Right, and I mean, I could have done concrete down here, but it would have been expensive. This was cheap. It was a ton of work. And that's basically the tradeoff with anything. It's like you could put a ton of work into it, and it would be cheaper, and it would last longer. Or you could put a bunch of money into it, and then it'll be done quicker, and you'll have to maintain it, right? This is only a partially complete vision. I am imagining making this entranceway a little more grandiose and having a railing and all of that. You just took steps right out from the Superdome. You built them in as you were building? Yeah, this is called floating, like a floating floor or floating stairs. There's no support underneath it. It's just being held by the weight of the bags. I put the geodesic on not for any other reason other than I was tired of laying bags. These are 18-inch thick bags, 20 foot off the ground right here. Like getting material up here and laying bag was exhausting. So my cop-out was to just put the geodesic cap onto it. I was exhausted. I had three years of laying bag. I did all the work myself. Most people get help in Mind the Labor. No, I had a lot of fun doing it. And I had help, like a handful of times. I'd have people over here for a few hours, especially in a really technical part where it would be much easier to have extra hands. But yeah, more or less, I laid the whole house by myself because it was fun. And also, like, no shade or anything. But every time I do have helpers here, work is not quite how I would have preferred. So I don't mind working alone because at the end of the day, everything I know is exactly how I wanted. Had to put a cap on the dome. Got my cob and my mud here going on the bags. And here's like a rough mid-coat. And a mid-coat that's been painted. I haven't put any finish on the house yet because I'm still covering some bags. I'm fighting the rain. I have some eaves to build. Some finish work to do on the dome. But it's coming along nicely. I was like a desk person doing office work. And then I just got my hands dirty for the first time when I was 27 years old. The exterior is coming along pretty good. And it's changing the inside a little bit. Skylight's coming along. It's not a unique thing. There's nothing special about me either. I never picked up a shovel until 2018. Came up with a little closing window for my circles. I didn't know a damn thing. I didn't know how to work a skill saw or even hold a drill the right way or how to push a wheelbarrow and load it properly so it didn't tip over. 2018 was when I picked up all that stuff for the first time. This is just masking tape that will come off when I'm done plastering and painting. This is my view when I'm sleeping. It's a little messy up there. I just spray foamed. I didn't have insulation in this portion for a year. But I've already noticed a difference in performance since putting that. It used to just be 2 inches of adobe. And when the sun is really coming in, it's pretty intense. This is stable. Yeah, it's not going anywhere. That is scary though. See, that's what I'm saying. My wife doesn't want to go in here. It feels like it's going to... You feel kind of nervous with this nice solid footing. Imagine standing on this top bag because that's the next step is to stand on this bag laying a sandbag up here and looking down at this deep hole. I was over it. That's why I put the geodesic on. This has been a guest bed and people have stayed here. It's a bit messy up here right now. It's kind of a construction zone still. We were ready to move into it. We were done living in that trailer out there. We lived in that for the whole time we were... And so now that we're living in it, it's like, well, are we going to take everything out and oil the walls? Anyway, I did have a little bit of a water leak. You should oil the walls, right? It's not actually sealed in there. Is that easy to fix with just adding some more plaster? Right. I'll just slip it with clay slip. It'll disappear. You won't be able to tell. But here we see the earthbags. These are the earthbags. You're just pulling soil from the dirt. From the hole out there. The first hole is the one that we're standing above. So that made sense to dig. You needed the dirt anyway to build the house. It's like a fancy re-putting of the dirt in the hole. So that's all it is. But yes, you have to leave the bags exposed on the top of a dome like this because domes have weird acoustics. So just us having a conversation here now, it sounds okay because of the ribs in the wall. But if domes are smooth, they have stereo sound. It has to have texture on the top 30% or it'll be crazy in there. Just making your ears kind of pop if you don't have texture. And then here you put a... Can you walk? That's just for dogs. No, this is for people. This is for my cats, really. And that's why it looks like it's being used mostly by cats, right? But no, this is a people lounge as well. And it's totally stable. What did you use? This is paracord. What's paracord? It's like the parachute cord. Oh, okay, so stable. Each thread is rated for 500 pounds. Just one. And then when you weave them together like this, this net is probably around 2,500 pounds it could take. So I've had like 10 people on this before. Mostly it's dedicated to the cats, though. I got cats because there's so many rats out here. So this is basically a cat space. How did you anchor that into the adobe? There is a block here in each one. This is called a gringo block. Well, they're called gringo blocks because the old Mexican doboleros didn't have access to steel until the white men learned from them how to do adobes and they brought nails with them. So they're the gringo blocks. So