Earthbag Root Cellar Build | Off Grid Food Storage (Part 2)

[Music] welcome back to part 2 of our root cellar build over the past day or so we've gotten a few more layers built up we got about 80 or so bags down there that we need to get lined up and tamp down we're gonna get the walls all the way built up hopefully we have enough barbed wire and then we're gonna have to run into town and pick up the rest of the supplies for the roof and the hatch [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right so we've got to the point where we needed to make another trip to town and pick up the rest of the supplies for this build we picked up a lot of the wood that we're going to use for the hatch and a couple beams for the roof we treated all of that with linseed oil let's go check out the root cellar and see where we're at over there okay so we've come pretty far on this build we only have to do about two-and-a-half more layers we ran out of barbed wire so we had to go get some more so we could finish the actual walls and then for our shelving the original design was to go with wood and cinderblocks but Lowe's had a good sale on metal shelves so we ended up going with metal shelves we got two four footers that are six foot tall and then we have one really big one that's gonna take up a whole entire wall so the metal shelving really wasn't much more expensive than the cinder block and the plywood that we were gonna use and it's gonna last way longer so we're happy with these shelves we're gonna get them down in the cellar obviously before we put the roof and everything on that way we can build them down there and we don't have to bring them down our hatch so it's about noon we're gonna see how far we can get on this build today and hopefully we can start working on the roof so we just finished setting up the two or three shelves we have down here and this is about how we mapped it out we plan to have a ladder here maybe have another table right about here so you could set something down on it and the shelves are mainly gonna be for canned goods but we can also store you know bagged garlic onions potatoes squash on them like that ideally I want to see how the humidity level works in here and then I'm gonna figure out how I'm gonna store the crops we end up having a higher humidity I don't need to worry as much about it but they will need to be boxed up if we have less humidity so we're just gonna start with this and see how things go and then add some additional things in here maybe for hanging or if we just need rooms to stacked like some crates we're really happy with these two shelves the only downside is that this tray they are a little wide of holes so it doesn't quite work for the jars but we can just put something there to adjust that and another reason that we went with metal is to deal with mold so generally with wood if it's not treated or coated somehow you're gonna get mold on the wood pretty quickly with the moisture level and just dark dampness you'll have down here so we went with metal and I'm really happy we did we have to finish up half a layer or course and then we have two more to do which is going to perfect be the perfect level for our shelves and I believe it will put us a little over the six-foot mark which is great because we are gonna notch down the roof just a little bit in there to help with support and I am 5/8 and Eric is a little over 510 so we'll be able to fit down there just fine [Music] all right we just finished tamping down the last bag of the walls my finger may be broken how was it Ariel it was awful that's honest truth this project I mean we're almost done and it's been under a week that I think this is maybe our sixth day of working on it but for some reason it just seems awful it just seems like so much more labor than some of the other things we've done and I don't ever want to shovel or tamp touch the sandbag again but we're not done yet so I will have to but we're really really pleased with everything and I've tamped my soul out so just keep that in mind and that's almost a finished product if you remember I think two videos back we cut down some of the quaking aspen at the other property and we do have plans to use that for the roof part of it now we have plans to also protect it so it doesn't break down it theoretically could still break down in the future but with this project I know it was a lot of work but we're really not in the financial position to make this something that's going to last forever and ever so we're doing what we can do right now with our constraints and we're gonna be using a little bit of some of the stuff we have around the property that we didn't have to buy we did already buy some wood as Eric showed you so if you're looking at things there may be some older used materials and there's gonna be new stuff that we brought in for the top [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] 100 inches good [Music] the way I want it yeah maybe it's not that much [Music] I think it's [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh man that's risky [Music] [Music] all right so the past two days we have gotten a lot of work done on the root cellar we finished the walls we got all of our logs laid across the top we got our chute built and one of our cross beams in we also fill up a bunch more bags and covered the whole top with extra sandbags that we had next on our list is getting the last layer of house wrap around this top layer and then we have a bunch of leftover greenhouse plastic from our greenhouse bill that we're going to be covering the whole top and to shoot with so that's on the list for