In our first series of roundhouse videos we designed, planned, and set the foundation for this unique eartbag home. This series of videos will focus on building the earthbag walls, installing doors and windows, and more.

The Exciting Next STEPS on our HYPERADOBE ROUNDHOUSE!

We continue our Hyperadobe Roundhouse build, picking up where we left off with our floor level bags, and installing our first door forms while wrapping and sealing the foundation layers.

The Most IMPORTANT DOORS in the Hyperadobe Roundhouse

Today we tackle installing the kids bedroom door frames in the most complicated hallway wall on our hyperadobe roundhouse. 

FINAL DOOR FORMS in the Hyperadobe Roundhouse

Today we install the last two door forms in the hyperadobe roundhouse!

We CAN'T CONTINUE the Roundhouse Until We DO THIS

Today we build the last access ramp and brace all our door forms. This will allow us to access the bedroom area of the house as the walls get higher.

5th Course COMPLETE! (Walls Up From Here)

The 5th course is officially finished on the hyperadobe roundhouse! This means the foundation is finished, and we can focus on building the walls as quickly as possible.

Now We're MOVING! Hyperadobe Roundhouse Walls

The 6th course is officially finished on the hyperadobe roundhouse!

GIVING us a BOOST: Friend Helps us SMASH Hyperadobe Bags in Record Time

Today we build cleats with our new nail gun and our friend Eric helps us eat grapes and smash bags on the 7th course.

FACING FEARS & Finishing COURSE 7 🎉

It's a big day! Course 7 is finally complete on the hyperadobe roundhouse. We lay an absolutely massive amount of bag, take down our shade sails, and run some errands.

How Do We Install Electrical OUTLETS in EARTHBAGS?

The 8th course begins on the hyperadobe roundhouse - but first we have to build window forms and set our first electrical outlets.

BREAKING Our Earthbag Rules?

Today we install our first windows and lay part of course 9 early. What?!

We Have a PLAN! Hyperadobe Roundhouse Continues

We're back to course 8 on the rest of the roundhouse, installing more outlets, and planning for the future.

Hyperadobe Walls HAVE to GO UP at the Same Time (Here's Why)

Today we're laying more earthbags on course 8, and getting ready for the hyperadobe workshop.

Our EPIC WEEK of Earthbag Building (INSANE Progress!)

Join us for the full weeklong Hyperadobe Workshop! We're making new friends, eating delicious food, and laying tons (literally) of earthbags

Building MOMENTUM? Hyperadobe Construction Continues

We're keeping the momentum going after our workshop on the hyperaobe roundhouse and officially finishing course 10!

We Added a Few NEW Window Forms?

Let's install a ton of bedroom windows on the roundhouse!

Hi there! Today we’re going to share the process of installing a Wi-Fi Mesh that not only covers our 7 acre homestead, but also puts that fast internet inside multiple buildings made out of metal and 16” thick earthbag walls.

Sections

1. Existing Internet Setup
2. Goals for New Setup
3. Researching Options
4. Why We Chose UniFi
5. Making a Plan
6. Wi-Fi Mesh Setup & Installation
7. Problems We Encountered
8. How Far Did our Mesh Reach?
9. How's it Working?
10. Shopping List
11. Wiring Guide

Disclaimer: Before we get started, I just want to make sure you know I’m not an IT person, have no background in networking, and not sponsored by any of the companies we’ll talk about in this video. We chose our equipment based on our needs, and we’re just sharing our experience. We hope you find it helpful.

Now let’s talk about our existing setup.

How We Used to Get Internet

When we moved to our property, we were coming off 5 years of traveling full time in an RV. We spent most of our time camping off-grid and boondocking so we had a cell boosted internet setup that worked so well we just kept it:

But then we built our first building - this earthbag solar shed office - and that’s where our problems started. Now we had two buildings. The office where we did most of our work, and the Airstream where the kids did their school work. We hacked together a solution using the Wi-Fi out antenna of one router to share internet to another router in the Airstream. It kinda worked, but meant we had two separate wifi networks, and it was very unreliable.

It was one of those things were it worked just enough of the time that we kept using it, but the longer we lived here, the more we noticed slowdowns, network managing, and the switch to 5G was making our 4G connection unstable. 

Not only that, but since the Wi-Fi was relegated to being inside the two buildings, we were constantly turning off the Wi-Fi on our phones while out working on the property. This meant our batteries didn’t last as long, or we’d get delayed texts, etc…

I knew it was time to level up our network here on the property, but it wasn’t until we ran into a guy marking things on our road that we really started taking it seriously. He told us a grant had been funded, and they were running fiber internet to our “neighborhood.” Crazy, right? We didn’t believe it, but over time they did start running the lines, and now that we were making videos full time this seemed like a no brainer.

