We Open Our Earthbag Cistern After YEARS

This week on OSRL, a huge storm is headed our way. It's time to batten down the hatches and brace ourselves. And after a full season of rain, we take a look inside our cistern. And we do not like what we find. I don't know what to make of that. How's it going everyone? And welcome back to the Domestead. Now if you're new here, my wife and I are building our own home off-grid here in the Arizona desert. Now if you could do me a favor, give this video a big thumbs up, and definitely subscribe because you want to see all this come together. Now if you caught our last video, you know I finished up the electrical in the straw bale part of our house. So that is exciting. Now I want to get started with the floors and I want to get started with the walls because all this needs to be enclosed. And I would be starting now, but unfortunately, we're expecting a huge storm. Now from what I heard, this storm is going to be big. Now technically we get most of our rain during the monsoon season, but the monsoon season is over. That ended at the end of September. But this could be a monster storm. So what I've been hearing is in this area we could be getting six plus inches of rain, which is wild. I've never seen that much rain over a weekend in my entire time of being here. That's almost half of our annual rainfall in just a couple of days. I don't know man, that's kind of wild. We'll see if that actually happens. Meanwhile, I'm just going to kind of be aware of the weather and see how that goes because this could all change. But in the meantime, I'm definitely going to be shoring things up around here and preparing for this massive storm. Now people that have been watching our channel for a while, they know we built the second section of our house with straw bales. We had a bunch of extra straw bales that were left over. Those were sitting right here. You can see the aftermath of where those straw bales were sitting. With that storm coming, I just wanted to pick those bales off the ground. Not that they haven't been rained on already. They've been rained on quite a bit. But it's time to get them undercover. For the most part, what we'll be using those bales for now anyway is for compost. I'll just get it right where we need it. You know what I mean? So yeah, I was busy. Got all those bales stacked up over here. We're looking mighty nice and this is where we'll be using it. So perfect. Now we get some crazy winds out here sometimes and you can probably tell today's kind of windy. Not nearly as windy as it could get but it's pretty windy. But because we can't get some intense winds, it tore down the tarp we have here. Kind of protecting part of our straw bale wall. So since we're getting all that rain, I want to get that tarp back over this wall and make sure this wall is protected. You know, we don't have to worry about this side of the wall so much because Jess has been doing just a fantastic job of getting the plaster over the bales and it is looking absolutely fantastic. Look at that. We got this wall completely done and she's about a quarter of the way done with this wall. So that is, she is really moving along. Telling you she is steadfast. Really making fantastic progress in that wall. She's just a really hard worker. I got to do my best just to try and keep up with her. Good morning. So the weather forecast has been just changing kind of erratically. The rain totals have come down from like the six inches to maybe like one and a half, two inches. But now I heard it could be anywhere from like one to three and possibly even more than that. So better to be safe than sorry. I put a tarp over our balcony over here. I figure it'll help protect the balcony from any really heavy rainfall. And then you can see I got it draped over here to kind of protect the doorways. Keep more rain from kind of getting in that way. And yeah it might still get a little wet but it'll be a lot better than it was before for sure. So that's set up. I've been moving some dirt around just to kind of create some barriers. Kind of move water away from any structures. But you can see the wind here is very calm. There's almost no wind. And I feel like that is this the calm before the storm. Who knows what to expect. You know the rain totals are just everywhere. We're gonna see. We're about to find out. So this is only going to be a couple of days. Starts today. Goes through tomorrow. Maybe Monday. But we still made sure to stock up. We got plenty of food and stuff like that. So we don't have to go anywhere. You know we're just gonna hunker down while the storm goes on. Of course we'll bring you guys along to see how this all turns out. But we're gonna have to put a little hold on doing the floor and the walls until this storm passes and dries out a little. So a little bit of a work to lay. So Yuvia's up on our hill. She's gonna keep an eye on the storm. Let us know when it's coming. What? You taking my stick? You taking my stick? It's