Installing DIY Vents to Help Cool Our Attached Greenhouse

This week on OSRL. We begin building vents for the greenhouse portion of our house build. These will be super important in managing temperature, humidity, and airflow inside the greenhouse. 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, but if you caught our last video you know that I've been hard at work putting up these panels for our built-in greenhouse. Now I got quite a few of these panels up and I've been working on getting these braced up because we get some pretty high winds here in the desert. Now you would think now that I got this top section of panels done I might go ahead and move to the bottom, but I'm not. I'm actually going to kind of wrap around here and knock out this east side. That should be a lot easier, build up some confidence, then come back and do the bottom over here. And you would think then I'd be ready to do the roof of the greenhouse, but you'd be wrong. I actually have to finish off the top of the house before I can do the roof of the greenhouse. Found that out recently. So it's going to be a lot of work before I can get this done, but I'm ready. I'm excited. Come on let's get this done. All right I'm back at the home base. I got my panels right here and I'm ready to put them up on the east side. I'm hanging out here with uvea. You know it's actually a little warm today. It might be about 70 degrees and still a little warm for her. So she's hanging out with me in the dome where it's nice and cool. Oh look at that, cute baby. So let's get going. Pull out one of these panels. Now in the last video I had to kind of use the air compressor and blow these panels out because we had some dust in there. Luckily I have a new box. I shouldn't have to do that. So this should move along a little quicker. So I kind of showed the tape I've been using in the last video, but I'll show it here again here. This particular tape is vented and I'll be using it in certain areas to let any kind of moisture that gets in the panels drain out. All right so excellent progress. I got half of the east wall done. I got to get the upper half done and I want to put some of those h channels kind of going in between these lower panels and I want to see how that works out. What's over there? What's over there? All right we're going to see how this looks. All right I can dig it. All right now I'm just going to move down the line. Keep putting these h channels on there. Oh I got it. You can't. You can't. Well it's bright and early and I want to get these panels up on top here on the east side. Get this done real quick that way I can move down to the finish off this south side. I was thinking I was going to need Jess's help but I think I can manage this by myself. She's got things she's working on so I'll just knock this out real quick. I'm going to start just getting the panels out there and each one's going to have to be modified a little bit I'm pretty sure. I might just kind of have to cut the tops a little bit and UV is keeping me company too. Since I have to make all kinds of different cuts on the tops of these panels I'm going to have to kind of measure out each of these panels to get a different channel length whether they be the h channel or the u channel. There can be different odd lengths. I got those pieces cut. Lickety spit. Let's get this panel up there y'all. So I got a lot of these plastic sheets that I've been taking off that you know cover these panels and I just thought man what a great opportunity to make more of those bottle bricks and we can use that in addition with the cob to sort of speed along that process and like especially on the top of the walls might make that a little bit lighter so the cob mix isn't too heavy. Also I think I forgot to remove one of the covers to one of these sheets. If you go out there and take a look one of them looks slightly discolored. I think that's my fault. You almost can't tell if that clear cover is on there or not but you can tell when it's up there. These plastic pieces whether it's the channels or even the panels themselves just really attract dirt so you know try and do it in as clean as area as possible. Let's get this puppy in place. What are you doing down there? What are you doing down there? You being crazy this morning? You being crazy? Of course the winds want to be a little ferocious today but it is what it is. I got to get these up. It's tough doing it from one side. Think this will work? Looking good. You have a girl. Keeping an eye on things huh? You keeping an eye on things? Good girl. So you know as I've been working out here I've just been thinking about how important work is to people. You think about it like you kind of almost it's like oh man I'd just rather be doing nothing and lounging at the beach. That's kind of like the instinct. Man if I could just spend my days lounging and sipping a margarita or whatever people sip on the beach. I don't know that's kind of the instinct you know they're like people wait to retire they can't wait to retire but man there is a real value in work and I think it really helps define a person's life helps to make people feel useful to make them feel a part of something and oftentimes throughout my jobs I don't know other people have felt like kind of dissatisfied with the work that they're doing it kind of feels monotonous kind of feels like you're just another cog in the machine and I get that and you know I urge people actually you know not to feel that way I know there are sometimes jobs that feel like a little like dead-end jobs or they're not going anywhere but I feel like if you're doing anything that allows you to kind of support yourself and you may not see it but you know I think you're useful to someone out there you know. But I'm really grateful for the kind of work that we're doing out here it is definitely one of the times that I've felt not that it's just that I'm working with my hands and it feels really fantastic to be working on something to be building something but yeah but it's building something for us and I feel so fortunate to be working like that and to have that kind of self-fulfillment from the work that I do even though I am really fortunate to be to be doing this you know I you know but I think there is a value and any kind of work out there and it really really is good for the soul it's good for the body to to be doing that. One more to go on this side. You know it's really easy for me to spot the blessings that we have out here and the kind of work that we do it's it's very easy and apparent to me and if you know if you're feeling like a little stuck a little feel like a little dead end you know just try and think about the value that you're maybe adding to the people around you you know maybe if you're not satisfied with your job maybe you're working on other goals on the side you know whether you're working at a job or working on yourself I think that has a lot of value. All right all the panels on the east side are done. Let's go get Jess see what she thinks about it. Oh UVA time. I got something