this is a block of wood that has nails spiking in all directions. Then when you put it into the wall and the nails clamp down onto the adobe, there's no way for that to pull out because the nails are holding it in by the weight of the building. So it would be impossible for it to actually come free. So really, everything's pre-planned with this kind of wall. Right. It's harder to anchor things to adobe than it is just a nice block of wood. You could just run to the hardware store and buy things that are made for wood. You're going to be really searching around for an adobe-specific anchor and adobe-specific glues to get this to hold. But I do think it would work. I wouldn't have 10 people on it. We have been up here jumping around, bouncing around. I believe this could probably take two and a half thousand pounds. And then you see you're plugged in over there. So you have solar? Yeah, that also controls the lights down there. That way, if you could have the lights down there, the ones that are on right now, and you could still climb with the lights and then turn them off if you're up here. Yeah, it's been fun to build it. And three years of doing it. There's lots of work to do. Still want to fine-tune everything. But it's livable is the important part. No, it gets a little intense in here. A lot of people have problems with airflow in their house. When they're designing their own house, they're not thinking about it as much. I think mine operates a little too good. We were talking about pressure in the dome. The slightest change of pressure coming off the mountain and all the stuff will come blasting off my walls. And my doors will slam. So I had to come up with a special way to fasten stuff to my walls, actually. So it would stay cool with the airflow and the walls and the sun. And the blackout curtains, right? Even though the sun's coming, I could make it really dark and cool in here. I could really block out the sun. What about the ceiling? Those are just privacy bamboo reed panels. People put those in their gardens. Did you do it because it's easy or it's functional? Cheap and easy. Cheap. Again, that's one of the last things you do. I was basically out of money. So this ceiling was like $200. And behind it is? It's a black landscape, like a weed block fabric. Because behind that is insulation. What's the material of the back itself? The adobe. It's a polypropylene woven bag. But then people have built these things successfully with just dog food bags. It just has to have a weave. It can be any material. You can use burlap, too, but burlap is expensive. And then how do you create a texture on top? You know, there's a valley between each bag, right? So you've got a bag and then there's a valley every four inches or so. And that valley is the texture of this. So it's basically clinging because of the texture of the bag itself, right? Some people add wire, but this is all cob, so the wire element is the straw. And nothing structural. It is itself structure. Yeah, all of the tensile strength in super adobe comes from the barbed wire. So it is all structural. Anyway, this is a structural element in itself. Like, this is a buttress. It's holding this wall up. Without this here, this wall would be compromised. So it's almost like in old churches. Or like the old Persian adobe structures you see out in Iran. They'll be three and four story tall, made out of adobe, and then those have a huge buttress coming off of it. So if the wall wanted to sway outward, this is pulling it, and if it wanted to come inward, this is pushing it. It doesn't matter which way, if it comes in or if it comes out. It's your choice, right? So this one comes in because I turned it into a bench. This one over here, again, that's a structural buttress. That one's coming in because it's, like, separating my kitchen space from the rest of the house. But most of them go out. But those are structural. Some of them are called deadmen. But they're holding the wall up because, like, these are heavy. Like, this building is calculated once it's, like, almost 250 tons, this small building. So you don't really want to have it swaying. There's no outside buttresses on this side because the corners are also buttresses. Like, wherever the wall changes direction, like, this is the buttress for this wall. I drew everything out. Like, some people use SketchUp or whatever, but I always liked having pen and paper and a sketchpad. So I drew this, and the orientation of the house, like, when I found True South, all of the solar gain, geothermal stuff, when I saw it on paper, and I saw where this buttress had to go, I was like, I'm basically looking right at the mountain. I turned it into a bench knowing that I would have an incredible view right here. I want to extend it. Like, where these chairs are is going to be, like, a large daybed. I imagine the bench actually terminating into this wall here, and there being just a huge lot, lots of cushions. But this is my home office right now. So this is the second buttress. Yeah, and this was just to try and create separation between kitchen and... And again, I drew all this so I knew where my appliances were going to go and how big my counter was going to be and stuff, so. So all the appliance stuff was thought out ahead of time even. Yeah. Because it's not a straight wall, so you kind of try to plan how it'll all fit. It's just a small space. So that's why there's no interior walls either. It's like all of them are exterior. There's no interior walls anywhere. You're trying to maximize your space. How big is it? The longhouse where we're standing is just over 400 square. And then down there is another 100 square. And what's nice, I mean, I go camping a lot. I'm, like, an