my stick. I found it. All right so I'm pumping more water into the trailer. You know if we are getting the rainfall that I think we're gonna get. Might be good to empty those poly tanks as much as possible. We are supposedly walking with Yuvia taking her out and she she has just planted herself out there keeping an eye on something. Yuvia what you looking at? I don't know maybe she's hunting. You think she's hunting something? Keep an eye on something at least huh? Yeah. And it is really cloudy obviously because we're supposed to get those storms later. So I wanted to check out the power the batteries see where we're at. Batteries are at 47.7 and we're not bringing in that much energy. So we might be bringing in just enough energy to kind of keep up with the refrigerator and the freezer. Just might be cloudy now for days. So we'll see if those batteries fully charge. If not we're gonna have to be pretty conservative on our energy use. It's starting. The rain's coming. All right y'all this is the start of it all. We'll see how this goes. So far as we approach the afternoon nothing real heavy just a light solid rain. But so far nice and relaxing. Maybe I spoke too soon. It's already seems like it's starting to pick up. Starting to come down now. It didn't take long. Already got some overflow and it didn't take much either. We didn't get any really heavy rain. It's just nice steady rain. I don't know how tonight and tomorrow is gonna go but we could get a lot more water. Good morning everyone. So yesterday did not turn out to be that big of a rain day. Again it was supposed to be an inch maybe more yesterday. And we got maybe a fraction of that. So as you can see here maybe we got an eighth of an inch. A far cry from what we were supposed to get yesterday. Of course there is still a chance of a decent rainfall today. So so far a little light rain right now. But it might ramp up a little later so we will see. But you know it probably just goes to show you're expecting the rain and you prepare for it probably doesn't come. But we'll see we'll see there's still a chance. So in the meantime I'm making plans for what's going on with the floor. Planning it out seeing what kind of layers we need. I might have to make a trip to pick up some supplies tomorrow to not open today. But again we might get that rain today so probably wouldn't pay to go today anyway. Probably go tomorrow pick up some supplies. So start building this floor out then the walls. And we're probably going to go room by room. All right rain's coming back in. A little heavier than before but nothing nothing big nothing major. I'm going to go over what I got to do. But I'm going to try and get done before tomorrow. We'll see. All right so I'm going to take out this wall of two by fours here on the trailer because it's heavy and it's falling apart. So I'm going to take this out and I'm going to put in another wall of OSB to rom this out and then we'll be able to use it again. Pick up some more gravel that we'll use on the floor inside the house. Look at this. It's raining. I was disappointed yesterday. Yesterday we were supposed to get so much rain and we're supposed to get this deluge and then we didn't really get anything. Look at Yuvia. She's going into the dome to wake mom up. She's ready for breakfast. Oh that's crazy. Uh yeah we're getting some rain. I don't know how much we're gonna get but uh we'll see. We'll see. This is kind of exciting. So yesterday I was able to finish taking out that wall of the trailer. I'm gonna have to uh wait until after the rain to put up the new wall and I don't think I'm going anywhere today. With all this rain that we're getting right now probably not a good idea to try and like haul back a load of gravel with the roads being all muddy and everything like that. So this might delay things a bit but but we're excited that we're getting the rain. So it's a trade-off. Well it's definitely a rainy morning and uh now the rain is over. The sun's back out kind of. But now that the rain is over the wind's picking up. I don't know if you can tell it's crazy. We got a decent amount of rain. Not a not a ton. Looks like uh three-eighths of an inch. A far cry from the one to three inches we were supposed to get but I'm it's okay I'm not complaining. I'll take I'll even take that that's fine. All right that's good. If I'm gonna get gravel the ground needs to be a little sturdier. So I don't think I'll be able to get gravel a day but that's okay. I'm gonna fix up our trailer get that other wall in place and then uh then I'll be ready to go once I'm ready for gravel. So I got the wall in place. I just need to shore up those corners with some two by fours and we should be all set. Julie you waiting for us? Are you gonna be bad for the camera? UV UV. We gotta go. Come on we gotta go. All right well the big rain has come and gone. We were expecting what three inches at least. What did we get? Almost a quarter of an inch total. A little bit of a letdown but