Testing Our FIRST Earthbag LINTEL on the Roundhouse!

We need saws, we need drills. I'll just close my eyes and I'll cut it. I'm going to go get some safety glasses. This is why we do it ourselves. I'm pretty sure smash the burger. Because it's crap. Everything's fine. The Hyper Adobe Roundhouse is our most ambitious project yet. Taking everything we've learned from five years of experimenting with natural building and off grid systems, we've designed an incredibly unique earth back structure that will serve as our family home in the centerpiece of our homestead. It's been a long road to get here, starting with the foundation. We leveled and compacted our base, dug out the trenches for the walls, put the plumbing in, wrapped and protected our lower layers, set over 30 door and window forms, locking them all in place with over 400 tons of material. We just recently reached a huge milestone, course 20 in the tops of our door and window forms. This means we're ready to install an insane amount of lentils or headers over all of our openings. Welcome back to the tiny, shiny homestead where we are not laying any more earth bags, at least for a little while. Today we are doing something different and I'm so excited. We're going to be building our first lentil. We're only building one for several reasons. We want to make sure this is the way we want to do it. So we're going to do everything that we would do when we get into like production mode for all 36. But we're just going to do one today. Set it up on the wall, make sure this is what we want to do, and then we can do more than one. First, we need to get all the supplies. There's so many things in the garage that we need to get down there. We need saws. We need drills. We need other things that I can't think of right now. But we're going to get it and we're going to get started. I'm a little too little too into you, got my head over my shoes, but I like it, I like it. I'm a little too little too into you, got me up over my shoes. This is very disorganized. This is how I do it. What is going on here? This is fine. It's going to fall off. Everything's great. You could just carry it. I'll make sure it doesn't fall. Let me down, let me down, like a little too little too into you, got my head over my shoes, but I like it, I like it. I'm pretty sure that this is all the things that we need, a tape measure, a pencil and a square and all the stuff that's over there. So we're going to go over there, uncover, because we still haven't seen what's there. We weren't here when the delivery came and the kids covered it up. So we haven't even looked at stuff. So let's go see what's over there and get started. It's a lot of wood. We're going to talk for a minute about some disappointments that we have in a specific box store, big box store that delivers out here and makes buckets. Yeah. So you remember when our fence magically got smashed? Yeah, that was the same company. And now we had this delivered yesterday when we were out of town and the concrete is broke right where they dropped it on our brand new concrete bed. Yeah. So that's fun. Also, they didn't bring everything. Not missing most of our lag screws. Also, one of the two by sixes is completely broken in half and glued back together. Yep. And one of the four by sixes is smashed. Like who picks that out and is like, hey, they could probably use that. What we need to do now is go through all of the lumber and pull out all the crap lumber that we can take back to said box store, big box store. And yeah. Yeah, because that's what we want to do is drive all the way back into town. An hour and a half there, hour and a half back. That's really fun. I'm trying to walk through the process of this two by six that's been glued together. Like, did they do it at the store? Did they do it? Did someone else do it and bring it back? Maybe, maybe. And they didn't notice. Oh, my gosh. It's kind of hilarious. Did we say their name? They haven't sponsored us. This just reinforces that we need a trailer to where we can go pick out our lumber, get everything ourselves. Make sure it's right. Make sure the quantities are right. Make sure it's not glued together. And then bring it back here without damaging any of our property. Y'all wonder why we're DIY. This is why we do it ourselves. And on top of that, like every piece has a huge split. This one splits all the way down. It is kind of standard for four by six. But I mean, some of them are pretty bad. So we will be replacing them. Also, guess what we got? We also got our strapping. This is our strapping for the that goes like over the bond beam to hold the whole structure together. And guys, we ordered so many things from Uline that they gave us a free gift. Would you like to see what that is? Jonathan picked it out. He got a Smashburger kit. This means that he has to make Smashburgers. Yeah, I'm not making it. But look at this. Smash the burger, flip the burger, cover it so it doesn't splatter. Blackstone. Guys, we should have ordered straps so many years ago because we