Cutting in a Driveway to the Quonset Hut Shop | We Make Progress!

foreign [Applause] here we go time to start the pad for the shop [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you summer solstice is here in Alaska and that's good news for Eric and I because we have been steadily working away this spring and we could definitely utilize the warmth and the daylight hours now we moved up to this property about two months ago it's 40 acres and we have just been concentrating all of our efforts on starting developing it we just made it out to the cabin and we are moving today we have both trucks we have two trailers this one is currently stuck in the driveway there's actually an indoor bathroom at this cabin the first thing that we did was turn an existing shed into the chicken coop and we've already started on our solar system we have the solar panels up they're not connected but that's going to be our future solar system to power our needs here at this property and we have been making great use of the tractor that we picked up earlier this year down in the lower states that thing is awesome it is just taking care of all the things we needed to here this tractor is a beast it is like almost Unstoppable here oh yeah you're good now it's not going anywhere it has been a tremendous tool for us and I know that the hours are going to rack up on this next big project that we're working on which is our Quonset hut shop so that's the one we've been kind of leading to Now The Summer's here we're ready to rock on it last fall we brought up the Quonset hut shop and we hope to have it completed or near complete this fall is a noble goal it is a massive undertaking so we know that going into it and we're ready for the challenge about a week ago Eric started cutting in our driveway to the shop it's gonna kind of meander along the forest and the shop itself will sit wide out in the open Eric's already been making really good progress on the driveway he's just flying through the work so we're gonna go check on him and see how he's doing [Music] you did all that work in like less than half hour yeah that was crazy well what an awesome morning we're having out here so far the Branson Tractor it just continues to impress us and today we're putting in a driveway we are going to be building a massive shop out here kind of like a big garage for us it's going to be 40 feet by 60 feet and it's a quonset hut so we're really looking forward to it and we're pretty much starting on it today so this is going to be the driveway that's going into it we picked this area specifically because it was already cleared so we don't have to take down very many trees here there is just like a thin layer of dirty moss on top of the gravel that's what I'm scraping down for us right now and the driveway is going to come in it's going to go by the Conex where our solar panels are it's going to kind of circle and at the top of the circle over on that side is where the Shop's gonna go and then it's going to wind around and it's going to shoot back over by the house somewhere or that is the section we haven't actually marked out yet we've marked out up until here and I wasn't thinking I was going to get this far this fast so we need to start putting in some more Stakes Mark out where the rest of this driveway is going to go it looks like a couple trees are gonna have to go I had to get pretty close to their Roots When I was scraping this down and then the plan is to come back later on and put gravel over this whole entire thing so we still got a lot of work cut out for us these two along with all these little ones I have to go but that's right where the Shop's going that's pretty much it check out these massive roots that are on this tree I mean look at this thing it's like a sea creature of some sort and this is called a quaking aspen and they're they're usable we're probably just gonna cut this one up and use it for firewood but the roots don't go that deep they kind of sit and like go out and we were able to push this one over with the Branson and it struggled a tiny bit but it got it over we could probably do one a little bit bigger and I'll kind of show you the soil that we're working with here this is what is in the ground so it's a lot of roots I don't know I guess I'd call it like clay maybe almost clay clay soil like I can ball it up so yeah that's like clay and then there's moss in there and then there's like old broken down wood and just a bunch of stuff so this is one of our piles we have two big piles so far we're probably gonna have with about four when we're done with this thing and this will all go into the garden well maybe not all of it but we'll mix this with like horse manure and other amendments and we'll let it break down and then when we put in our garden we'll have a jump start on a bunch of dirt and we're just trying to put these piles where they're kind of out of the way so they're not in our way later and we have to move them again [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] it's amazing how when it's 70 degrees here it feels way warmer I'm not sure if it's our intolerance to the Heat or what maybe it's just that we're higher up on the earth and it feels a lot warmer I think that's the case because we're we're probably not even at 70 but it just feels blistering out here we've got to re-measure where the Shop's going we decided to shift it a little bit to the left and back from when we first originally measured it out in the winter months and this particular area there are some older stumps really really big trees that last one must have been huge and I think these trees were taken down about a decade ago so that's kind of cool they're already decomposing and they're pretty easy for Eric to just lift out with the tractor was going to start a little more in the front like more forward [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] got to work a little section at a time you know what I mean well that was a nice day's work so we put a little over three hours just tractor time and we got a ton of work done and I actually haven't even like looked back at what we completed so let's take a look around the new driveway so the shop is going back