We Speed Ran 30 Days of Heavy Cob Work

Yeah we probably got over a month's worth of work in just a few days. What a ruckus storm we had yesterday. That was definitely the biggest storm we had so far. Pretty wild. Can't trust anything out here. Not during a monsoon. How's it going everyone and 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. Now if you could do me a big favor don't forget to hit the like button and definitely subscribe because you'll want to see all this come together. Now if you caught our last video you know I was promising that we might be getting a lot more rain and we got another storm brewing. Look at that. It's heading up on over the mountains and I think it's going to hit here maybe real soon. So batting down the hatches for sure. The wind was uh kind of crazy a little while ago. It's still blowing but uh died down here a little bit. Maybe that means the uh the rain will be coming here shortly. It's here. Oh my goodness. It's really coming down. Good morning. Man what a ruckus storm we had yesterday. That was definitely the biggest storm we had so far. It was pretty exciting. Coming over to the rain gauge. Look at this. We got an inch of rain yesterday. Everything around here is soaked and I guarantee you those uh the poly tanks are full. I was feeling them yesterday and it was right up at the top. I didn't see any overflow but uh that's probably coming. You just gotta if we get a little sprinkle it's probably going to be overflowing. So coming over to our latest IBC tote. See we got water up to here. Over 100 gallons. Maybe 120 gallons in here. Nice and that's just off the shed. So I'm sure those got a decent amount of water as well which is excellent. All right I am excited. So Jess has been working on mudding the inside of the dome but with the rains coming we thought it might be a good idea to get back up there and get some more mud on top of the dome and maybe push to finish that off. Now it's something Jess here has been wanting to do solo for I don't know forever. She's like I'm just gonna take care of it. But recently I'm excited. She's just like would you mind helping me? And I'm like yeah absolutely. I've offered so many times but she's like nah I got it I got it. Yeah I was trying to finish it myself but it's taking so long and I think I kind of got discouraged and I stopped doing it for a while. So I just thought you know when we work together it works out really well and we kind of I know you help keep me focused on the work and I work harder when you're working with me so maybe we can get this done a lot sooner. Heck yeah. Teamwork makes the dream work. I'm excited yeah I can't wait to do this so I've been wanting to I've been wanting to help her out for the longest time and I'm excited that she's like yes let's do it together and I'm like oh yeah that's what I've been waiting for. So yeah I'm excited so I'm going to be making the mixes hauling it up to her and then she's just going to be up there applying it. How's that go? All right let's get to it and we got to work fast because we could get more rain today. I mean you never know. It says like oh it could be flooding but we might not get a few drops and then it said well you might get a few drops and then deluge so we'll see. Gonna only play it by ear. I'll get more dirt in the next one. So we got a week's worth of work done here and like a couple hours. She's putting this mud up fast I barely have time to make a mix. She's working quick. All right so we are making really good progress on the top of this dome. At least 10 really good size mixes. We've made a lot of progress really quickly and now I got to get things ready. I got to get more dirt so we can keep on moving but actually our weather apps are telling us that there is a really good chance probably even like 90 percent or more that we could be getting rain so I'm hesitant. I'm putting more wet cob up there because if we get a lot of heavy rain that could end up washing all that new cob off. In fact we probably pushed it quite a bit already maybe we should be working on the inside and that's what we might do. Before it rains we might make some mixes do some work on the inside and we'll just kind of play it by ear whether we get the rain or not we'll see. Look at this Jess. I get to do the farmer's carry. I've been meaning to do this exercise for a while. Working on the outside. Working on the inside. We're getting it all done. Great we're getting a lot. Got a lot of outside cob done. Got a lot of inside cob done. Nice. Yeah it definitely looks like it's pouring over there to the south of us so I don't know we're definitely I think we're definitely going to get hit here. We'll see how it goes. All right the rain is here as promised. The apps didn't lie to us this time. All right well this is pretty exciting. All right so the storm rolled through. At the height of the storm we probably got like an eighth of an inch of rain and it's been a light rain ever since. Just kind of on and off kind of a light rain. Wasn't nearly as bad as it said. I mean we could get some more rain tonight but this is kind of one of those