We're Building A Straw Bale Pole Barn House!

This week on OSRL. This is it the final phase of our house build. We're sharing with you our big plans on what we're building and how we're building it. All right everyone welcome back. So if you caught our last video you know we started planning out the rest of our house but we kind of got caught short didn't we? Yeah we had some rain. Yeah we're still dealing with a little bit of the remnants of that right now. The top of our root cellar is still wet so I got a little pool of water on it. But we're back out here we want to finish the planning and we kind of want to share exactly what's going on. So we kind of talked a little bit about the house that there's going to be a house here well and it's part of the the dome. The dome is part of the house. It's all going to be interconnected but we kind of want to get into the details of what we're building, how we're building it, and all that good stuff. So kind of give you guys an tour of the house. Kind of went through some of the rooms and stuff like that that's going to be in there but it's all interconnected. The dome, the root cellar, and this next part. More time for pets. That goes in between all the activities or during them. So we had some ideas kind of going into this whole house build years back and originally we wanted to build another earthbag dome and connect the two. Yeah it was going to be all earthbag. I think we learned some things along the way. Like this dome is very nice for the summer months. It stays pretty cool but it is a little darker which is great because it's energy efficient for those summer months. Allows you to get some place to kind of keep cool. So right now the dome is where the living area is and the bedroom. So I think those are good rooms for the dome. Kind of places where you're relaxing, where you want things quiet, cool, out of the sun. Yeah but the rest of this will kind of be you know the kitchen, the laundry room, the bathroom. It'll be kind of those places where you're kind of maybe in and out and it'd be kind of nice to just get that sunlight in there. Have your cob plans fallen through? My gloves are wet. Did you say a fly? Yeah. How many flies do you murder? But not by drowning right? They must die by your own hand. Oh look got clean gloves. Hang them up in an hour they'll be good. You said you were going to be doing cob and it said you don't want it. You can make a lot of cob with that much water. Dirt is moist too. Things are still drying out from all that rain we got. I'm gonna need a second tray. Yeah we still haven't even technically, I mean the dome is finished but it's still not finished. It still has to be waterproofed and protected and I don't even know how long that'll take. And that was a massive undertaking for just the two of us and the size of that dome. It took a lot of energy and a lot of time and work. So not that we're opposed to it. I think it was a fantastic build and a fantastic idea. We love it. But in order to just get this process done and get a place to live in, I mean we could spend quite a bit of time in the dome right now. It does offer a really nice place for us to just kind of get out of there. A place for us to sleep even stay warm with the rocket mass heater. But we want this build to go a little bit quicker. We kind of decided to frame things out in a more of a pole barn style build. Exactly what type of style pole barn were we looking at? Well I didn't know too much about pole barns going into this. So I kind of looked it up and what we're kind of going for I think they call it like a monitor style pole barn. So that means that the center is kind of raised up and then there's like two almost kind of lean to kind of sides coming off of that center part. We just thought that would be perfect for kind of what we want to build here. Since it's part living space but also part greenhouse. Chickens are so hungry they're trying to bust through the gate. You gotta throw the treats down first so I don't get mobbed when style, we're actually going to be kind of using multiple techniques and kind of several different styles from what we learned to actually kind of build these walls. So let's talk a little bit about the foundation. Let's talk about the foundation for the north side the living space. So we're on the north side of the house and we're actually going to still use earth bags for the foundation. Obviously we have experience with that and I think it'll make a good foundation for the type of walls that we want to use. I think for the most part we'll be using gravel in these bags because we want to prevent water from wicking up into the walls. Now above the earth bags we're actually going to be using straw bales which will be kind of a new technique for us. We will be bringing straw bales in and this north side will actually be built using straw bales. But actually you know with the pole barn type framing the straw bales will pretty much just be infill. I think technically we've decided to kind of sort of wrap the straw bales will kind of be like on the outside of the framing. Yeah technically it's going around them. I've always wanted to kind of use to kind of try a straw bale building so this will be exciting to try it out for the first time on our house. So straw bales for the wall at least on this north hand side the roof will be sort of like a metal sheeting on the north side and on top. Is there anything else you want to say about this particular side of the house before we move on to the greenhouse? Not too much just that this is where the rooms a lot of the rooms are going to be on the north side. I think we kind of went over that in the last video laundry room kitchen. I think the placement of the greenhouse in these rooms will be excellent because during these winter months the greenhouse will be able to will heat up from the solar gain and be able to warm up those rooms on the north hand side. And then when the sun is going up high over the summer months that metal