tonight and then tomorrow we are going to be burying this thing and getting rid of all of the dirt that we excavated out of this hole along with building the top for the chute [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay so our fruit seller bill is officially done and we're just going to give you guys a quick rundown on what kind of went into this bill so first off there is a few things that we still want to do just little details we want to put some steps in for climbing up on the mound that we built and another thing we want to do on the outside is we need to put some sort of cover over our vent that way when it rains we're not going to get water down in this vent oh no we ended up putting about two feet of dirt on top of the root cellar this wasn't our first location that we had chosen out for the root cellar but it was the highest ground that we had so we kind of had to put it here and in that aspect we don't really want to put a structure over the root cellar it would be blocking the garden and a lot of sunlight that we'll be getting so we're still kind of trying to figure out how we're gonna maintain snow in this area this winter let's check out the lid system that we figured out for those cellar our lid consists of pretty thick insulation we got metal roofing left over from our chicken coop build some two by fours and a little bit of hardware cloth to hold our insulation inside and this thing fits really snug we don't have any handles on it yet I think I might add two on here but this is basically ain't gonna be ariel and i coming out here together when we're going in the root cellar so it's not too difficult to get this roof off the total cost on this build including our excavator rental was around $13 dollars we use 650 of the poly sandbags and it took us just me and Ariel a little under a week and a half to build so we're gonna head down the chute and arrow is going to give you a tour of the inside of the root cellar the opening of this hatch is two by three and a half feet which is perfect for us we can get down it pretty easily and I can lift this top on and off and like Eric mentioned this is kind of like a two-person deal I don't plan on doing grocery shopping down here every day I'd say we'd probably come down here once a week in the winter during canning season we're obviously going to be helping each other get the cans and the food down there more so I all in all we're happy that we ended up doing the hatch especially because we had to be above the ground so much all right so we are down here in the root cellar and we're gonna talk a little bit about what's going on in here first off it is dark and it is damp and that is the way it should be it's quite scary actually we have a thermometer down here or a little digital temperature gauge and we are at 96% humidity and 57 degrees so pretty happy with that I probably would want it to be a little lower maybe low 50s I think we'll be fine for summertime temperatures but we're hoping that in the winter we hover right above freezing - and we won't know until we get closer to them to see if it's insulated well enough for that the humidity is great it's really high so that's great for keeping a lot of the vegetables it is a little high for keeping canned food down here but again I think it's gonna be okay we already have our chicken stock and salmon down here we have these shelves so you can actually double stack them so you can fit a lot of cans down here and I think we'll have extra storage too so it's turning out that this area is probably going to be closer to a true root cellar where the humidity is very high which again is good for keeping moisture in the vegetables probably not as ideal for keeping dry herbs or even other things that you want to keep really dry down here but we'll just figure that out as we go right buying the ladder we are going to dick a little area for a sump pump just in case we do have water come up I don't think that's gonna happen but again I don't know if that will happen in the winter or in the spring when things thaw but right now the top and the sides are sealed we've had pretty good rain for the last few days and there's no water leakage at all inside this is our vent right here and we just have one at the highest point and that is for some of the gases that the potatoes are gonna be putting off we wanted to have one just in case and we will have a cap for it if it turns out that it is letting in too much cold air in the winter the root cellar is an 8 by 8 diameter on the inside that should be plenty of room for us and we may adjust shelves and things as we go we may add some hanging areas for other things to just hang off the sides of these handbags and we are going to be very very busy painting lots of stuff over the next few months and filling up this root cellar we will be sure to keep you guys informed on how things go this season with this and over the winter we have any freezing or flooding going on but I'm going to head up for now [Music]

Channel: Simple Living Alaska

Views: 213,925

Rating: 4.9057693 out of 5

Keywords: off grid root cellar, alaskan root cellar, alaska root cellar, storing food off grid, off grid living, off grid life, living in alaska, off grid vlog, earthbag construction cellar, earthbag cellar, earthbag root cellar plans, earthbag root cellar, earthbag construction, alaska vlog, sandbag root cellar, building with earthbags, root cellar build, root cellar food storage, diy root cellar, underground root cellar plan, homestead alaska

Id: hucNE7732jM

Length: 20min 22sec (1222 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 26 2019