you know what's not going to be let down. You guys you guys have been asking forever what's happening with the tank. Well let's do it. Let's go inside. Let's look. I need to grab my measuring stick. We're gonna take a look inside. All right man when's the last time we peeked in here? A year ago? More? A couple years? I don't even know. All right let's take a look. Well is there water in there? Yeah there's water in there but do I even need to measure that? There's almost no water in there. Oh look at that. That stick is barely in there. Four inches exactly. Okay well I don't know what to make of that. Okay well that is a disappointment. Honestly we got to figure out what's going on there. I don't know if there is some type of leak or if it's evaporating. It could be evaporating right? No I mean it's not airtight. It's not airtight. But there's a cover over it. There's a cover over it. I mean it's concerning if it's leaking. Yeah. I don't remember how much there was in there last time we checked but well it's definitely more than four inches. It was definitely more than four inches. That's concerning. Obviously this isn't working out as we had hoped but I mean it has been dry for like the longest time. And again this is kind of catching overflow but I don't think the overflow it is catching is very efficient. I think if we wanted to get a decent amount of water in there it would need to flow directly in there versus the poly tanks. So there's definitely a lot we got to think about when it comes to the cistern. Do we want to make any changes? Do we want to keep it the way it is and eventually pump water straight into there? I think it's gonna be we're gonna have to talk about that. Yeah. We've been talking a little bit about how we want to set up the water for the house and so we're gonna have to figure out where the cistern fits into all that and we're gonna have to make any changes to that. Yep. Yep. So obviously we'll have to obviously we'll have to talk about that and make up some plans and kind of see exactly what's happening. Like is it leaking or is it evaporating or whatever because there's definitely a significant water loss. There's a liner in there so the only place I can think of that it would be leaking would be by the outlet. Correct. It's just a solid pond liner. If anything is leaking it's probably by the where I had to cut into it to put in the the outlet. I'm sorry you look disappointed. You look heartbroken. Well yeah. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. It's definitely still a hole in the ground and we can always use a hole in the ground. So we'll figure it out. We gotta you know seal up the outlet somehow and maybe even just turn it into like a stationary water tank that we pull from. There's something we can do with it. Yeah. For sure. Or turn it into another underground room. I don't know. We'll see. We'll talk about it. All right well thought we'd do a little bit more investigation and so just came to the conclusion I should do a little spelunking. All right we're gonna see what I can see. Go down there. Find out what's going on. Whoa. It's been forever since I've been down here. See what there is to see. It's crazy walking down here. It does look like it's going into the pipe. So it is high enough to sort of make its way into the pipe. So it could be some type of leak around there. Looks like what it could be. Okay can I come back out? All right well I was able to shore up the corners of the trailer here with some two by fours. I think it's looking real good. Now we didn't get a whole lot of rain over here but the back roads over by the mountains could be a little rougher because rain coming off those mountains sometimes those roads get a little bit more wet than we would over here. So I'm going to wait for that to dry out a little bit more over there. Maybe I'll head out in the morning and pick up our first load of gravel. You water and after we got all that rain? Gotta get my basket plants. Oh I suppose. You know since I'm waiting on getting the gravel I know Jess has got a lot of cobs she's got coming up pretty quick. So I'm going to do some sifting. Get some more dirt ready for her and yeah be a little bit more prepared. This stuff is pretty moist. You're not going to need to use as much water when making your cob. I think we'll be drying up for now. I don't think there's any more rain on the forecast. Of course you never know. I've heard some people predict this winter is going to be a drier one. I've heard some people predict it's going to be a wetter one and you know we'll just take it day by day and see what happens. That's just how everything goes right? It's all you can do. It's all you can do. Take it day by day and see how it goes. All right y'all. Thanks again so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Thanks for being a part of this journey. We appreciate every thumbs up, every comment. Thank you guys so much. We love you and we'll catch you in the next video. Bye.