This is a PROBLEM..

we are Elsa and baron we are in our eighth year of living off grid six of those years we lived in a 13ft camper saving all of our money to buy the 40 acre offgrid property that we now live on and we're building our very own home of our dreams with our very own hands after so many months of back and forth the batteries for our home solar kit have arrived he said it's Corporate America bro they don't give a about not delivery or what no just about the whole thing like sending him back here in that giant semiu semi truck is like not not what you want to do the batteries were in transit for almost 3 weeks because they were so heavy they had to be delivered on a fullsize semi- we live pretty deep in the middle of nowhere on Miles and Miles of dirt roads the first two delivery drivers just entirely opted out of delivery once they realized where we were on this day Baron had to call multiple times to make sure the driver didn't bail and thankfully he arrived and departed without a problem thank you to battleborn for providing these batteries for us in exchange for video content and thank you Rich solar for the panels I'll just need your help with the we are so used to living this way in a remote off-grid location that we forget to talk about stuff like this that offgrade living is not always dreamy like it's kind of advertised to be FedEx said so you build that house yourself Baron he said yes I did it takes a lot of hard work because we are maintaining every aspect of Our Lives on our own there's no professional to call when the water line breaks or the well pump malfunctions no one is coming to pick up our trash it's almost an hour drive to the local hardware store if we need one little screw to fix a project like for real the closest Home Depot is 3 hours away and receiving packages is hit or Miss depending on the conditions of the dirt roads and apparently how the driver is feeling that day I am gearing up to release a full video about the harsh realities of offgrid living in the next month or two once we get our solar installed and I think that you're going to find it pretty fascinating last quite a night game changer 3.0 battle [Applause] 27 hour We're going to have 20 kilowatt hours more power than we currently have that's a lot we currently have six and we're going to have 26 I hope the Bluetooth works good I think it's a good idea but if it doesn't work good then it'll be a pain to butt did do you have I been walking around with tooth toothpaste on my shirt all day that I thought it was a mushroom it is mushroom on top oh you that the whole thing yeah it's connected I thought the mushroom had just faded well happy accident I suppose I'm just opening up this package from dar dar has sent us this before and this is kind of a funny thing it's a routine gift that we receive from a handful of subscribers or that we have in our history of being on YouTube people from Vermont are so proud of their syrup that they love to send it to us and I I love that I love that I could not be more grateful D has sent us I don't know I don't know if it's been her the whole time or well she's been the most recent yeah and the most most frequent I think right Bob from Vermont's oh I forgot let me see what brand it is St Johnsbury Vermont anyway people love to send us maple syrup thank you so much Dar dang Maple grow Farms 100% pure maple syrup dark and r bust Maple Leaf cookies Butternut okay we had this question or this discussion earlier today when you picture do you really yeah yeah okay listen when you picture maple syrup just off the cuff what do you what kind of tree do you associate it with in your head I know a maple tree is not a pine tree but in my head I picture like a Christmas tree for where maple syrup comes from even though I know that that's not the case you're a lot more exposed to pine trees than deciduous hardwood trees well now but I feel like since I was a kid I feel like in pictures and stuff it's like Christmas tree Association am I the only one tell me I'm the only one if I'm the only buckwheat honey buckwheat pancake waffle mix buckwheat maple sugar sugar maple drops shaped like Maple Leaves wow I haven't opened fun package in a long time it feels like maple balsamic vinegret wow maple syrup ooh grating sampler holy moly pure maple butter this is just thick maple syrup right holy moly what a fun surprise thank you again Dar there's this game that Baron has played what a million times well I've played all the different versions of it except for the new one he has pulled wisdom from this game in into our lives time and time again it taught him so much about managing people managing populations not that we have that we do populations to manage but it's been such an informative game for so many reasons just to understand how different factions can influence choices that politicians make and how different edicts that they could issue um have a ripple effect and it's kind of it's kind of slap sticky or like tongue and cheek where they'll lean into kind of the Ridiculousness of it fluoride for example when you put fluoride in the water on your Island it will make your people a little bit dumber and it will lower their likelihood of Revolt so they become a little bit more docile and a little less intelligent free education does certain things free birth control does certain things so you can just like see how all these different ideas have a ripple effect on a population the game is called tropical we were talking about Tropico in the car today when we were talking about the state of the world and stuff and I always like to say well if I was the island dictator to frame it in a way that you can understand it depending on how you want the ship to go I guess and so because there is kind of a lot going on in the world we thought that we would download this game just for funsies yeah and play it together and then I can kind of show you what I'm talking about generally okay we got to choose an outfit should our dictator's name maybe bonica yes right yeah so it's not technically a dictator it it depends on how you choose to like rule right you can be a like