Goals for the New Setup

So it was up to me to figure out how to make this work. These were our goals.

1. Same Speeds Everywhere - We needed to have the same internet speeds in multiple buildings AND outside those buildings. Our solar shed office which has 16” earthbag walls, the Airstream which is Aluminum, and this steel goat barn container that we renovated for our daughter.
2. Single Network - We also work outside A LOT. I wanted our Wi-Fi to be a single network that we stayed connected to as we walk around the property.
   
3. Simple Setup - Like I mentioned, I’m not an IT person, and knew I would be the one setting up and managing this whole system. So simplicity both in physical setup and software would be important for my sanity.
   
4. Expandability - We’re still building our big hyperadobe roundhouse, and let’s be honest, we live on homestead. We’re always going to be building or working on a new project. So it was important that this system was modular and expandable for different use cases.
   
5. Solid Ecosystem - Besides being expandable, I wanted to be buying into a good ecosystem as well. Like I’d connect things and stuff would work. Adopting new pieces of hardware would be as painless as possible.
   
6. Good Software - Part of that was software, too. With all of our off-grid systems, I’m finding it increasingly important to invest in companies that make good software. Bad software creates critical bugs that can be detrimental on a homestead.
   
7. Fast - Finally I needed hardware that would take advantage of fiber internet speeds. Our current router maxed out at like 120Mbps, and we could get fiber plans up to a 1Gbps. So it was just time to level up.
   

Researching Wi-Fi Mesh Options

Like any good homesteader, I started researching. First up was what I call active research. This is when you kind of know what you want, but don’t know how to make it happen. Typing search queries into search engines and websites, watching videos, reading articles, taking notes.

During this initial phase one company came up over and over again for people like me without a lot of networking experience. Ubiquiti - specifically their UniFi line.

So I started what I call passive research. I joined Facebook groups and subreddits so that as I visited these social networks, I would start seeing conversations about UniFi and home networking in my feed. 

Modular networking ecosystems are complicated, so just by reading other people’s problems and solutions and all the comments and advice on each thread I was able to understand so much more about what would work and what wouldn’t.

If you’re researching a topic like this that you’re not familiar with often you don’t even know what to search for. Passive research helped fill in a lot of those gaps for me.

Why We Chose UniFi for Our Homestead Mesh Network

So long story short, we picked UniFi for our homestead network. Like I said, not sponsored - but here’s why we felt like it was the best choice for us.

1. The general consensus in the groups was that UniFi was a solid prosumer line of networking gear that worked well together, was fairly easy to setup for novices like me, but could be configured pretty deeply if needed.
2. They actively developed their software, had open source repositories so you could use their software on your own hardware if you wanted, and that is a great sign that a company takes their software seriously.
   
3. For me, having a great user interface is also important - if I’m getting frustrated with a bad UI then it’s’ just adding stress to my life. UniFi seemed like they were doing a good job of taking complicated actions, stats, and metrics, and making them easy to understand through design.
   
4. They were all in on PoE, and this really intrigued me. Power over ethernet uses a single cable to not only pass data, but also power. So I knew I’d be installing multiple antennas to mesh around the property, and when you’re off-grid getting power to those antennas is difficult. So the idea of running a single ethernet cable to an antenna made a ton of sense to me.
   
5. Once you buy the hardware, you get the software, and don’t have to pay monthly for it. This is not the case with a lot higher end networking gear nowadays. I appreciated that even if the hardware cost a bit more, the software was included, and constantly updated over time.
   
6. As always we’re looking for companies that are DIY friendly. UniFi’s line of products is so deep and modular - they make a piece of hardware for just about every scenario you could think of - and has a pretty thriving base of users that are both professional and residential. So that was a good sign for me.
7. They also had a solid ecosystem in place that we could expand and grow with - stuff like cameras, door entry, etc… I’ll just say we have big plans for our house.
8. If I wanted to get deeper, they had options like VLANS for keeping certain Internet of Things (IoT) devices separate, and guest networks for when we have meetups and workshops.
   

Making a Plan & Understanding The Basic Components of a Unifi System

So now that we had decided on UniFi it was time to start planning our setup, and knowing what pieces of hardware to get. This was the hardest part for me to understand because with every other home networking system I had ever used, all of these things were usually included in a single box or router, and I never had to think about it. 