there somewhere in that vicinity so we got a nice wide corner here and the reason we're kind of setting it up this way and we have it nice as wide is for backing into the shop so you have a big trailer you have a truck tractor whatever you swing around the turn and then you can almost do like a straight shot back into the shop it looks like this section is a lot higher I didn't really dig down that deep but you can see we're already hitting like really nice gravel right there a lot more work needs to be done up here I left some nice ruts looks like we can use a little widening right here maybe about three feet wider and this is a really low spot so we're gonna have to fill this in from one of the high spots with dirt or we'll have to pile this up with some gravel this whole section over here we completed like a few days ago we're just kind of testing things out but this has dried up really nice and this was already a really cool flat section right here and then if you go all the way down here this is where it kind of connects with the main driveway for some reason there was a ditch here and this is like exactly where we wanted this driveway to go we wanted to kind of be next to the Forest but not too close where we're going to be digging up the roots so we've got a couple high spots that we're going to be able to come along and scrape some of that gravel into this little pit and I got a marker there and a marker there you'll come off the main driveway and you'll head in this way are you playing and that's what it's going to look like in the future and then we'll gravel it up almost to the same height of the brush on the side you know or the Moss It's So Tan You Can't Hide redneck well I think we might do a little more work out here tonight widening things up and then the next step is gonna be putting gravel down on this whole area and we actually started our own Gravel Pit so that should be pretty awesome but we're gonna pick up with this project in a couple days we have a concrete truck coming at about 9 9 30 tomorrow morning so we're gonna get rested up and we got a long day of work tomorrow but we'll pick up on this project and see you guys in a couple days Pine thank you I'm gonna start a business it's called a e excavation except it's just e working hey it looks good man it's 4 15. we left on schedule we are fried as Patty Cakes I think we're well over 20 hours of daylight and we're headed to Fairbanks for a supply Run for the Quonset hut drive without some you slept I didn't sleep I tossed her like five hours straight and then I woke up and looked out the window and you were outside filming stuff at three in the morning so I decided to make coffee and here we are just drinking that coffee is Jesus it's 80 degrees it was like four feet of ice down there long drive we finally made it our first stop is Fairbanks block and building material we're picking up supplies for the Quonset hut shop and we're getting some wire mesh and some rebar some of these a lot of unusual things we're picking up today shape sizes and weights and the next thing we're picking up is gonna be foam board insulation I think we're gonna get like 80 sheets of it so I whipped up some v-board yesterday and these are going to help us tie those down without cutting a strap into it so we'll get this all secured and we'll head off to the next stop all right euresco construction materials ah how many did you get we got 80. we needed 75 at 2400 square feet so 75 is a little much and then we bought five extras just in case [Music] I like that I wish I was six four instead of six two huh all right boys let's go to your rescos well that wasn't exactly how we were planning on doing but we got it up there it's on the trailer it's nice and Tall the V boards working great let's head on down the road check out this tree there's all sorts of honeybees on it we are making a pit stop for the boys Eric ran into Home Depot I think we're wrapping up our errands but I love when I see honeybees out about because these are someone's honeybees maybe they're even a few different people's hives I don't quite know I don't know what this tree is but they are all over it and there's all sorts of other native bees on here too so I just thought it was pretty cool how was your trip piping nine rolls we're just about wrapped up here it has been a long day with not a lot of leap as usual and we're leaving Home Depot we got one in the main key elements to the shop and that's gonna be for in floor heating this is hex pipe we have nine 300 foot rolls let's figure out how to get this on the trailer and let's head home foreign [Music] well everyone we have returned from Fairbanks with our supplies and it's been about a week we've had time to decide more supplies that we need so we ran back up there we've got another full trailer load this is the shop build so let's go take a look at the Quonset hut and we'll show you exactly what we're working with this is the Quonset hut and one of the coolest things about these steel buildings is the fact that you can just order these they ship them to you on pallets and you can assemble them yourself so ours came on six pallets or six and a half it weighed 12 000 pounds we hold it up here in two trailers and these things come in different styles they come in different sizes ours is from a company called steel master and it is their a model the dimensions are roughly 63 feet long 37 feet wide and it's got a peak of about 17 feet a lot of these you'll see are just like completely round buildings I mentioned ours is a Model A so you'll have flat walls you'll have those big ones right there that kind of curve up you'll have more flat and then you'll have a curve on top the reason I wanted to kind of go with that as opposed to a round one is I wanted full space of the Hut so in a round one you're kind of limited when you get along the walls as far as like parking stuff or having a workbench this one uses these straight pieces of metal right here it goes straight down to the floor so you get like a hundred percent usable space in this Hut we opted not to buy the end walls from this company you can buy them from them and they're just made out of metal they look similar to The