Today We STOP Making Adobes and START Building

I got good news and bad news. We used all the bricks. These bricks are too wide. 50, 60 bricks that we're not going to be able to use. We've made over 350 blocks over the last couple of weeks, and we need a break. I'm tired of screwing with this. Today, we're not making adobes. We're laying. We need to see some progress on the hyper adobe roundhouse, but that doesn't mean it'll be easy. This will be by far the most complicated adobe lane that we've done yet. There's going to be some interlocking. There's going to be some weirdness. It's going from single to double. Good morning, friends. We are back at the roundhouse. We are not making adobes because it has been super cloudy and rainy. And all the ones that we made over the weekend have not dried yet. So we're going to keep laying blocks. But we are at a critical junction. As you can see, we've kind of stopped up there. So that's going to keep coming this way. And then it's going to get complicated because now we have to start going this way on the straight wall. And as soon as we get on the outside of the straight wall on this wall, we need to double the bricks so that it's the full width, because there's not going to be any wire chase or utilities chase here. It's just going to be full wall. So anyway, it's going to there's going to be some interlocking. There's going to be some weirdness. It's going from single to double. We're just we're going to take it slow. Good news is we still have a lot of bricks. We should have enough bricks to continue this. I don't know how far we'll get this morning, but it looks like a really nice day. It's going to be clear today before it just starts raining like every day for the next 10 days, which is, you know, good for the desert. Bad for adobe brick making, but we'll figure it out. Oh, this is the first confusing spot that we have so far. This is where the entrance wall meets the outside circle wall. So we need to interlock the straight wall and the curve. So that's what we've done. It's actually not as complicated as I thought it would be, but I'm really glad I was up here because she always has like really good ideas and thinks things through. Unlike some people, she always thinks about the next step. And I think about what I'm doing right now. So having her out here with a second set of eyes is really helpful. She's she mapped this out and it looks really great. And everything is working out great. We only have to do a couple little cuts here and there to make this brick fit here. So everything's looking great. I'm really happy with it. Yeah. So we're leaving this. Oh, this is for the chase. So this is where we put the utilities. Utilities are going to come up on the inside of the circle walls. We still have to do that on some of the straight walls to get stuff out to certain areas of the house. But then once we get to the outside over here, we're going to start doubling the bricks because there's no utility chase there and this is all outside. So we don't we don't really want a weird step there on that wall. So that'll be fun. Our first double bricks. Yeah. Hopefully they fit. If they don't, we'll have a little air gap between, which is not a bad thing. I'd be worried about them being too wide. Oh, I don't think they're too wide. We'll see. If they are, then we're not cutting. That's too complicated. Too bad nobody's going to see it. So cute. Did we do it? We did enough for this morning. Sounds great. I don't know how many bricks we laid, but it definitely wasn't as many as yesterday, but or the day before. But it was more complicated. And I feel like really good about how we figured it out. Mostly because of Adelaide. I think we should try to finish from here over there before we start making bricks. I feel like that would be like a good make us feel like we got stuff done. You know, but we still have that other side of this. We can come back to that later because that part is complicated. Well, I think we should do it before this gets out of this room. No, because it'll all be on the outside. It's not. Well, there's a little bit of it. I know. I just should we do it while this is in here? Because then we have to take it apart and move it. Well, maybe we could at least get it to the outside of the corner. Yeah, we'll see. That area is complicated, too. It's all complicated. Nothing is easy. Well, it's good. It does look good. Thanks, Adelaide. You're welcome. Today's video sponsor is Quince, and they have done it again. I've been eyeing these dishes for the last few months, and I'm finally starting my collection for the house. So you're getting a sneak peek at my color scheme. These dishes are by East Fork Company, and now they are available through Quince. And that makes me so excited because the quality is top notch. 