sheeting should protect the house from heating up too much. Yeah. All right let's head on over to the south side. Okay now we are on the south side and the south side is going to be built a little differently than the north side. This side is going to be a greenhouse going to be very exciting. I can't wait to put this together. You're excited about the greenhouse because that'll allow you opportunity to grow some more food which you've been chomping at the bit to do. We've been so busy out here with building growing but growing food is definitely going to be a top priority. So this will give us some space and some time to be able to utilize it. Now for the foundation for this it's going to be a little different. Instead of earthbag I think we're actually going to go with a gabion. So we'll still kind of dig this down a little bit. We'll put a gabion wall on top of here which will be kind of like the stem wall and instead of metal sheeting we're actually going to use polycarbonate sheeting along here on the south side. So I'm very excited about that. It'll also sort of be on the top roof as well at least part of it and of course since we'll have a polycarbonate roof as well we'll have to shade that out in the summer months. But it will give us an opportunity to get a little bit more light in there. You know even if we're using a shade cloth maybe we use like what uh what percentage of shade cloth would you say you put up there in the summer months? Probably between 50 and 90. Because that summer sun can be so intense and you definitely want to sort of reduce it as much as possible without but it'll offer a little bit more light than let's say putting up metal. Yeah we're talking about the types of windows we want to use especially for that greenhouse portion and getting ventilation in there so we might get some specialized like windows towards the the top there. Yeah what's your idea for that? Why don't you go into a little bit about that. Well I know they have automatic vent openers for greenhouses that they automatically open up at a certain temperature and I thought that might be a good thing to have especially because it's going to be kind of high up there and we don't want to climb up and open it manually. It's going to be kind of a pain so maybe we could get those. All right in our last video you saw Jess moving some rocks around and now we got to move them around again because the plans have changed even from the last video to this video. This isn't official but we're kind of moving some rocks around so Jess can get an idea of sort of where these posts are going to be. I think the posts are going to be critical to how you plan out the inside right? I figure the posts will probably be where the interior walls are going to go. We don't want posts like in the middle of a room or something where we need to move around. Good thinking. So I thought we'd start over here on the north hand side. Let's start out in the shade and then we'll end up in the sun. You know kind of crazy that this is February and you still need to kind of hide out from the sun but the sun's intense here even in the winter. Now don't get me wrong in the winter months when it's cold you kind of want to stay out under the sun a little bit but man this is a beautiful warm day and it feels fantastic out here. Yeah there's there's like bees and butterflies floating around. It's almost point. I think we're ready to move forward. Excellent that's what I like to hear and so I think we're at a really good time of year for this. You know the temperatures are really cool now we're getting some rain obviously if we're going to be utilizing straw bales we don't want those bales to get wet. It's we're getting a little bit of rain now but I don't think it's very consequential. Yeah and we're going to be moving into the dry period of the year pretty soon. So I think this is great you know if we can get sort of the framework done if we can kind of get that roof in and even if we put the bales in that'll act as a real nice protection but hopefully we can get a good chunk of this done before the rainy season even comes in maybe we can get those straw bales in place and even protect it. I'm anxious to see how fast we can get on this build and maybe we can have a nice place to live soon. I've been really looking forward to this part of the build which feels like it's kind of like the final phase of the house build putting everything together and you know we've been living out here for a while now and we're getting by you know in limited space and working with what we have which is fine but I mean it's I feel like it's going to be different you know having this space and designing it the way that we want that in a way that really suits us. Yeah it's kind of interesting to see how plans have changed over time you know we kind of went into this with one expectation and those plans have changed with just sort of kind of new ideas that we've been bringing to the table new experiences and I'm excited I'm excited to move on to this next phase of the build I think it'll go a lot quicker than the dome you know we're kind of living in the dome a little bit we're kind of living in the trailer a little bit but you still feel kind of cramped you actually do a lot of your work in the trailer still because even though we do we do utilize the dome that's kind of where you still like to work out of it's you got internet connection there and everything like that and I think you're starting to feel a little cramped in that space. I am and I guess just the way my mind is I don't like the any kind of you know like a cluttered feeling um and being cramped it makes it difficult for me to work. I'm excited I definitely want to move forward with this next phase ASAP so I'm ready to get to work let's do it y'all let's get this done let's see how much we can get done before the monsoon rains come I'm excited. So we'll catch you in the next video where we'll be breaking ground on the next phase of this build bye y'all