While UniFi does sell some "all-in-one" boxes, I quickly realized that to find the best combination of functionality, price, and expandability I needed to understand how each part worked. Here’s the basic pieces of a UniFi system:

1. You need a gateway. This can be your own computer, but the simplest solution is to get one of theirs. The gateway is the sort of the heart and soul of the whole system. It comes with the software that lets everything talk to each other, lets you access online from anywhere in the world, and provides security - it’s how the whole ecosystem works.
2. You need some kind of switching. What this means is that there are ethernet ports that you connect different antennas or devices to. While you can get gateways with switching built in, one main reason they’re often separate is the PoE aspect. If you need to power a bunch things on different ports, it makes more sense to have a dedicated device.
3. You need an access point (AP). Or in my case multiple access points. These are Wi-Fi antennas that let your devices connect to your Wi-Fi network.
4. Not to confuse things, but I also needed special access points that would allow meshing.

Understanding Meshing

Let’s talk about meshing real fast. For those situations where you want to extend your network, but don’t have a way to run physical wire, Wi-Fi meshing is the answer.

The way this works is that the access point has hardware and software that lets it “latch” on to a Wi-Fi signal from another antenna, send it to a switch, and distribute it back out through other access points. Also it can beam that Wi-Fi signal back out and make the radius of the first meshing antenna even larger.

So the goal is to be connected to the same Wi-Fi network as I walk around the property and enter buildings, having my device automatically jump between each access point depending on which has the strongest signal. Now let's see how we set it up.

Wi-Fi Mesh Network Setup & Installation

We started with our gateway, and we went with the Cloud Gateway Ultra. It’s considered a starter device for sure, but it was powerful enough to run 1gbps speeds, manage 30 UniFi Devices and 300 clients. Plus it sat nicely on the desk in the shed and didn’t require me to go down the route of a whole rack install. That’s for the house. Keeping it simple for now.

You plug an ethernet cable from your modem or ONT right into this device, and then download the UniFi App on your phone. Once I did that, the app was was able to discover the UCG-Ultra I got my unifi account setup, the gateway provisioned, and my wifi network created.

Now remember, this particular gateway didn’t have an access point built in. It also didn’t have PoE. I’ll pause to say you can buy gateways that have all those built in, but there are tradeoffs like price, slower speeds, not enough PoE ports, needing to go with a full rack install. Like I said, there are a lot of ways to do this. This is just what made the most sense for us.

In order to distribute the internet via Wi-Fi to the inside of the shed, and outside the shed to everything else, I needed access points, but also a way to power them via PoE.

So I started with the Flex Switch. It was small and cheap, and had 5 ports and 46w of total power.

Now the tricky part with the flex is that it’s kind of made to be powered by PoE. So it doesn’t have a traditional power port. You have to get a PoE adapter which is just a little box with an ethernet in, ethernet out and an AC plug.

With the switch powered, I could connect my AP’s. Inside I could have used pretty much any of Unifi’s AP’s in such a small space, but went with the U6 Mesh so I could set it on the desk and not have to install one of the discs on the ceiling or wall. This connected to the switch with a single ethernet patch cable.

Then comes the fun part. Meshing to the rest of the property. I needed the most powerful outdoor mesh antenna they had so I went with the U6 Mesh Pro. It was weatherproof, had versatile mounting options, and gigabit speeds. It also said 2,000 square feet of coverage. We’ll see how that actually worked out.

So out of the Flex Switch we ran a very long shielded outdoor cable out our wire chase, under the eaves, and to the East side of the Solar Shed roof. We also put in an Ethernet Surge Protector with a drain wire down to our grounding rod. At the end of the day it’s not going to stop a direct strike, but should help a bit with static charges in the air.

With both AP’s connected to the switch, I went back into the app and began to “adopt” the new hardware. This should be a painless process, you just tap the button, give it a few minutes while it updates and sets stuff up, and then you’ve got a Wi-Fi network to connect.

When this works, it’s magic, and the reason I went with UniFi. It wasn’t always the case for me, though. I’ll get to that in a few minutes.

At this point we were setup inside the shed and outside the shed for about for decent distance in all directions. Pretty good! Now we just had to get that internet into our other buildings - which of course were both totally different.

First up was the Airstream. It was under this awesome metal truss cover which I knew would allow me to get the second U6 Mesh Pro up as high as possible and pointed back towards the first U6 Mesh Pro at the Solar Shed.