could have been making Smashburgers for years now. Monsoon season is here and it's making things difficult for us. Weather apps are really bad at predicting the storms when they come in. And so our work schedule is constantly being thrown into chaos. I think this week alone, there was like three days in a row where we were trying to work on the house and we couldn't. We kept getting rained out. These intense thunderstorms bring lots of rain, which is good, but also hurricane force winds, hail, blowing dust storms and intense lightning. As you may know, our off grid solar system got damaged by lightning a couple of years ago. So every time a big storm comes through, we get a little bit nervous. If we shut the power off to protect things, what happens to critical loads like our fridge or freezer, our Wi-Fi routers? Well, thanks to today's sponsor, Jackery. We know that the HomePower 3000 is a quick and easy way to keep your critical loads powered during an emergency or a monsoon. The HomePower 3000 is a mind blowing three kilowatt hours of lithium iron phosphate battery storage and a 3600 watt inverter in this tiny enclosure, which means it's easy to carry it wherever you need it most. It's super simple to use, too. You just plug it up to an outlet with the cord that it comes with. It'll charge that battery up to 100% and you can turn it off and it will hold that charge for a whole year with its zero drain technology until you're ready to use it when your power goes out. So let's say that we have a huge storm coming through. There's lots of lightning. We're worried about the integrity of our system. We shut everything down just to keep it safe. We can easily take the HomePower 3000 over to the fridge or freezer and plug it in while the big system is off. With three kilowatt hours of battery, it can power those smaller kitchen appliances for one to two days. Hopefully we won't ever have a monsoon that lasts that long, but it's good to know that we're covered. Plus, if we want to run our instant pot or coffee maker in the airstream, there's plenty of power for that, too. One other feature I really like about the HomePower 3000 is its UPS function or uninterrupted power supply. So one way we could use the UPS is to keep our Internet up and running, even if we turn our power off. The way this would work is we would plug all of our Internet gear, the fiber ONT, the unified console switch and the antennas into the AC plugs on the front, connect the unit to power via its AC adapter, and it will charge up. And then if the main power goes out, it'll switch to powering those devices via the internal battery and inverter. And it does this with a 20 millisecond switch over. So if your power goes out unexpectedly, your router isn't going to reboot or restart in the middle of an emergency in a storm, which is exactly what you want. Besides the 3600 watt inverter, the HomePower 3000 has native DC ports as well. So if your Internet gear runs off USB, you could plug it in directly and have it last even longer. It's even got a 30 amp RV plug. That means we could plug the entire airstream into it and run everything inside, including the mini split for several hours. And of course, if you're looking at outages lasting for multiple days, you can always add solar panels so that you can recharge that battery without noise or fumes or gas. With all the crazy floods, storms and weather events this season, now is the perfect time to grab your own HomePower 3000. You can use the affiliate links in our description to get the perfect solar generator for you. Now, let's get back to the build. Those of you who've been watching for a long time, you know what a lintel is. We've done it for a lot of our other buildings. In case you're new here, anytime you have a door or window or an opening in your wall, you got to support over it because then there's more wall on top of it. And you don't want that to like sag and like make your window break or start making it where your door doesn't open right anymore. Like you have to support it the way that a lintel works in earth bags. In this case behind us, we have these window forms that we put in. These are temporary. They're going to get taken out before we take them out. We have to support over them, right? So we're going to build a big lintel and then you lay bags up to it and then you lay bags over it and then you take your form out. You put your frame back in. So that lintel takes all the weight of all the bags that you keep building up on top of it. I got to go grab some water. OK, well, Jonathan goes and grabs some water. I'm going to work because that's what I do. Just kidding. Can you put ice in my cup? Just kidding. Keep the ice in my cup. OK, here's what's going to happen. We have all that lumber that needs to go back because it's too messed up that we can't fix it. Because it's crap. Yep. So we're going to make one lintel, just one. We're doing a small one. We're going to burn the wood. We're going to scrape the wood. We're going to glue the wood. We're going to screw