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You can scan this QR code or visit the link in the description below. And don't forget, they have free shipping and 365 day return. So really, there's no reason to wait. Check it out today. And while you're doing that, I'm going to keep envisioning my finished kitchen while I keep laying adobe blocks. Friends, just a quick reminder. Events this fall, Fanny Shanny Homestead. We've got the tour coming up on October 3rd. This is where we walk around and we look at all the different projects that we worked on here on the homestead. We look at solar and rainwater catchment, permaculture, super adobe, hyper adobe, lava crete. We have a delicious lunch. We get to hang out with cool people, answer lots of questions. And then we also have a couple of workshops coming up later. We've got the lava crete accent wall workshop on October 10th and 11th. And we have the hyper adobe and lava crete workshop. November 13th through 15th. Also, don't forget, there is an adobe block making workshop at Awareness Ranch. Our friend Gurdas is running September 26th. That's up in Tucson. So maybe if you don't want to drive all the way out to Cochise County and you're closer for Phoenix and Tucson, it's a great little day trip. It'll be super fun time. You should you should come to all of those. tinyshinyhome.com slash events for the homestead tour, accent wall workshop and the lava crete and hyper adobe workshop. And then awarenessranch.com for the adobe block making workshop. We'll be at all of them. So you should come and we'll see you there. Cool. All right. Let's get back to it. So remember when Ashley said we weren't going to trim the blocks to make them fit up there? Well, we're trimming the blocks. All right. The goal for this morning is to complete this little exterior wall. These bricks are too wide. So we are not just doing the outside. We're doing the outside and the inside of this bond beam. It will be completely full of these adobe block. Really hard to see. So hopefully you understand what I'm talking about. But we only have, you know, a little bit of section there. I think it's going to be less than 50 bricks. So hopefully we can get that done today. The only downside is Johnson does have to cut all of these adobes because our bond beam isn't wide enough for two full bricks. Anyway, it slows us down a little bit, but, you know, with a new blade on the saw, we can chop them pretty fast and then lay them up there as quickly as we can and hopefully wrap this wall. But I know it's not like that. It's just in my mind. Maybe that's all right. Imagination, Roman. That's just not enough. I just want more time, but there's no plan enough. Maybe now you're up there all the way. I know that you are gone. But you are next to me, metaphorically, right next to me. And next to me. Oh, I know that you are gone. But you are next to me, metaphorically, right next to me. Right next to me. We are so close to having this double wall done here. You can see we're missing like maybe eight, nine, 10 bricks. It's really getting complicated around all the C purlins and the bar joists are having to cut all these weird parts and we're having to trim off each block like an inch, which is just taking forever. But we're almost done with that part. And then we can kind of fill that in. And I don't know where we're going to go after that. We may try to finish back on the where we have this wing out on the back door. We may try to do that. Or we may build another form with not as wide brick. So we have to cut them all. Problem is, we just have to wait. And that's really, honestly, the biggest problem here is that we're already all we only have those two windows of bricks left. We used all the bricks like we had a ton of them. So, yeah, we're definitely going to have to go back into brick production mode in the next couple of days. We're definitely going to finish this first. Yeah. OK, so here's the deal. We have trimmed way too many of these bricks, probably like 50 of them, which is real dumb. So before we do the area in the back that needs the double wall, we're going to make a new form. But the problem is we want to get this done. We don't have time to make the new form and make the bricks and then wait like two weeks for them to dry. So I'm going to cut these last few. We're going to finish this area and then we'll keep moving. OK, so we finally got that done. We're just going to go ahead and move right over to here because they're all right next to each other. We're intersecting the circle with straight wall, and we got to at least build it up close to the next bond beam where the next set of bricks will start. We don't want to get too close because we'll want to interlock those two. We're just going to try to get rid of our mortar today, because as you can probably see, it looks like we might get rain soon. So we want to get what we can up on the wall. Also, I would like to get all these bricks kind of off the deck over to the windows to dry out a little bit more because we keep having to cover them with the tarp because they're exposed. And it just feels like they're they're just not really drying when they're covered with the tarp all the time, but they're dry enough to move. So move that over there. And that way we want to finish this area and get out to the outside. We'll have those bricks and whatever other bricks we bring over. Anyway, we need to hurry because it looks like it's going to rain. Now the mountains to the desert, to the ocean waves have a glow I can't ignore, but I can't explain. It makes me want to see it all. What do you say? Let's go take in the view. Now the whole world's in color, baby, we're on the move. It's like my vision is new. Everything's more beautiful when I see it with you. Driving down the highway like it's ours to take. With every single exit and adventure waiting on a road I've driven a thousand times before. Now you're long hair shining in the July sun and I'm singing to you, baby, that we've just begun. And I'm feeling like the road we're on is going to never fade. So let's go take in the view. Now the whole world's in color, baby, we're on the move. We got good news and bad news. Good news is most of the bricks we made as we're putting them up, they feel great. Bad news is this whole set of three to one that we did with three sands to one clay because we were worried about cracking. These things are not structural at all. A bunch of them crack and like if you