outdoor person, and, like, all of this just folds together. Like, those just get out of the way, and then this tabletop comes off, and you could scissor that closed. And so it goes with me camping also. And this was all rough. Like, I got this from Habitat from Humanity, and it was, like, ugly and falling apart. Like, I refinished this with coffee. The stain on here is coffee. Like, I make cold brew coffee and a little bit of oil. Did you do all your kitchen stuff? Yep, I built all that stuff. The wood is interesting. This was a shower. I built an outdoor shower at one point. It was this beautiful outdoor shower. I loved it, but my wife hated it because it would let the draft in, right? And even if it was sunny outside, you know, we'd be outside showering, and a slight breeze, even if it was 90 degrees out, would just, like, ice cold. So I'm going to redo the outdoor shower one day. But when I disassembled the shower, I had tons of cedar, so I just, I repurposed all of it. Yeah, so they could all both be open. And then the insides of these are red. Is this the old shower? This is the old shower color, yep. And when I stained it black, it kind of ended up having this purple hue to it. I love it. And these are all yucca stalks. These are yucca stalks from my property. I'm really proud of the kitchen. I brought in all the elements I wanted from the outside. I have my really nice red adobe clay. These are all rocks from the property, you know, chrysocolla. This is all mesquite that was milled nearby. I also like the wood. What kind of wood is that? That one is a cottonwood tree that fell down in town. It just, like, after a huge storm, it, like, fell over, and I just, like, was in the area, and I just grabbed it. And that, too? That's a mesquite. I have a huge wood pile. I think it just come from my wood pile. But I wanted it to kind of have, like, this extended feel, like where it... Like it's part of the... Like it's part of the desert. Like it's... Because these are mesquites, too. So I just brought all of the elements of the desert, the yucca. You know, it's all here, in one space. So I'm really happy with how the kitchen turned out, because I have this hacienda window. This was a ton of work, because there are two walls here. There is the interior wall, which is this one. And then, to get this a double effect, I had to have a whole other wall built there. So there are two super adobe walls, back to back, right here. So I could have this hollow of a hacienda window. It's like a Mediterranean-style window. You know, it's off-season right now, but this is where I would hang to dry my basil and my dill and things like that, to create seasonings. This is a cat door. That's for my cat, specifically, to come in and out of. It's up off the ground like that, so snakes and stuff aren't going to come right in. It doesn't actually have a door on it, but it also helps vent. There's something in here, too. Frog, yeah. Frog, okay. This is a vent, because I don't have a hood. There's no hood for the snot coat. You don't need a hood in Arizona. So that's just a vent. It never... Winter, morning, noon, and night, summer, it's always open, right? It's just creating flow in the kitchen. Because the bathroom's actually on the other side of this wall, so I couldn't have it here. Couldn't have it here. We could go in there. It's a construction site still, but the toilet works. Yeah, you see the earth value. Right, so this is what the rest of the house looks like. But before it was finished, the kitchen sink will be right here. The wiring, I did myself, the insulation. And that conduit goes underground and goes to the solar shed. This is my shower drain here, so this will be the shower. This is working, so I don't have to use my trailer anymore. Because my trailer, for the last year since living in the house, has just been a glorified outhouse. But now, my wife and I aren't doing that. This was one of the first things I built. All I did was copy my RV, because I learned a lot of things living in my RV. So that's basically a SureFlow pump from an RV. It's direct current. There's no alternating current in here. So that kept the price of this really low. There's no inverter. It's just a charge controller. Everything here was a few hundred dollars. A deep cycle marine battery, a $30 pump. It was really easy to do. And it transitions into regular interior brass piping from this Flexi hose. I have a water wall. Basically all of the water fixtures run parallel with the pump, all on the eastern wall here. So it's really simple. I'm not going to lose pressure. Just like an RV. I learned a lot living in my RV about plumbing. So here's kind of the start of my gray water harvesting. And this will all be underground eventually. That's where my actual water heater is going to go. And then it's going to go through this hole here. So there was a pipe there that I laid the bag over. And then I removed the pipe. And now that opening has been left over. That's easier than punching a hole through the wall. Anyway, I have a three-way here. So the gray water from the sink and the shower come into this one. And currently it's all plumbed to the septic tank, which is the direction that goes. But my long-term goal is to be able to switch that. So then the gray water will come out through here. And it will go to these cactus. I've got lots of mulberry trees. A desert willow. And then here you have the greenhouse. This is also an experimental thing. Because I come from Ohio. So in Ohio the rules are very simple. You plant in March. You harvest in November. Out here, it's wild. It's just the wild west. Everything started from seed. In this shade zone here, I have melons and basil and dill and amaranth. And