the wood and we're going to set it up on the wall and then we'll oil it later. But we just want to make sure it looks right. And this is how we want to do it. So we have our friend Sophie here. If you see a new face, she's our neighbor. She's our friend. And she's going to help us burn some wood. Yummy. Isn't that wood total crap? Total crap. All right. The time has come. We are going to make one of our bedroom window lintels. So our bedroom windows are going to be 28 inches wide. Our form is 32 inches wide. These lintels need to go a foot over the form size on each side. So 32 inches, 24. We're going to cut this to 56. We can get two, two of these out of one. So we're going to be cutting three four by six pieces and a two by six piece. And then we're going to burn it. It's going to be really fun. OK, now it's been a really long time since we used a saw or cut anything. And guess what I forgot? Safety glasses. But it's a good thing that this is just like not going to move. So I'll just close my eyes and I'll cut it. That's what's going to happen. I'm not going to the garage to get gloves. So, look, I've got it lined up exactly where it needs to be. All I have to do is this. See how easy that was? You should probably hold it. Most important thing when you're cutting blind is that you make sure your hands not in the way and then you'll be fine. Everything's fine. I'm going to go get some safety glasses. Why don't you move a little? For all the history of the human race, we've been trying to figure out communication for being on a drum to painting up in a cave. Then the language came and we got these letters. Centuries tried to use some better, but now it's easy to overcomplicate. Twenty six letters in the alphabet, but when I look at you, I place my bet that I could tell you all I need with just these three. Yeah, I, I, I, I want to be with you for all my life. Yeah, I, I, I, I want to be with you till the day I die. Let me take a minute just to make it clear there's a beautiful complexity in you, my dear. And every single layer that I see makes me want you more. But there's something in the way that simplicity can cut through the noise of modernity to take these simple words from my heart to yours. OK, we built our first lentil and I totally forgot how messy this job is. That's OK. So here's what we've done. We have eight inch. What are these called? Black screws, timber locks, eight inch timber locks. So if you come down here, you can see why we chose eight inch. This is an 11 inch piece when we screw everything together. So by doing our screws like this, you know, we're locking in to these two boards in two different ways. So we did two, four, six and two, four, six. Each of these lentils, that is the short side, is going to have 12 screws. And then the bigger lentils are actually going to have 16 screws. So we are going to not oil this yet. We're just going to go set it up on one of the window forms and make sure it's the right size and it's how we like it and get an idea of what it's going to actually look like. And then tomorrow, after that glue has had 24 hours to dry, we will oil this sucker up and it will be ready to go. And then we'll make a ton more. It's not as heavy as I thought it would be. This one's not bad. It's a little baby. Little baby lentil. Woke up to 17 new problems blowing up my phone. Oh, yeah. You know that if you let them, they'll try to break your soul. So I put on my robe and pour some coffee. Turn off my notifications. The sunshine pouring through the window sends them problems on vacation. You got to roll with it. Just roll with it. Just got to go with it. Just go with it. Oh, life is gone. It's been out of control. Just go with it. You got to roll with it. Just roll with it. Just go with it. Oh, keep your eyes on the road. Let go and just roll with it. Just roll with it. This is a good example, because these bags are actually a tiny bit higher than the form, so you can kind of see how you're taking all the weight off of this by having it set on the back. Yeah. And if the bags aren't high enough, we'll just put we'll shim or put like boards under the side and it will be fine. One thing that we do want to make sure that we do is on all of these windows, they need to all all these lentils need to be at the exact same height, because if they're not, our windows are going to look really weird on the outside. So we're going to be laser leveling and doing a bunch of very precision work when we put these in. But that's going to be on down the road. First, we just need to make 36 lentils. OK, so the lentil looks really good. That means that we can go ahead and cut and burn and put together all the windows here on this outer bedroom wall. We'll get all those done because they're all the same size. We're going to do that tomorrow because it's about to rain. We got to cover up all that wood and put up all of our tools. So for tomorrow, it's going to take us more than a day to build all this. I didn't say we were going to take a day. I think we can cut it all tomorrow.