just drop it, that one actually did better than the other ones. But like it's not drying out on the inside. It's very easy. Like that should not. Even with the ones that were super cracked, the ones that had more clay in them. Like if it did have a big crack down the middle and part of it broke off, you couldn't just snap it like that. That's not structural at all. So that's a bummer because that's a whole like probably 50, 60 bricks that we're not going to be able to use. But we're going to break them up and try to reconstitute them into a new batch and just add more clay. But that's sad. So if you want to put your hand in there, if you're interested, you can feel especially his top teeth, how they're pretty flat. You go all the way to the back. So instead of being that flat, they should be at an angle. Did you want to do that? And then we'll take a look at your hand all the way to the back. You can trust the spectrum of the pretty trusty buddy. Yeah, so he's got quite a bit of points in the cheeks, but that's not really the main problem. Usually when we see teeth, it's more the flatness throughout their face. So when we go and address just the points that are sitting on the cheeks, we inevitably reduce the angle. Right. So if I go and reduce that, I'll do that. So that's what's been done over and over. So he's got quite a diminished angle. So we got to put some angle back. Let's see what he thinks about it. Good boy. So I'm going to do his points and then I'm going to close him up so that he can understand. OK, this feels better. This is Anna. We recently had an equine dentist come out to give Ford and Rue checkups. This is Rue's second visit with Anna and Ford's first time. Anna practices a more gentle approach called neuromuscular based horse dentistry. There are no power tools used, just hand floats and plenty of breaks with the speculum. This kind of dentistry addresses pathology issues, but it also makes sure pathology doesn't return by setting up the horse's mouth for what is anatomically correct for them. This influences muscles, neurology and so much more. Nice cheese breeder so he can break the grass, but there's an angle. So it's no more if you want to kill it, too. It's it's not pointy anymore so much that it can. It actually cut my finger earlier when I felt it. See how pointy it was? But it's still rough. It needs to be rough. We can't make horses teeth smooth because the smoothness will make all their muscles in and around their heads work much harder to do something that should just come effortlessly. What I understand from talking with Ana is that the power tools can easily take off too much tooth and can cause more problems down the road. By using these hand floats, she's able to precisely take off just enough tooth, and usually it requires no sedation. With the power tools that most dentists use, sedation is nearly always required. Like I said earlier, this is Rue's second visit, and I loved hearing Ana tell Adelaide that she was a completely different horse and that Adelaide has done such a great job working with her. I felt the same way when watching Rue and Adelaide together, but me not knowing much about horses, it was just really great to hear experts say the same thing and acknowledge that. So we got to take it down to a little bit closer to the other one. So it's still about half an inch taller. You can put your hand to feel how much taller than the others still. So we could only take, you know, as much as the enamel allowed us at the time. So a little bit at a time, we'll bring it back. Hoard, of course, was great, too. And if you're in Cochise County and are interested in a more gentle approach to horse dentistry, I could not recommend Ana enough. So we'll leave a link in our description of this video so that you can get in touch with her. Got a nice, cool afternoon. So, well, pretty humid, but cool afternoon. We're going to take all that mix that we trimmed off of those blocks to do the double wall over there where you got in here. It's soaked. So I'm hoping a lot of the clumps are kind of gone and then we're going to remix and make more blocks out of it. It's a nice thing about Adobe as opposed to like earthbags. When we add cement, once the cement hits that water, you know, it has a chemical reaction and it binds and everything. But with the clay, you can just get it wet and sort of tear it apart again. So we're going to reuse that. And then we're going to reuse this and we're going to make more books. Hello there. We are back out for another experiment. So, you know, we've been talking to a lot of people about these Adobe bricks in the mix and doing lots of research. And we had sort of initially been told that we didn't need to chop the straw after talking to a few other people who also make Adobe's. They suggested that we try chopping the straw with the idea that the smaller pieces of fiber might help hold it together a little more consistently as it's trying to pull apart when it dries and when it starts cracking. You know, we've had this chopper since the solar shed days. I hate this thing. I didn't want to have to use it because it was just going to add like a whole other step. But at this point, you know what? Like, we're still having some issues with it. Still haven't quite got it nailed down. So we're going to try it. I've got some new. They're not blades. They're like little pieces of plastic. It's like a lawnmower trimmer piece of plastic. We got new ones in there. I got a whole bunch of straw. We're going to fill this trash can up and then what we're going to do, because, you know, we have been soaking our clay sort of overnight where we'll we'll