The most difficult part of this install was figuring out how to get the wire from the antenna along the cover and down into the Airstream without adding new holes. I also added another Ethernet Surge Protector here and drain wire down to the grounding rod for this building.

Long story short, I figured it out, and pulled the single outdoor ethernet cable up to our networking area in the trailer.

The U6 Mesh Pro then connected to another Flex Switch that we mounted to the wall also powered by the PoE adapter, and a U6+ was mounted to the wall to provide wireless signal inside the trailer.

Once this was all connected I powered on the Switch, and waited for the new devices to show up to be adopted. A few taps later, the U6 Mesh Pro on the Airstream cover roof was pulling internet from the U6 Mesh Pro on the Solar Shed roof and distributing back outside the Airstream and inside via the U6+ on the inside of the Airstream. Sweet.

Finally it was time to replicate the same setup inside our Goat Barn Container. Not only did we have a nice new 3,000 Watt Victron solar system we wanted to get connected to the internet to monitor, but we were hoping this would extend the Wi-Fi signal all the way down to the front gate so we could level up our new Ghost Controls Gate Opener with their Multi-Connect Module.

I mounted the 3rd U6 Mesh Pro to the Goat Barn where we had already drilled a hole in the container, and ran the last outdoor ethernet cable to the antenna. We also installed the Ethernet Surge Protector for this one, but instead of running a drain wire we grounded it directly to the container through the back plate we had already grounded the container itself.

Inside guess what? Another Flex Switch and U6+. Same process, once the switch was powered and the antennas booted up they were seen by the system, adopted, and magically everything was meshing. I was getting the same speeds inside the metal Goat Barn Container nearly 200' away as I was inside the Solar Shed near the source of the fiber installation.

Not only was it fast inside, but location of the Goat Barn got our Wi-Fi signal all the way down to the front gate. Perfect!

Ok well it wasn’t all perfect. Here are some problems I ran into.

Problems

The first big problem was that I actually couldn’t adopt any of my U6 Mesh Pro antennas. They just kept failing. Being new to the UniFi system I had no idea what to do. I went to bed the first night pretty disappointed because if I couldn’t get the main meshing antenna to work, then none of the other stuff would work.

Turns out, apparently this mesh antenna was brand new, and the networking software inside the gateway didn’t have the latest update to be able to adopt them yet. By default, the gateway is set to run updates on everything overnight, so the next morning it magically worked the way it was supposed to.

The second big problem was my cable from my U6 Mesh Pro on the Airstream Cover to the gear inside the trailer. I don’t know if I damaged it when puling through the holes in the Airstream or what, but it would only allow FE or fast ethernet speeds and was capping everything at about 100Mbps. Still pretty fast, but when you have so many kids with devices inside there I didn’t want it being restricted.

I ordered another one, did the whole mounting/reattaching thing again, and got full speeds there, too.

One final bit of setup issue was having to manually tell some of the access points not to mesh. We wanted the ones mounted to the outside of the buildings to mesh, but not the inside ones. This would start to create interference loops and slowdowns if everything was meshing all the time. Thankfully the control panel made this pretty easy as it’s just a software setting for each device.

Other than that, installing the Ethernet Surge Protectors was just a huge pain. Mounting to wood and metal was super fiddly, and of course running ground wires and digging up my ground rods was no fun.

How Far Did Our Mesh Reach?

This was the biggest question I had going into this. 2,000 square feet really isn’t that big from a circular perspective, and I was worried that my meshing antennas would be too far apart.

From the main antenna on the Solar Shed to the Airstream Cover is about 100ft. They are kind of pointed away from each other, and part of the roof is in the way, but I’d say we get 90% throughput.

The Goat Barn antenna, though farther away at 215’, fares much better because the Solar Shed antenna is pointed right towards it, and there aren’t any obstacles. Funny enough, the Goat Barn part of this was kind of last minute, but it really ended up being at the perfect central location.

With the Solar Shed antenna and Goat Barn antenna we have Wi-Fi over 500’ down to the front gate, and covering the majority of the property.

After seeing so many people online saying I’d only get a couple hundred feet out of these, I think it’s important to note that most folks are probably installing these in densely populated areas. For us, with wide open spaces and virtually zero obstacles we really were able to take full advantage of the distance these could mesh.

Also I have to say that I poured over the antenna patterns on UniFi’s site, and just couldn’t really make sense of them. So my drawing here is just showing where my signal reaches based on me walking around and doing speed tests. Not super scientific, but hopefully real world enough to be helpful.

How's It Working Out?