Hut we're going to be building our own end walls out of wood with the Sawmill and you can put these things on all different kinds of Foundations you can do them on gravel dirt up on Piers we are going to be doing an insulated concrete slab we're gonna have radiant floor heating we're gonna have a coal stove as backup heat and then we're gonna be doing some sort of insulation on the Hut later down the road this is going to be a big undertaking for us and it looks like Ariel already got started on the gravel I'm gonna hop on the tractor we're gonna see if we can get her done there's a lot of gravel we got a haul over here fruit [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] the hole over in the Gravel Pit is super deep at this point I can't even see Eric working and he's doing an awesome job everything's going great I think he is almost done out here lots of bugs puppy [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] mosquitoes found us out here they are just swarming and it's like a new breed that showed up so these are the little ones I think these are actually nuts huh uh whatever they are they're biting and they're they're making me itch so that side went really well that was actually a wide spot but that was closer to the Gravel Pit this side over here is a lot further from the gravel pit and it was a lot bumpier so I'm having a little more trouble on this side smoothing it out right here I'm trying to take out this little Hill and it is like the most compact dirt gravel whatever it is I've ever seen and the bucket couldn't do it and the backhoe is barely just scraping it so we're taking that little Hill out and then we also have a little dip over here that we're gonna have to fill in I got a little bit of dirt from that but I think I'm gonna have to start running a bunch of gravel and filling that in it's taken a long time all in all we've been out here all day so I think I've had maybe like six or seven more hours of actual tractor work on the tractor and it's cool though we connected the u-shaped driveway so we have gravel on the whole thing we still need more gravel and I think that's gonna do it for the night we're pretty beat so we'll uh come up with another game plan for tomorrow and we'll get back out here and keep working on this drive way oh [Music] [Music] thank you sunflower seeds handy for snacking another busy morning so I put a few more hours on the tractor uh doing some work over there I was filling in that big hole and this side of the driveway just needed more gravel so we are at 50 hours and according to my Branson manual it is time for complete service of this thing so we're gonna go over the whole tractor and look for loose bolts hoses anything I can just visually see that's wrong and then we're going to do some of the fluids we're going to do hydraulic fluid this is a hydrostatic transmission so it's the transmission too this takes over 10 gallons of fluid so we got to drain out 10 gallons put 10 gallons in there we're gonna do the oil in the engine oh and the front axle we're going to be doing gear oil in the front axle let's get going on this we're going to start with draining some of the fluids let's see let's hope this doesn't squirt on me really not clear yeah that's good though oh my gosh the section did you pull it off yeah yeah just like really started coming out when you did that let's section yeah that weekend is physics coming out any faster oh yeah there it goes okay from the looks of this thing how the heck do you get that thing off how the how do you get in there what the you know what it is it's because we have this backhoe on here this thing's like right in the way it's like that was a mission as you can tell by these holes in these hydraulic oil filters I could get the wrench on the small one but it wasn't gripping enough it was too tight so I powdered a hole in it with a screwdriver Twisted it off the big one apparently you need to remove your backhoe before you get to that one so next time we do this service we'll take the backhoe off prior I've got one gallon in the front axle it takes 1.9 gallons let's get her topped off all right this isn't working like that Perfect all right front axle's done I was literally messing around with it for like 10 minutes and then also it just came out [Music] all right now comes the fun part we gotta put 10 10 gallons in this bad boy well last time we went to Fairbanks and I was buying all my supplies to do this uh maintenance on this tractor I did my research O'Reilly's they said they had the oil or online it said they had the oil and they didn't and you need 10 gallons so Aaron and I were like going all over Fairbanks trying to find what we needed and I cross referenced the oil to what would work this is a Branson and unfortunately we're putting a Kubota oil in it so this is the like expensive Kubota oil this stuff was not cheap we're gonna put this in this time and next time we go we're gonna do a little more planning on my end and uh call and make sure places have the oil and then we'll um get the right oil next time How do I get this out it says Kubota super udt2 Universal Transmission hydraulic fluid I mean these things are heavy but no you're are you crazy what do you mean I got a funnel on that There She Goes the beginning of the end 10 gallons you thought the gravel took a long time we're gonna be here a while with this I hope it goes in smoothly and just start bubbling out like the front axle all right oh my gosh my arm's gonna be killing me today well it went good out here the Branson has 50 hours on it it's been absolutely awesome for us and we're finishing up with the oil which I just did and I'm going to grease everything on the front end loader everything on the backhoe and there's a bunch of grease fittings on the tractor and the front axle and we're gonna fire her up check the levels again on all the oils we're gonna get back to work see it pushes that old grease out gives you the new stuff come on wow Eric's working I just wanted to show you some fun stuff around here the bees are doing really good they were kind of off to a slow start with the weather but it seems like they're doing a lot better now I was just over here a few minutes