fill up our ratio of clay, we'll saturate it, we'll mix it all in, we'll get it nice and smooth, and then we'll come in and add the sand at the last minute and then make the bricks. We were doing the straw last minute. Once we chop it, though, we should be able to mix with the paddle mixer and it shouldn't shouldn't get all tangled up in there. We'll see how that goes. But my idea is that we'll try to soak the clay and the straw together overnight. And we're going to open up the second thing so we can always have a mix that has been sitting for a while to kind of soak. Some people think that maybe the straw is absorbing too much water and that changes how it dries. I don't know that I'm convinced about that, but I do think that sort of letting all that stuff marinate might be part of the issue, too, because we have to move really fast. We've got to make videos. And it's this whole process is extremely frustrating and the whole like drying process, having to keep them covered or misted or whatever, and then flip them up and then flip them over. And like you really got to baby these things to get them to work. And it's when you're trying to make videos, you try to make progress on your wall. I'm tired of screwing with this, but we have a lot more to make. So we need to figure it out. So anyway, I'm going to chop some straw and then I'm going to put it in that goopy mix over there. And then I'm going to empty out that one. I'm going to put some more goopy mix in and some more straw. And hopefully we will find more success in the future. Thank you for coming to my adobe dock. Also, we are goggling. We are masking. We are doing all the things to protect our ears and eyes and nasal passages from chopping straw. This is another reason I hate doing this. Good grief. How many more things can I fit on my face? How many more? It's going to break. I can feel it. I can feel it. Well, maybe not. Goodness gracious. I'm unclear on if this is going to actually help me or not. OK, there, there, there, there. OK, danger. See? Much better. All right, let's go add it to the mix. All right. That actually mixed in pretty good with the paddle mixer. Didn't really have any issues with it getting all clumped up like we did with the bigger pieces of straw. So we are just going to let this sit. I am definitely going to try to get this empty and get a second batch going, though, because I do feel like if we can soak both the clay and the straw for at least several hours before we come out and do anything, it'll give us a much better chance of success. Again, it's just a theory we're trying to sort of eliminate or mark off things on the list as we go. But I think either way, having a second batch of clay that's been soaking a little bit longer is always good. So we don't have to wait on that to keep moving. And then we can do two batches and then come back the next day after these are soaked and kind of do the whole thing over. There's a lot of water in there. Not sure I'm going to do this. OK, so we have a couple of hours before we have some friends coming over and we want to try this new idea with the chopped straw. So we made up two batches earlier. This one's already gone. So we did that. I mean, that was pretty quick, right? But it takes a little longer to mix because you're having to mix the straw and with the paddle mixer. So where we're at for this one is it has a bunch of straw already mixed in. We put some more on. We're going to mix this in and then we're going to add sand and then probably at least one more layer of straw. We're still not sure about the amount of straw we need. So we're going to keep testing with that and going three quarter inch on the plywood instead of a half, because a half inch is just it's bowing and bending and the three quarter helps keep everything a little flatter, which is good. I see shadows late at night. I hear echoes, smell perfume when I flip the bedroom light tossing and turning until I woke. My bed was in flames. I began to choke. Everything I ever had went up in smoke. It's only me who's still remain. The reason you're only doing like the four to eight is because you don't think the mixer can handle more material in here. Yeah, I don't think it can. It feels like the sweet spot. Yeah, for sure. This feels like if we could fill this up. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I just feel like when we were doing that, that's when we broke the other paddle mixer. That's what I'm worried about. So we did more tests. We ended up doing one batch, one to one and one batch, two to one. So obviously the one to one didn't make as many bricks as the two to one because the two to one had more sand in it. We're going to start another soak because I think as annoying as it is, I think the Adobe is all about the pregame and how much prep work you do the day before. I feel like it's so much more inefficient than hyper Adobe. It's kind of frustrating, but we're learning to be a little more patient and try to do a little work beforehand. So we're going to get our straw in and soak clay in and soak. And both of these let them sit overnight and be ready to do more tomorrow. Another has another one, but you're looking by regret is your and you still have a dream. So never don't try and never sit. Don't be wasting, wasting. Don't be wasting time. So never don't try and never sit. Don't be wasting, wasting. Don't be wasting time. Because maybe you'll fly. And maybe you'll soar when you're leaning in. You'll always be around for more. Because maybe you'll fly. Maybe you'll soar. Waste the, waste the, waste the time. Maybe you'll soar when you'll lean, always be around for more.