We’ve been running this setup for over a month now, and overall I’d say that the “it just works” promise of UniFi was pretty on point. Similar to our Victron power systems, once it was properly setup it has just been humming away in the background, doing its thing. 

Sadly no one in the family has been like, “Wow, Dad the internet is so fast and stable now, you rock!” They’re just like…"Yeah it works like it’s supposed to. Cool."

Really though, those are the best kind of installs on a homestead. When what you did improves your quality of life, and you don’t have to think about it anymore. It just does it’s thing in the background, stable solid, and reliable. That’s the goal.

Just a couple of fun extra things I’ve noticed.

1. The control panel and dashboard really are great. They give you so much information, and present it in a really clear and easy to understand way. I’m learning so much about networking just from their graphs, tables, and data.
2. The Topology map is a unique visual way to see how things are connecting to your network, especially if you’re doing a lot of meshing like I am.
3. Yes everything is configurable, even the icons and names of devices connected. So you can easily see at a glance who’s connected and where in a way that makes sense to you.
4. And that’s just scratching the surface. There’s the ability to create multiple networks and firewalls, turn on various security and filtering, add backup failover internet sources, view details of traffic to various sites and which devices accessed them, and so much more. Sometimes I get a little overwhelmed looking at it. In a good way.

Shopping List

Cloud Gateway Ultra ($129)

UniFi sells quite a few different gateways, but I’ve found the Cloud Gateway Ultra to be great for small tabletop installations and medium sized homestead networks when paired with the right PoE Switches and AP’s.

Flex Switch ($99) x3

For my install I needed a PoE switch in each building to power my antennas. The Flex Switch was the right size for us, but if you need to make more connections UniFi makes a ton of different switches in every size and power capacity you could think of.

PoE+ Adapter ($15) x 3

The Flex Switch needs a PoE+ Adapter to get power if you’re not powering it via a PoE cable from another bigger switch. Many of UniFi’s other large, more expensive switches do have a more traditional power supply included.

U6 Mesh ($179) 

I bought a U6 Mesh to take up as little space as possible on our desk in the shed. Feel free to use the U6+ or similar if you’re ok with mounting to the ceiling or wall.

U6+ ($129) x2

We went with this the U6+ for inside the other buildings. Similar to the other products in the UniFi line, they sell like 8 versions of this antenna with varying power, coverage area, bandwidth and speeds. Our buildings were tiny so we went with the cheapest one.

U6 Mesh Pro ($199) x3

We were looking for max square footage so we went with the U6 Mesh Pro for our outside antennas. UniFi makes several outdoor rated mesh antennas with different specs. They also make point to point antenna sets to “beam” the signal and nearly full speeds for very long distances. We almost used this to feed the Airstream until we realized it would be better to mesh and provide signal outside the buildings as well.

Ethernet Surge Protector ($12.50) x3

Jury’s still out on how important these are, but the Ethernet Surge Protector is relatively cheap, and as we’ve learned -lightning can be erratic. A little extra protection never hurts. Use one for each external antenna.

Outdoor Rated Networking Cables

Using quality waterproof, UV rated and shielded cables for outside antenna runs is important. UniFi actually makes some really nice ones, though they only make them up to 26ft. We had to use these 3rd party ones for our longer runs.

• 1m ($4) x 4
• 2m ($5) x 2
• 5m ($8) x 2
• 50ft ($20) x 1
• 30ft ($20) x 1

Short Patch Cables

And of course you’ll need lots of shorter patch cables to connect all your gear together. To keep my life simple I ordered all these from Unifi, but you can obviously get Cat6 cables anywhere.

• .1m ($2) x 4
• .3m ($2.20) x 4
• 1m ($2.60) x 2

Wire Clips

Finally, if you want a nice clean install, you should have some wire clips on hand. We bought several types as we had multiple materials to connect things to (i.e. wood, metal, etc..).

• UV Zip Tie Cable Mounts ($10)
• Cable Management Clips ($12)
• Coaxial Cable Clips ($13)

Total

So for my install I spent about $1,700 including all the cables and accessories. Each building added about $550 to the total.

Wiring Guide & Wrap Up

Oh my goodness friends, we feel like we’ve covered so much, but if you still have questions feel free to leave a comment, and we’ll do our best to answer.

And if you’re looking to do something similar on your own property, and want to say thanks for this video, we’ve created a PDF guide of our setup with wiring diagrams and a shopping list to get you started.

As always we’re just getting started here on our off-grid homestead, - make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss the next project. Until next time!