to show you. Follow me. Okay. Maybe daddy wants to show us something. UV, you want to go take a look? Come on. Oh thing is... UV is excited too. You excited? It's all covered. Got a whole wall done. Does it feel good to have a whole wall done? Yeah. Knocked it out before lunch. Nice. Now back to the south side and finish that whole side the bottom half. A lot of work to get done. UV, you want a bowl? All right so I got that whole east side done. Very exciting but I can't rest on my laurels. I got to get the bottom part of that south side done. Just put it off a little bit because it's going to require a lot of cutting. I got to build some frames. Again vents are going to go on this side so it's going to be a little tricky. I'm probably going to have to like cut up every single panel just to make sure everything fits right. It's going to be a little tricky and a little time consuming but I'm excited. Got the east side done. Now can I get the south side done? We'll see. Well the winds are definitely crazy again today. I'm glad I don't have to mess with any of the panels but I am going to start the framing down here and get things ready to put up panels tomorrow. I do need to get more hinges. I ran out of hinges. I don't have any more so I'm going to have to get those ready so I can install everything right away. So I got to cut a bunch of wood get that painted and get that ready to go. It's time for a grass roll. You ever feel free enough to just want to go out there and just roll on the grass like that? I would never do that. All right so this is the first of my vent frames that I've cut and painted. It took me a while and I still have eight more of these things to put together but I think I'm ready to put it together and install it but man I really got to get moving. I got eight more of these things to put in before I can finish off with the panels. Yeah you know work can be not just physical things you're doing physically but it's the energy you put forth mentally and maybe even emotionally or spiritually. So I look at work as being something that's kind of personal. You know it's something that you you're creating something so you're you're working towards some kind of goal. Usually you're not just doing things just to do things. There's a purpose. You're putting a part of yourself out there. Your own energies whatever that form might take and you're doing something constructive something positive. You're building something whether it's a physical thing or non-physical but you're creating something so it's this kind of creative force and that's why it's really important to me because it's a positive thing that you are taking from yourself and you're putting out there in the world. So it could be like a huge project that you're working on or it could be something really simple but I think it's important every now and then to think about like what kind of impact is the work that you're doing having you know on people or on the world. Everything you do has some kind of impact. All right so I got the first vent built and installed last night. I do need to put in a board under here to finish that off so I'm going to do that real quick but I got eight more of these things to build so I got to move along pretty quick. I'm thinking about just cutting them putting them together installing them and then painting them. I think that'll be fine and I'll move along probably a bit quicker if I do it that way. This is where Yuvia hangs out during the day. It's already getting too hot for her so she likes to lounge in here. High 70s is too much for you huh? She's busy being a cutie. We decided to make our own vents for the greenhouse rather than purchase pre-made vents for a number of reasons. For one, it cuts down on cost. Also it gives us more control over the look and materials. We'll be needing vents that will work well with the automatic vent openers which we'll be attaching later. These vents will be working in conjunction with the insulated panels, more vents near the top of the greenhouse space, areas of thermal mass inside the greenhouse, as well as a special heat transfer system you'll see us building in the future. All these things will help us regulate the temperature and humidity inside and create just the right conditions for growing food. Is that a good upper body workout for you? Yeah it's pretty good. So this pail is a little squishier than some of the others. It's one of the ones we hand tied. Has that been a bit of a challenge? It's not too bad because we have the initial layer on there that gives it like a harder crust I guess you would call it. Got a little crust, it's a little crusty. Yeah. So not too bad. Yeah it doesn't really impact what I'm doing here. And once I get this on it should be pretty solid. Yeah nice. I'm really pleased with how much I got knocked out here. You know would I like to be farther? Of course I'd like to be farther. I'd like to have this done but you know got that whole east side done. All those panels are up and I'm pretty much done with the framing out here on the front. I only have a couple more to do. I'm going to knock those out probably a little bit later but man I've just been really chugging along. And of course I got to paint them but then they'll be all ready to put those panels on and this whole south side will be complete. Then I can start thinking about the roof again. Exciting times, exciting times. But tell me how exciting it is for you to now be on the north side of the house. You were working on that west wall for a while. I feel like that took me a while just to do that little wall. So I'm kind of hopeful now. Seems like the weather is warming up. We're going to have some warmer days so I can get out and do lots of cob. And we'll have all the the windows and doors on this side. I know it's like a longer wall so. If I may interject again you say that's a smaller wall but technically that bale coverage is that there's as many bales on that small wall as there is on that whole north side. It's the bale amount is actually equal so. Okay. Maybe that'll make you breathe a little easier. Yeah. I mean just looking at it looks like a pretty long wall. Yeah it's daunting. But there are lots of doors and windows. So yeah hopefully with the warmer weather I can move a little faster and get that done. Don't get used to that warmer weather. You never know. Always be wary that that cold could still drop again. We're just in mid-February so you know we got the rest of February which is still looking pretty good. Just about near perfect temperatures. And then March which a lot of times there wants to be like one big cold blast in March. So other than that yeah no complaints. Absolutely perfect weather. Sometimes it's a little windy but you know you can work around that. Sometimes that makes the panels a little tougher to work with but we're getting there. Fantastic. All right y'all. Man I am so excited about the progress. We're really moving along. So exciting. Definitely give us a big thumbs up for greenhouse vents and we'll catch you in the next video guys. Bye.