times where I wasn't hoping we got like a huge downpour because I just didn't want that new cob to just get washed off so. So we got a decent amount done today. Not as much as I had hoped. I was hoping we'd get between 20 to 30 mixes done. We got 10 outside a couple mixes inside. So still quite a bit done. So we'll see what we can get done tomorrow. Again good chance of rain tomorrow. So let's see if we can get a good amount of mixes. Let's aim for 20 at least. Come on. But I'm not upset at all about the progress we made. It is looking pretty good. Okay so I think we got some more rain last night but let's check and just double check on this total. Plus we got to empty this rain gauge. Just over an eighth of an inch so a little bit more but not much more. And today there is a chance of rain pretty much all day today so we're going to play it by ear. We're going to get back out here start making some mixes try and get some more cob up there and just uh just see how it goes you know that's all we can do. So we are starting to get some rain. Just kind of a healthy drizzle so I'm not sure if Jess is going to want to be out here right now. We'll check but if this lets up we might head up there. So a little bit of a setback maybe. We'll see. All right so we got a nice little break in the rain. Perfect time to get some work done out here so I'm going to start mixing and Jess should be out here shortly. She's going to head up on top and we'll start uh start putting up this cob. All right let's get mixing y'all. Mix is going up already. The mix is waiting for you. All ready for some more? All right even with the rain delay we still got 10 mixes down and it's almost time for lunch but I need to refill on some dirt get that ready so I need to refill some supplies so I'll probably do that probably break off for lunch and then we'll see while we're looking for rain. I already see clouds moving in so see what we can get done. All right it is post lunch and it's not raining there's some menacing looking clouds but uh I've started making more mixes again and we'll see if we can get some more done. Maybe uh 10 more mixes. Hit 20 today that'd be nice. Let's see what we can do. It could could rain anytime now but you know we'll just uh just take it as it comes. All right round two how are you feeling? These mixes take a lot out of you right? A lot of work. Could be a rain delay coming up I don't know. I stopped making mixes. Jess is just finishing up on that last one I took up there and uh the wind's picking up I'm starting to feel some raindrops and uh I don't want to be carrying them up there and then have Jess get stuck up there with a bunch of cob when the rain starts coming down so we're gonna hedge our bets and uh we're gonna just clean up and uh we'll be done for the day. Just gotta work around the rain that's it. All right here comes the rain looks like we made it off the roof there just in time. All right all right I'm excited. Get a little more water. All right we are back at it again we're headed up to the top of the dome and we're gonna get some more mixes done. I'm really excited by how fast this has been going um yeah I think we got a winner. I think we uh just kind of keep on doing this until we get up to the plastering. One-handed hat putting on. Do you want me to put on the hat for you? Oh she's got it. It's sunny this morning so I'm gonna make sure I get my hat in. All sun no rain. There should be a day without rain finally. All right how do you think these are gonna this is gonna go? You already kind of got a decent layer over here. I just so I just need to fill in these little divots where the rocks were so it should take less cob. I don't know if it'll be any faster or not. I guess we'll see. I guess we'll see. All right we already got a couple of cob mixes going. I'm just gonna keep at it and keep keep feeding her. All right so we were wondering where Yuvia was and she is out exploring. Can you see her? I'm surprised she's doing this at this time of day. Five-finger death punch. Seriously though do you think your fingers are strong enough to like put through a board or something? All right so it is after lunch and we are back at making mixes. I think we're already uh two mixes deep right and uh we're gonna try and knock out a few more mixes here and we're not supposed to get any rain but you know on uh during the monsoon you just never know when it says it's gonna rain it could not rain and when it says no rain we could get a ton so there's always got to play it by ear. I just want to know look at the flexibility and agileness of Jess here like a like a jungle cat climbing on the dome. Yuvia you regret coming outside? You regret coming outside? She had to pop out for a bit maybe just to do any business and uh just to check see where if we're not going anywhere too hot out for her. Gotta be inside where it's nice and cool. I just kind of like to point out a couple things now that we're out here uh some people have said that the cob coating has just washed off which is not true in some of the thinner spots definitely the bags are showing so you know with those thin