ago and they were just totally buzzing around the front the potatoes are doing pretty good believe it or not we had a frost I think it was June 12th so extremely late I don't know if that's late for this area it's probably not out of the normal but that that's really late and so when we have a garden hopefully next year we plan to have like frost blankets and things like that because I would have had everything planted by that time and our potatoes a lot of them had Sprouts but they died so they'll be okay they're gonna have to regrow some new Sprouts but that was a little bit uh unexpected I guess we have baby chicks hatching out there's one hatching out under this gray hen as we speak so I'm gonna grab it and show you what it looks like [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] yeah they're thirsty we've got baby chickens and that is a good reason to celebrate that and Eric is almost done with the pad for our shop he's been working on it all day yesterday and a lot of today there's still a little bit more work to do but we figured we'd celebrate out there this evening with some food the chicks started hatching yesterday we've got three moms hatching them out and we like to come out here and just check on them well I like to come out here a lot and check on them pretty routinely so they're doing well and there's still more to go right good there's a black one in there I haven't seen it's not just natural heart tell me pipe up foreign [Applause] how it's almost perfect I scrape this all down there's nowhere we can pull gravel from I have to pull it from that area four or five inches the only thing I can think to do would be do what it's already doing is scrape some of that front section over to here oh my God the wind is blowing up hot day out here and check out our new pad so I thought I was actually gonna get this thing done today but I didn't and I did and at the tractor and we have like 6.5 hours on it since I started this little project over here which I don't think is too bad we got a lot done with that tractor it honestly amazes me how good of a job that thing does but this is obviously a lot bigger than the Shop's going to be we wanted room on the sides we want a room on the back we have to get a concrete truck in here we have to do a bunch of work so it's absolutely huge right now and it looks like the back is still a little bit low we're using our laser to check the grade so we found one spot that we really like the level and then we went around and kind of checked the other levels the back was four inches too low that corner was two inches too high and it takes a long time to bring gravel over here from our little pit so I'm gonna work on that again tomorrow we'll get it nice and leveled off but it so far it looks really awesome I dug down with the tractor about six to eight inches through like this soily stuff that we have here to hit the gravel bed and this was pretty much just like a meadow before we started I think I took down like one or two full-size trees and that was it and we ended up with two huge dirt piles but it's looking good it's about the time to eat dinner we're getting hungry we're gonna bring a couple things out here and we're gonna have a little cookout in the middle of the pad that butterfly is on your nose bow and doesn't even care do you see his face it looks like a chicken does look like a chicken huh do you want help moving there you got it watch out dude it's a big fan you want me to kind of press it into the you want to cook the dough first yeah I want to cook the dough so is it okay I'm just gonna plop it down and work it on the edges then that's what I would do thank you what I got in here for Ken Lane [Music] got some delicious tea and then we are making pizza we were going for like a deep dish style we used to live somewhere where you could get Old Chicago Pizza and it was there was a deep dish that was really delicious but my sourdough is a little bit moist so it's not quite taking shape so we'll see how it turns out but we're gonna make or we already made some spruce tip uh pesto and we have a whole bunch of other delicious ingredients to add foreign that's good got some Zing to it all kinds of good things fermented honey garlic like Ariel said the spruce tip pesto we have a variety of Olives Kalamata olives and some spicy green ones salami and a bunch of mozzarella and look at that look at that Pizza it's so hot right now some more heat on this thing pretty much just cook it from the top almost there we are gonna kick it up a notch we're gonna drizzle a little bit of the garlic honey on there do you know what it looks like a popper why is it greenish because of the uh just a little just a drizzle definitely a deep dish whoa that cheese is like crisped okay let's that is Bon Appetit that looks amazing and we're gonna enjoy the pizza we're having a great time out here building this new shop it's coming along we're gonna see you guys on the next one no Forks no but I didn't say it was burnt I just it was a little the Bottom's a little crispy oh spruce tip it's good it has such a well it's sprucy such a weird flavor I can't oh yeah it just tastes like citrus ears one more day out here I'm working but what Deb a frog from Italy the ones on the long sides are supposed to be 18 inches deep and then 20 inches across from the bottom the front and the back are supposed to be 18 inches deep and 18 inches or 12 inches 18 inches I think something like that there's gonna be a lot of gravel coming out of those Footers that's good put in the driveway I'm gonna put it in that bumpy part of the driveway gentle okay

Channel: Simple Living Alaska

Views: 398,779

Keywords: off grid living, living in alaska, homestead alaska, tiny house alaska, off grid cabin, off grid in alaska, cabin in alaska, homestead living, off the grid alaska, off grid cabin alaska, alaskan homestead, living off grid, off grid living alaska, homesteading alaska, off grid life, alaska log cabin, branson tractor, branson 4820, tractor backhoe, quonset hut building, cutting a driveway, gravel driveway, concrete pad, concrete slab

Id: vMpCJ6qzzCM

Length: 37min 31sec (2251 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2023