THIS Is How We'll Cool Our Desert Home With NO Electricity

this week on osrl our plans for off-grid no electricity air conditioning start taking shape as we figure out what we'll need and how we'll get it all installed time to get some work done all right y'all welcome back to the channel now if you're new here my wife and I we're building our own home here out here in the Arizona desert completely off grid on solar collecting our own rainwater as you can see here we're building a monitor style pole barn as an addition to our Earth bag home but uh we got a special little project to go on before we continue on with the build this has to go in before the foundation this part is really exciting because I think it will make the house really comfortable to live in well what is it it is going to be a form of air conditioning that uh uses no electricity and it's called well it has a various different names I've heard of but um Earth tubes is what we like to call it so because we live off grid completely on solar you know we'd like to keep our energy usage as low as possible you can get much bigger solar raise and really pull in all kinds of energy you could probably run whatever air conditioning mini splits but if we can lower our energy usage and keep things as simple and as low energy as possible I feel like that's really the way we want to go and uh you know solar you can only run that when it's sunny right so if there are issues with your energy you know no no AC so with this I mean it runs 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year no energy and that's amazing it's completely passive and there's no moving parts so you know as long as everything's installed properly there shouldn't be any maintenance to it which I love as well like with a conventional air conditioning system eventually something's going to break down with this it's going to be a lot of hard work there's going to be a decent amount of upfront expense but probably not any much more than you would for a a decent air conditioning system that's probably going to run us anywhere between $1,000 to $1,500 but like I said once it's all said and done that's it that's it yep so we're excited and so that's what we're going to start on now let's get some measurements down let's kind of figure out where these things are going and then we got a little special surprise so let's get to it you going to roll it out yep 100 that's 100 ft yeah ready for trench too yep is that whole Bush going to have to come out all right we got it figure it out I think so [Music] D is I'm all squirted with some surprise time to get some work done y leave it alone it's a Prett yeah all right y'all well I got the tractor back yesterday evening and this morning it looks like there are some issues with it I hope I didn't do anything to it but it looks like this tire is real low on air so I don't know what's going on with that I'm going to see if I can get some air into this but also it's not starting and I've tried multiple times I'm a tractor novice I don't know much about tractors so I'm going to have to reach out to our neighbor see if he can help us and uh we'll we'll go from there all right y'all I got Jess out here and little known secret I don't know if you guys quiet down bird I don't know if you guys know but it is Jess's birthday it looks like you got a little birthday gift yep what am I looking at it's a super cool like Hightech bird feeder I guess because why not bring technology into your bird feeding life you could see it has a camera in the middle of the bird feeder there and when a bird lands on the feeder it well it has like a motion sensor or something and then it takes picture or video of the bird which is really cool I I really love the wild birds out here I've been feeding them and we're starting to see a lot of different kinds of birds so I'm going to add this to my bird feeder collection and see if we can capture some different birds on video very cool and of course if we get if we get this to work and we get some excellent bird footage or pictures we'll definitely include that in this video we're looking at maybe doing low Tech air conditioning but then we have a high-tech bird feeder yeah [Applause] all right [Music] so just a little update on the tractor good news is my neighbor came over and we're able to get a started looks like it was a little bit of a short preventing it from starting up it is starting now which is good but we still got the issue of this uh this back tire which has a flat but I found the leak and it was just a little Thorn just a tiny little Thorn just enough to cause a a good size leak in this tire it's like right there so I'm going to pick up a tire plug kit I feel bad that I drove it all the way over here and then it's got a flat so I'll plug up the tire for him and I'm going to see if uh this tractor can do what I need it to do hopefully it'll be enough and then we'll we'll put it to work but meanwhile you're probably wondering why I'm uh dressed up like this I'll let you know here in a second I told you I would tell you why I'm dressed like this today and this is the reason why ma'am woo woo look at this look at this she's dressed all sharp it's this lovely lady's birthday today today is the day happy birthday thank you so I'm going to take this lady out to the city to celebrate her birthday and to celebrate we're going to get supplies we're going to Home Depot what lady doesn't like to go to Home Depot for her birthday it's something I've been wanting been waiting for yeah and I'm excited we're going to we're going to do some other things too but uh we're going to do some business along the way and we're going to take you along with us all right we're headed off on our big adventure to the city you ready to have some fun and enjoy the day I'm ready all right and I'm driving of course because today is your day all right first up we are in the big city and by Big City I mean the biggest city near where we live which is kind of a small City but we're going to first up we're getting some lunch you hungry yes I am you better be because it's all oh you can eat time to fill up what are you going to get what are you going to eat all the things all the things that's the answer I like let's do it all right we're at our next stop what's the next destination for your birthday Home Depot home away from home wait it's our next stop but we're already done here right yes so uh take us through a little bit of what we got you don't have to go through too much but uh um just just the basics a whole lot of PVC and glues and joist hangers and we got some fun stuff right I snuck in some flowers so the PVC stuff isn't cheap but luckily we bought uh quite a decent amount of it so there was like a bulk discount which ended up being quite a bit same just quite a bit of money so if you're doing something like this think about doing it in bulk all right we are back we didn't do too much filming today uh we were just mainly out enjoying ourselves but we are back I'm ready to take off these relatively clean clothes put my Rags on and get back to work you ready to that's enough birthday for you right yeah well I got to plant my plants in the garden right yeah but that's work