layers of cob yeah it's going to kind of wear down kind of quicker and those bags are going to show but you can see up here where that cob is a lot thicker it's really holding up really well in the intense rains now eventually that will wear down and that would wear down as well but once we get this thicker layer on here it should hold up a lot better and it should hold up long enough to get that plaster layer on even though this has some wear and tear it's still holding up really well everything is doing fine and even if those bags like deteriorate a little bit that's not going to be an issue it's just going to get wet again and that dirt inside is going to get wet and harden even more so it's a pretty resilient build. Yeah the only reason why those bags are showing is because we didn't get plaster on quick enough but it did last like a long time yeah even with that stuff yeah so yeah really it's like like the surface will slowly erode and wash away when you get driving rains on it but the straw really helps hold it together and the clay itself in the soil kind of is water resistant so it slows down the erosion but you know this is like years of wear so we're we're trying to you know put another coat of cob on there and then get it plastered as soon as possible so we don't have to do this again. Luckily we called it quits and we got off the top of the dome but it is raining you see we weren't supposed to get any and here we are that's how it goes it's coming down pretty good on the day it said it wasn't supposed to rain yesterday we're supposed to get rain and it's just a little bit pretty wild pretty wild can't trust anything out here not during a monsoon. I'm excited I'm excited that Jess felt she could come to me and ask me for some help after repeatedly turning down offers for help in the past yeah why the sudden change I mean I'm just happy you were able to to do that and feel comfortable enough to to ask that it's it's it's tough for you to ask help from anyone even from me yes I'm trying to work on that I think you kind of pride yourself on how you know you like things done a certain way and you like to be in control of that process I think beginning to end so you've asking for help you've kind of like let control a little bit of that process in order to get some help like I'm in charge of the mixing process so you can't fully get maybe the mix just how you want it it's obviously how I'm making it but it seems to be okay for you it seems to be working for you yes working pretty good yeah excellent and I think because of the team up you know we probably got over a month's worth of work in just a few days yeah it's incredible yeah I'm really happy with the progress yeah you know another thing is I injured my shoulder oh yeah kind of my upper arm shoulder area it was back in February I think and it still has some lingering pain and I actually lost mobility in my arm this is my dominant hand here so it's been kind of difficult doing work so I really did need the help too is that kind of what pushed you into asking for help yeah that was one of the things for sure okay but you know I was a little bit worried about you know getting into the work and and maybe pushing it too hard with an injured arm but at this point it's like the initial injury I think is healed and it's just kind of like some chronic pain and stiffness and so I think working it like that without you know going overboard or like you know like if you had to like take those cob buckets and move it to the roof like that would be that might be too much too much but it's good to keep it moving yeah so I'm excited I think made a lot of progress there and I think we'll just keep going and we'll be able to knock out the whole thing yeah so definitely be looking forward to I think we can finish off the top of this dome pretty quick all right teamwork makes the dream work and we really appreciate you guys being part of the team watching our videos leaving a thumbs up commenting it really helps and we really appreciate it thank you guys so much all right well we'll catch you guys on the next video see you then bye she just came outside to get some pets yuvia video's over it's over in the silence of the desert where the stars align two hearts come together in the warm sunshine with hands in the start up they plant their dreams building a life stronger than it seems we're living off the rain under the endless sky with every drop of promise as the days roll by love's the only key together we are wild together we are free we're solar panels shining we're dancing with the light waking to the sunrise paying day for night through the whispers of the wind we find our way in this desert paradise we'll forever stay we're living off the rain under the endless sky with every drop of promise as the days roll by love's the only key together we are wild together we are free through the storms and the droughts hand in hand we stand each challenge of blessings in the sun kissed land we'll build our forever with love that never leaves we're living off the rain as the days roll by together we are free teamwork makes the dream work