president or like an anarchist or whatever you want to be okay I like to rule in a fairly libertarian way have a very tiny badass government let the people do kind of whatever they want Free Press which can be like super difficult a lot of times it's easier if you rule in a hyper militarist way I like the green the soldier outfit I do the lipstick color black Anarchy we have to like beat parts of the game so we can unlock special trat there's charismatic compulsive hoarder kind of normal manipulative Savant I want to be a savant Veronica is seductive increases the approval of citizens that are sexually attracted to El Presidente by three and likewise decreases approval of citizens not sexually attracted to El Presidente by3 how how do you want to like do you want to have a lot of people or a few people do you want to have very few and do you want to just have like a farming Community or like a capitalist Society no can we destruct things yeah we should bulldo this terrible Palace you can't you have to have that yeah you have to have the palace and it's the one you designed well I could pick the windows and the shrubs but I didn't really design it I wanted to see what livestock we can run crocodiles cattle sheep pigs goats goats crocodiles that's wild I guess for leather oh sugar cocoa tobacco banana pineapple coffee cotton and rubber I remember you always being so proud of your islands and trying to give me a tour and and it just when you don't know what's going on it doesn't yeah it doesn't matter how did you find out about this game originally it's been around for a long time it's one of the more popular games in like the I guess it' be considered a real-time strategy game RTS what I was asking earlier is wouldn't a country want their population to be educated and wellfed and strong well it depends on what you're trying to do well what would happen if that was the case where we give them the ability to educate themselves well then they want elections and they get they're actually informed on what's going on on in the elections and they'll want like highle things that serve them well because they're educated like you can't just put down a sports stadium and then have everybody be happy like they'll vote you out of office they'll know when you're doing like mafioso type stuff like they'll catch on like if you kill one of the Rebel leaders then your people will catch on if they're educated if and they'll like set up a Revolt so as an El Presidente we don't want our population actually to be that smart well it depends on what kind of like situation you want to have like I normally like to have my population be super educated and grow the population slowly so that they can all have good jobs and then I just import until I have like colleges and stuff I just import the like higher ed type people bring the experts yeah until I can like make experts on my own but then if as long as like all your parameters are good your freedom levels are high then when the election comes around you'll get elected whereas if you start doing things that don't appease people but then you have like different factions like the Loyalists or like the hippies and if you don't do like some sort of legalistic stuff then the Loyalists will be like what the heck you know or like the Patriot crowd that's like super yeah okay the crown is so this is Great Britain or like they don't say that but that's what fulfill a trade route with the crown well what that do they want huh cyber Operation Center H Spy Academy Commando Garrison ooh I want to start some like that well we got to like we got to like export some bananas before we start a cyber security lab okay I just want to see what happens when these well when it like starts getting exciting oh I want to build a pyramid okay we have three homeless citizens so we could build a Scamp a Scamp yes and then we will house all three people so something you can do you can bribe kill arrange accident arrest or institutionalize to like the faction leader it's pretty realistic yeah so I tend to like if I'm if I'm struggling to like win an election I'll just bribe the rebel leader I see and then it's like and then they'll be like okay okay Veronica is all right we're not thisiss have a Pirate Cove are we with it are we going important okay we got to be careful about like the just fun chaos decision well isn't she isn't this the quest she wants us to build it yeah it is but we can say no oh but then our revolutionary standing will drop I don't know if we like govern right like if we have things going on that the revolutionaries like like free press and all that kind of stuff and like don't get too capitalistically oriented then they'll be tight with us these types of games it's like when I played Fallout and I accidentally shot someone and everyone came after me yeah they're like high consequence yeah but that's what makes it fun oh I didn't realize that was fun well it's like I don't know in like older games or less simulation oriented games you can just do whatever you want and it just doesn't matter you know but I'm not much of a gamer so for it to be a little easier is helpful hop up hop up good they know pilot hush what are you working on I'm still doing solar research so I can decide what all we need to order yeah it's been quite a lot of learning these last couple weeks just trying to get all this figured out just today I'd been like putting it off and trying not to think about it but just today I was talking to my buddy Travis and he brought up the idea of installing our solar controller and inverter combo package the solarc outside and I had considered that when we first were looking into it because it'll put off Heat and the fans will be loud I tried to just shove that down and ignore it and then it came back up and I think that's probably what we should do I don't know it's just every single component takes like a day of research at least so it's just been a lot of geeking out on all this stuff I was just telling Baron that I should start wearing makeup for videos because it seems to do better when I wear makeup in thumbnails but not today at least you got your wolf