Today we’re going to share everything we know about hyperadobe earthbag building - these UV treated raschel mesh tubes present exciting new opportunities, safer build sites, and huge cost savings for those of us building with soil.

Since hyperadobe is so new, there’s not a lot of information out there. We’ve been furiously experimenting the last 4 years with it, building a solar shed office, a large outdoor chicken garden, a small composting toilet outhouse, and have taken everything we’ve learned from those projects to design a huge 2,500 square foot roundhouse for our family - all while documenting every step here on our YouTube channel.

So today, we’re going to do our best to condense all that knowledge - the pros and cons, wins and losses, and all the tips and tricks we’ve learned along the way into a single video so that you’ll be fully armed to go build your own hyperadobe dream home. Plus at the end of this article we’ll share some ways we can help with your specific project if you need it. Let’s get started.

Sections

1. History
2. Benefits
3. Earthbag Basics
4. Tools
5. Bag Types
6. Bag Sizing
7. Calculating Bag Amount
8. How To Lay, Fill & Tamp Hyperadobe
9. Advanced Techniques
10. Windows & Doors
11. Roofing & Plastering
12. How We Can Help
13. Questions?

History

We’re not going to get too deep here, but it’s important to know when, where, and why these building techniques came to be. Stacking bags of dirt has been around over 100 years. The military used them for flood control and bunkers because they were cheap, built quickly on site, and could even stop a bullet.

We’ll fast forward to the 1980’s where Nader Khalili popularized more permanent earthbag buildings at the Cal-Earth Institute. He combined ancient dome and arch construction methods with sandbags and strands of barbed wire to create a monolithic structure resistant to fire and earthquakes.

He further improved it by implementing “superadobe” or long tubes of enclosed polypropylene bag material that would be filled with earth, moistened and then tamped into a formed adobe brick. This would allow anyone anywhere in the world to build an earthbag structure with just manual labor and minimal tools.

Nearly 30 years later, Fernando Pacheco developed the hyperadobe earthbag method. This focuses on building vertical walls using raschel knitted fabric - kind of like what you’d see fruit packaged in at the grocery store.

Not only does this mean you’re using a fraction of the plastic material around the dirt, but it costs about half as much as superadobe and doesn’t need barbed wire because the open netting allows the material from the lower layer to lock into the new layer above.

Having spent extensive time building this way we really think it might be the future of natural building - but that’s a big claim. Let’s talk about why you might want to build with earthbags.

Benefits

In our recent video about why natural building is so important, we talked about how constructing shelters used to mean you used what you had around you. Then the industrial revolution happened and 2x4’s are getting grown halfway across the world, milled thousands of miles away, and then transported even further.

Traditional construction is also full of all kinds of chemicals that can cause cancer, tumors, thyroid issues, and respiratory problems. So by building with natural materials we create a safer, cleaner environment that we live in day in and day out.

Thick dirt walls don’t necessarily have a high insulative R-value, but they have thermal efficiency and thermal mass transfer.

For example our solar shed office uses 16” hyperadobe earthbags. It has a traditional insulated roof to catch rainwater, and an earthen floor. We also have a mini-split ac and heat pump. With all these things combined, the mini split is incredibly efficient because once it brings the interior to temperature it holds for long periods of time.

Thermal mass transfer is the most interesting thing about earthbag walls. When the sun warms the wall, it gets absorbed and slowly passed through to the inside. For our 16” walls we’ve found this takes about 12 hours.

In our climate, the best way to use this to our advantage is to build our longest wall facing south so that in the winter, the sun is absorbed and naturally warms the inside overnight. You’re usually kicking off your covers around 2am.

In the summer, a traditional roof provides shade over as much of the walls as possible to help keep it cool until the very end of the day when the sun is low and blasting the western wall. 

With proper insulation in your floor and ceiling, earthbag walls can be very thermally efficient using just the native material.

We already mentioned earthquake resistance, but natural earthen buildings with earthen or cement based plasters are also very fire resistant as well.

And probably the biggest reason to consider earthbags is just that anyone can do it. Our whole family pitches in every time, we don’t need any fancy expensive tools, the cost of materials to build a wall are insanely low.

We get to spend time together outside in nature making things with our hands. It’s a very therapeutic way of building.

It is a TON of manual labor, though. It’s not for the faint of heart or weak of body. But we’ve witnessed people of all ages rolling their sleeves up, getting their hands dirty, and finding the part of the job they can do best.

Earthbag building is truly affordable and accessible by almost everyone.

For those of you who are like, “Ok I’m in. how does this actually work? What do I gotta do?” We’re gonna get into it.