right it's fun work it's fun birthday work so she's going to plant her birthday plants meanwhile I'm going to mess with that uh tractor over there all right you say hi kisses for the people always kisses for the people oh look at this she's leaning up against the wall to get some pets she wants some attentions you got a date with a brush later today ma'am which plant are you planting first Lana what's this last one colano just a little little tin plant tried to get all perennial flowering drought tolerant plants nice that's smart cutest plant in the world so I found the problem that was causing the flat in the tractor oddly enough it was just a tiny little Thorn and totally took out that tire completely flat had a good size leak in it so while I was out I picked up this uh Tire plug kit and I'm going to try and plug up this tractor tire [Music] [Music] all right so I got this thing filled with air going use a little soapy water to see if there's any small leakage I think I did a good job I got to cut off this excess yet and and then we'll uh we'll test this thing out so I got this IBC Tote here that we haven't been using for water collection and it's kind of Mucky kind of dirty and I have plans to use this actually for food growing but for right now I think it could make an excellent storage for all those little pieces of wood that I that I've been making uh doing this build just uh all these little just all these little scraps and pieces of wood all that I can use for next winter so I thought round it all up here into one place and it's easily coverable when the monsoon rains come so it'll be nice and protected neat and orderly absolutely perfect and it'll make just happy to get things a little more cleaned up around here so I was going to kind of scrub this out a little bit more but after dumping the dirt you know just this a little bit on the size that's not really going to be that big of an issue so I'm going to put it to where we're going to keep it for storage and then start cleaning up some of this wood all right so I got that IBC Tote modified and I got that wood picked up it is looking so much cleaner out here so much cleaner so much more room so this has just been a little part of the spring cleaning I've been doing just trying to keep everything a little tidier a little bit more organized around here and I feel that's just going to go a long way into making me more productive so this is the IBC Tote as you can see I got this thing almost filled it's kind of crazy that the couple little piles of wood just filled this thing up so much but it's contained it's nice and neat looks pretty nice and then should when the rains come easy to cover keep dry and a lot of the stuff will be ready for the next winter when we might need some of this to heat the Dome okay so this morning I thought I'd give the tractor a start and uh and see what I can do with it uh you know I'm a little nervous with the uh Tire being plugged up the way it is it should hold but uh still makes me a little nervous uh but uh we'll see we'll see how this goes hopefully it holds up well uh try and remove some uh some of the brush that's going to be in the way of the trenches [Applause] I got it started got the tire patched but I feel like feel like there's something weird going on with the Hydraulics so again unless I'm not doing something right which is definitely a possibility uh I'll have to check with my neighbor to see if I'm doing something wrong with that but um yeah we might we might this might not work out as well as I had hoped but uh it was a good try did you have a good birthday I had a very nice birthday now by the time you see this her birthday will uh you know be over a little bit but uh I'm sure she'd appreciate it if you guys left a little birthday wishes down below now for your birthday you got a really nice gift didn't you that bird feeder you are really enjoying the heck out of that thing areen you yeah it's kind of nice getting to see all the birds like close up and getting video of them now you've loved watching the birds from kind of AAR obviously you can't get too close you'll go ah and go out there with the binoculars you know kind of see all that's in there but that's kind of a really neat perspective getting them right there up close yeah kind of a cool little Gadget Peter got that for you cuz you know know how much you've been enjoying the birds and you've been you've been loving it if that's something you're interested in checking out we'll leave a link down in the description and uh you can check it out see if you want to uh to add one to your domicile so yeah we'll leave that link down below and if you buy from our link then I think we'll get a get a little bit of commission on that so we appreciate that well we got some things measured for the Earth tubes I'm really excited about getting into that project I really want to get started mainly because because I can't move on with the p uh the house build until this uh the Earth tubes are in uh I was really hoping that the uh our neighbor's tractor would have worked out unfortunately had all those issues that I kind of had to work out you know some of it was uh some of it unfortunately probably user error but uh I was just a little hesitant especially with that tire to really try and overwork it and put it through its Paces the last thing I'd want to do is really put the tractor to the test when um when it's kind of hurting like that I really appreciate my neighbor letting us even try to use it that was very generous of them I mean we used it before to create some of these basins and everything like that so I mean having a neighbor like that who's willing to let us use a tractor like that very nice very helpful very generous I just don't want to put it out of commission for our work yeah this might be kind of a big project it's it's a pretty it's going to be a pretty big undertaking for sure and I'm I'm anxious to get started on that but uh I think we'll be going in a different direction you'll see that soon meanwhile there isn't too much more I can do with the house build I had to sort of hold off putting the ribs along the trusses until I got some more parts but I got those parts so I can go ahead and do that and that'll kind of be the last thing I can do until we get those Earth tubes in so it's I'm going to finish the framing then we'll do the Earth tubes then we'll get that foundation in and then we can keep on building from there so so stay tuned as we get the last of this framing in and then we get to actually start on the earth tubes so very exciting again this will be a completely off-grid way of sort of he uh s definitely cooling our house but maybe even heating it as well so but if you have any questions about the Earth tubes about what it's all about any details leave those down below and we'll make sure to answer it through those videos as we start that process of installing them all right so uh give this video a big thumbs up for Jess's birthday and uh we'll catch you in the next video y'all bye

Channel: Our Self-Reliant Life

Views: 41,540

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Id: sZNx-axfdLQ

Length: 23min 1sec (1381 seconds)

Published: Sun May 12 2024