then in this zone, I have hardier nightshades. There's tomatoes here and eggplants. Anyway, I built all this soil out too. So I build my own soils by growing mushrooms. Anyway, this is the terracrete. It's just intense diamond lath with mud-straw mixture over the top of it. So this is easier than earthbags. Oh yeah, for sure. But it's super experimental. I would never build a house like this. It's ferro-cement, but with earth instead of cement. And with this mesh as the only structure. Right. This is the same way you would make ferro-cement. This diamond lath, but I didn't use cement. I used earth because I just have earth. And I knew it was experimental. And I'm like, well, if this thing melts away in three years, I could do something else. And it is having problems. You see that intense cracking right there? That's where water's pooling when it's raining. So, I mean, it's experimental. And so, I wouldn't want this happening to my house. And it's fine that it's happening here because it's not my house, you know? Yeah. This is an easy place to grow. Extremely easy. You could be a forager here. And there's just so much food. I could see some wild amaranth. It's like, wait. I mean, you see that dense green stuff? This used to be the Aztec Empire. So that's how the Aztecs had 400,000 civilians in their capital, you know, 4,000 years ago. It was because they learned how to cultivate the red amaranth. And that stuff grows wild out here. And these plants? They almost look like a palm frond. Yeah, those are yucca. That's the MVP of the desert. Right, that's everything you need because it's edible. The root is like a very dense potato. But then you could use these for tent stakes or a support beam. I used them for decoration in the kitchen. And then the natives would use these for basket weaving or hats. So this is the MVP of the desert. There is no plant that has more uses than this out here. And then out here you see mesquite. I'm guessing this is all mesquite. Yep. That's another reason that just makes it really easy to live out here because mesquite is a hardwood. So it's desirable to burn it. So there's just no shortage of firewood when you're cold. There's no shortage of food if you're hungry. Because mesquite, what do you eat? The beans. And the beans can be made into syrups or you could ferment it and make it into mead. So it's just, you have to know it. And it's not food we normally buy at the supermarket. No, right. And there's tons of it. There's just tons and tons of food out here. There's dandelions just sitting right here. The flowers are edible. The leaves are edible. All this stuff is edible. I mean, we're in a pretty desert-y part right now. But just looking in, I can see multiple varieties of grasses. Here's some sort of white sage. There's the yucca. There is an insane amount of biodiversity out here. And we're standing in one of the drier parts of the property. If we get down into the wet parts, it's just overabundance. Yeah, so you have to know it. And I didn't know. I just learned. You're an Ohio boy. Yeah. And it's easy to grow food in Ohio. I'll tell you what, it's been harder to grow out here. I've had a lot more success foraging mushrooms and everything. Mushrooms are crazy out here in October. And that's how I build soils, too, is I grow mushrooms. And we use this myceliated substrate. It's usually oak or soy that's been partially eaten by the mycelium. And once we've taken the fruiting body, we can take the substrate and mix that with the earth here. And in a couple years, it really densifies the soil. It looks cool without the railing. I know, right? But I'm going to be old one day, Kirsten. And then same with this. This needs a railing. It's just there's so much to do, and I am just one person. But I want furniture up here. I want shade and the whole deal. Are you collecting water off the roof here? No, but that is in the plans. So that's why the tank is where it is, the larger tank. So this 430-ish square feet will shed into that larger tank. So all of this will be rainwater capture? Yes. This wasn't part of the original design, this flat roof. But this was because on the ground, when I was envisioning building, I'm like, well, no matter what I do, I'm going to miss out on my 360-degree mountain view. So there's only one way to sustain having that view, and that is to get on top of my tallest structure. Around the world, natural buildings generally kind of have the same look as the rest of the surrounding, whether you're in the hills or flatlands or the plains or whatever it is. You kind of see that this is a mirror image of the mountains themselves. So natural buildings generally kind of match the horizon line. I work full time, so my house is partially complete. It just had to be simple. And so this worked out really well for me and my wife. It's been really comfortable. This is not unique. The thing that I've done here is not a unique situation. Millions and millions and billions of people that died long before I was born also built their own damn house out of these materials. Half the battle is, and I'm a real estate agent, and so I get people all the time who are just like, do you think I can do this? I'm not sure if I want to do it, but I'm not sure if I can. I think just knowing in your heart that you can do it is enough. The rest of it will come later. That's kind of what living like here is like. Pretty relaxed. I still don't know what I'm doing if I go under the kitchen sink. Like, I've got to go to the hardware store like three and four times. The desert definitely has a way of slowing everything down. Everything's moving so quickly in the city and in the suburbs. The magic of the world is exposed, I feel like, in the desert.