Earthbag Basics

Before we learn how to build with earthbags, let’s look at few core concepts.

Think of the process like a huge 3d printer, and you’re the printer. Laying each course and building the walls layer by layer.

You should start with a foundation. Digging a trench where your walls will go is an important first step. Not only will it allow you to create options for drainage, water and rodent barriers, but it creates a “toe hold” for your walls to lock into the earth and stabilize.

We’ll take you through our full foundation setup in a few minutes, but let’s start with shapes, buttresses, and interlocking.

The first thing to keep in mind is that circular earthbag walls are inherently stronger than straight walls. You can create huge diameter vertical walls without any additional support because gravity will pull the wall in, but it’s stabilized against itself because of the shape.

Straight walls are definitely still possible, but you need to “buttress” every 10 feet or so. This means a small perpendicular wall at least 3-4’ that locks into the foundation and interlocks all the way up.

Buttresses should also be around door openings whenever possible to help support that large hole. Also, if you’re smart about your design, a buttress can even be an interior wall. It doesn’t always have to point towards the outside.

Whenever you have a buttress or even just a wall that intersects with another wall you need to interlock the layers. Think of it kind of like Lincoln Logs. One wall layer will go over the join point and the next layer will sit flush up against it. This helps create an incredibly strong, locked in structure, and should prevent against leaning, sagging, or blowouts.

Sidenote - One thing that superadobe bags and barbed wire do very well are domes. Not only are they circular, but they get smaller towards the top creating a very strong unified structure that doesn’t require a separate roof.

They are, however much more complicated to build as you need multiple compasses and points of reference to make sure the arch is mathematically correct and it doesn’t collapse.

We love domes, and think they’re beautiful - but here in the desert we need to shade buildings and catch rainwater so that’s why we’ve focused on hyperadobe. They’re perfect for building plumb, vertical walls without barbed wire so you can put whatever kind of roof over them you want.

Now, you can totally do vertical walls with superadobe bags, too. It’s just more expensive and still requires barbed wire. If you’re building in an earthquake heavy area the barbed wire is important to that structural tensile strength so superadobe might make more sense for you in that scenario.

When you’re building vertical walls you do have to make sure they stay plumb. If they start leaning too much as you get up higher you’re creating a dangerous situation so use your tamp, a big level or a plumb bob to keep things in line.

We should also pause here and be clear that we absolutely do not recommend trying to build a dome with hyperadobe bags. The material is totally different than superadobe, the barbed wire won’t hold the same, and honestly there’s not enough research, examples, or tests out there to know for sure what would happen.

Now that we’ve covered some of the basics, let’s gather the tools we’ll need to build with.

What Tools Do You Need?

To build an earthbag building you’re going to need a few things.

Soil


Easy enough, right? Well, the type of soil you have does matter. You can do a simple jar test or send a sample off for real scientific testing, but in general for wall fill material you’re looking for at least 30% clay. Any less than that, and it may have trouble binding together when you add water and tamp.



The best mix we’ve found is something similar road base or A/B mix which is 1/3 Sand 1/3 Rock and 1/3 Clay. Adding just a bit of water and tamping really locks this up quickly into a hardened brick.



Many also recommend adding 10% portland cement, especially to the foundation layers, header/bond beam layers, and around any forms that will be removed later.



Using the dirt right on your property is ideal, but if you have too much sand or too much clay or too many rocks it won’t be as safe or effective so you might need to supplement from a local gravel yard.

Be especially careful of too much clay in your mix, too. Not only will it be incredibly difficult to fill with a sticky, gooey mix, but rain events can make the walls unstable until they dry out again. Try to keep your clay ratio in the 25-45% range.

We always recommend making a few test bags and seeing how they perform.

Cement Mixer


The key to properly filling a hyperadobe bag is getting the right consistency. A cheap cement mixer (we use the ones from harbor freight) are perfect for letting you add exact amounts of clay, rock or sand, and then water until it’s ready. They can be run off a small solar system or generator so you can use them anywhere.



While it is possible to mix by hand, a cement mixer is going to save you a lot of time and energy - which you’re going to need to transport, fill and tamp in the bags anyway.

Shovels


Good quality shovels are always going to help move the dirt around faster. We use them mainly to take dirt from our material pile and put in the cement mixer.

Water


You will need water to get the mix right for these earthbags. If you just fill with dry soil then it won’t compact correctly and you’ll end up with a dangerous, unstable wall - especially as you build up higher.