shirt at least I'm already cute as I am 100% of the time there's something in this house that I've been putting off for a long time not for any reason in particular today I'm going to tackle finishing this drywall mud hopefully finishing [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] we did it I think it looks really nice um once we get the ceiling done this place will look totally different we're still kind of kicking around how exactly to do that but we're kind of thinking we'll use the same thing that we used on the back wall now I got to try to finish this stripe and it's super tedious and annoying and it's more of an Elsa job than a baron job hello I'm taking a break feel like I have most of the research finished that I need to do for the solar stuff so I'm going to order all the parts and tools tonight and yesterday I started up the Subaru for the first time in maybe a week or week and a half just to keep the battery charged and make sure it's running good and when I got inside after letting it run for a minute the fan for the AC was making all kinds of noise and I immediately turned it off and then when I turned it back on no air would blow out of it so I'm assuming that rodents got into something I don't know where within the system they are but there's probably either a rat or Mouse nest in the HVAC system somewhere so I'm going to try to figure that out and I couldn't be more thrilled so here we go there is some evidence in here of someone building a house not a crazy amount of destroyed things I always leave the hood popped cuz that tends to keep them out of it but I don't know the air is on and should be blowing but it's not there's no sign of my in here they probably work their way into the cabin air filter I don't know let's make sure that the pulley are spinning yeah they are and this motor runs really loud but it's not knocking on the computer anything it's run really loud ever since we swapped it in it's a i AG motor and supposedly they make a little bit more noise when they run okay I'm going to start disassembling things [Music] there's some shredded paper under here not ideal not what you want [Music] bud gross oh you bastards yuck I need some gloves and a mask it's like every 6 months Road cause like a catastrophic well hopefully this isn't catastrophic but like this is a problem this is why I've been saying we need a garage but we just can't afford to build one right now and I've tried all the sprays and the moth balls and the whole thing putting lights out here they just get used to whatever you do and then just push past it I need to just set out a bucket trap every night but that's gross and I don't want to have to kill them all but I just have to kill them all that's like the only I know some rodents have out here can carry hauna virus so I'm going to play it safe and put a respirator on yuck [Music] man well I figured out what happened there's a tur or like a fan right there a turbine and one of the mice fell down into it and I was just reaching in there to see if I can get debris out and I think when I turned the air on the other day what I heard clunking was the mouse getting killed in the turbine of the fan hopefully it didn't fry the fan but it probably did only other thing I can think of maybe the fuse for the fan blue when uh it was trying to overpower the mouse that was stuck in it I don't know which fan on the fuse box like is it the main fan the sub thing fan fan 2 fan one got to Google it all right Elsa I'm filming keep it down today I'm going to get all of our panels hooked together all the panels are going to be wired in series and when you wire things in series the voltage is additive and the amperage stays the same when you wire things in parallel the amperage is additive and the voltage stays the same being a 48 volt system our solar controller requires fairly high voltage for it to click on if I add all of the voltages together of all the panels it'll give us enough voltage to operate the oh there's a bird nest to um operate the uh solar controller okay hopefully that's clear as mud um I'm going to climb up there and show you what we got going on [Music] so each of these are 250 W panels This is 1,000 2,000 3,000 watts of solar like I said we're going to wire them in series [Music] living off grid means we are without connection to the power grid and in our case without connection to the water grid either we have no option to be connected to the power grid unless we want to pay for the polls to reach out to our property which would easily cost over 100 Grand we did actually for real weigh this option in the beginning I don't know about Baron but to me the idea of building an entire house with only portable batteries charged by small solar panels seemed fairly impossible this is actually one of the reasons why we bought a full Ryobi kit of tools because they had their own batteries that we could recharge versus hauling around our big batteries with tools that had power cords and those corded power tools often times pulled way more power than we could handle anyway because they're more powerful tools but alas we did it we built a house with no on grid power and I think that that's quite impressive if everything goes according to plan these solar panels should help bring in enough Electric for us to power a washing machine all our kitchen appliances our office space and anything that a normal house W power but it's solar so we will always and forever have to be aware of our usage and be aware of the weather we might not be able to run high powered appliances at night when we're not bringing in any power and we might have to hold off on doing laundry during long snowstorms but even with this reasonable hindrance the only thing able to dictate our electricity is the sky and over the last 7 and 1/2 years off GD that's been a comforting and beautiful way to [Music] [Music] live Flor foree [Music] [Music] [Music] the ribs in the roof and all the roof screws make the Unistrut twist so then I can't get it to line up [Music] go it's a new day and the other night I got the Subaru figured out and figured out that it was the blower that had burned up when the mouse fell into it I checked all of the circuits and everything and it wasn't them it was right at the blower and I'll show you how I verified that here in a second I just got the part that I needed in the new cabin air filter so I'm going to go ahead and install that now so that's what hasn't been working but apparently it's decided that it's going to work now really what I should have done is just pulled the blower which is the cabin air fan and then pulled my multimeter put it against that and measured voltage to it cuz then I would know that I didn't have a fuse blown or anything cuz if there was a fuse blown then when I turned on the air it wouldn't put 12 volt to the blower instead I checked all of the fuses and relays first which was kind of a waste of time but here's how to check it like to begin with here's my trusty multimeter to check my voltage click it over here and then hit select so then it's in DC mode and then I can put the um pins up to one to the blower and then the other actually the brown will or the black will go to the ground and the ground is just like a like the door jam is a good piece of metal to ground it to it's just like a raw piece of metal in the car while I'm here though I got a new tool set that I think is just the coolest so this is made by weira this is not an advertisement but these guys are just really super cool I think it's a German company but anyway you have all of your different bits you could possibly need um sockets that have they're colorcoded and they have like a grippy uh Edge along the bottom so that you can spin them by hand comes with a micro screwdriver and then this little guy is so cool cuz then like when you're in a spot you can hold tension on it and spin this you can also use that with the little um ratchet and this is like a ultra fine tooth ratchet so when you click it it can click like little tiny increments so if you're in a really tight space you can um still ratchet things and then on the front of it it's got these teeth so that you can just spin it by hand if you need to it's just like a super nice micro tool set that fits in my fanny pack and has most everything I need I won't lose stuff because it's all right here super cool I'll leave a link to it in uh the description but I'm just excited about this is all I love like little tiny geeky like that okay let's check the voltage now it's on DC mode I don't know if you can see that now see yeah see 14.4 Vols so it should be spinning right now but it ain't so we're going to replace it or is that just a base uhoh it's different no I checked the part number and everything oh that sucks now I got to return this stupid thing I might just run to town and see if I can pick one up in town but very unlikely okay after some Googling I realized what the issue is that since the subie has automatic climbing climate control it needs a different blower motor so I think I'm just going to cut off the wiring harness and foro the climate control and directly wire it to the pins on the new blower the climate controlled blower motor is $400 versus this one that's 30 I don't feel like we need climate control I'm going to unplug the battery I need to get to these prongs so I'm going to cut this to make them a little more more [Music] accessible I should just be able to touch the wires that I stripped to this and um see if it'll spin I don't have a soldering iron and I think without drilling through those tabs that's about the only way to do it so I'm going to have James bring his soldering iron over see if he thinks this is a good idea or not [Music] w h we want it going this way we want the air coming out of the sides of this do we for sure mhm cuz it's got to pull in here it always does that after I unplug the battery that's okay this goes to this side it goes just how it is there okay I'm going to unplug the battery okay so what we need to do is just just solder this on is that right but worst case I can imagine is that it will just if it's on it'll blow full blast like I won't be able to turn the fan down well that's that's probably what it'll be yes okay okay I'm going to go grab the battery did I hit you yeah sorry yikes did I hit you yeah sorry my poor thumb this this is here see there I did it to myself just just to prove I wasn't mad at [Laughter] you okay I think it's it's on there this lifestyle there's a whole lot more involved to it than people realize yeah like this kind of stupid but you can't afford to hire somebody come out and do all this stuff you can't take your stuff to town every time you want a little something done uh but you know if you hire everything done you can't afford it right some can huh some can well but they can afford that they can afford not to live like this if you can afford all that then what are you doing out here huh if you can afford all that then what are you doing out here that's right and I know about how that would go they wouldn't be put they wouldn't put up with all this crap if they had the money unless they just absolutely are hard up well you know some of us are kind of hardheaded okay here we go let's see oh yeah bud she's blowing cold it's blowing harder than it's ever blown that's fory sure turbocharge that's hilarious okay excellent all right you did it thank you yay I could help you that was fun you just got here for the P you missed all the cussing thank you well I had plenty of cussing D dream was so upset this afternoon thanks for watching we'll see you guys next time

Channel: Elsa Rhae & Barron

Views: 53,943

Keywords: elsa rhae, scamp, scamp trailer, barron, concrete house, construction, diy, home, house build, house, concrete home, building, how to, passive solar, home design, concrete architecture, dream house, family home, self built home, dry stack, Tiny house, Elsa Rhae and barron, off grid, concrete tiny house, we built our own home, a frame, cabin, a frame cabin, building our own home, homestead, homesteading, off grid home, solar, solar power, solar powered cabin, solar powered home

Id: Tc_2KHIpj4s

Length: 32min 57sec (1977 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 10 2024