We use a solar powered pump pressurized setup with rainwater catchment tank, but really any way you can get water and pour in the wheelbarrow will work.

Wheelbarrow


Once the material is mixed you need to get it onsite to your wall. Since this will be a constant moving target, a wheelbarrow is highly recommended so you take a full batch at a time.

Scoops


In order to move the dirt from the wheelbarrow into your bag, you’ll need a handheld transfer method. Large coffee cans work well, but we really love these feed scoops from Tractor Supply. They’re the perfect size for this application and the handle is useful.

Hyperadobe Earthbags


Of course you ‘ll need the actual bags to fill as well. These come in long rolls that can be cut to size based on the wall you’re laying. We’ll tell you where to get them and teach you how to prep and fill these bags in a few minutes.

Tamp


Finally once the bags are full and tied off you’ll need to compress the material into an adobe brick. Tampers are pretty easy to find at the hardware store, and we have a few different weights/sizes for different applications.



20lbs is a good weight to get the bag compressed quickly, but that can be heavy for some people. 10lbs will work, too. You can even weld up your own custom one if you’d like it to span the full width of the bag.

For the sides you can just use a 2x4 about 18” long.

Dolly Bucket System


While it is possible to fill hyperadobe bags by hand, we definitely recommend the dolly bucket system to help you fill them faster, more evenly, and with less physical labor. The basic idea is to take two 5 gallons buckets, cut the ends off, tape them together and build a funnel that allows you to expand the bags, keep the wall straighter, and more evenly filled. An elastic band around the end lets the bag slowly release as it gets filled.



You can also add a bracket and modified dolly or handcart that the bucket can hook on to for very long runs and when you don’t have as many hands available. 



The beauty of this system is that it uses cheap materials you can find at literally any hardware store. No proprietary custom made products for sale here. Anyone can make a bucket system.

Choosing Your Bag Type

While we love hyperadobe bags, it’s important to know the difference between superadobe and hyperadobe. Here are some pros and cons of each.

Superadobe

• Made out of Polypropylene, come in rolls of various lengths and widths
• Degrades quickly in sunlight
• $0.46 linear foot
• Requires barbed wire between layers
• Slippery
• Great for domes and monolithic structures
• Requires more planning, math, and calculations to be safe
• Can use bucket, but need to vortex as you go
• Stiffer and harder to scrunch for unbroken runs
• Smooth surface makes it more difficult to apply plaster

Hyperadobe

• Polyethylene raschel knit, comes in rolls of various lengths and widths
• UV coated, lasts for years in the sun
• $0.27 linear foot
• No barbed wire required between layers
• Grippy
• Great for vertical walls with attached roofs
• Simple, safe construction for the whole family - just build the walls straight up
• Can use dolly bucket to lay faster
• Flexible and easy to scrunch up to do long unbroken runs
• Knitted mesh surface creates a lathe to apply plaster directly to

One quick note - we haven’t mentioned a 3rd type of earthbag building here yet. Single bag. This uses individual sacks that are stacked end to end, but in general we feel like the long tube method is superior, and didn’t want to over complicate comparisons in this article. Just know it’s out there if you’d like to investigate.

Sizing

The size of your bag matters, too. The bigger or taller your structure, the wider the bag should be. In superadobe domes, the wall width should not fall below 10% of your internal diameter So our 9’ superadobe dome needed 12”-14” bags to be stable.

In hyperadobe, it’s not quite as important since you’re building vertical walls, but obviously the taller you go, the more important the width of the bag becomes. We’ve found 16” bags do great up to 12’ which is plenty tall for a house. Any taller and we’d recommend 18” bags.

Calculating How Much You Need

Our friend Hayden at Curvature has a nice calculator for domes that lets you punch in the diameter size, and tells you how tall it should go and how many feet of bag to use.

Calculating hyperadobe bags for your project is simple, too. Since you’re building vertical walls just take the combined length of each wall to know the linear footage for each layer. Then decide how many layers you’ll need. For reference a 16” hyperadobe bag is about 5” tamped if you fill it properly. So a 10’ wall would be 24 layers.

Multiply the length of one layer by how many layers you need, then divide by the length the roll comes in to know how many rolls to buy. For reference, our 200sqft solar shed used 2 rolls, our 70 sqft composting outhouse used less than 1 roll, our open air 1400sqft chicken garden used 4 rolls, and we expect our 2500sqft roundhouse to use 10 rolls.

Alright friends, let’s take you through how to build with hyperadobe step by step.

Laying, Filling & Tamping Hyperadobe Bags

The basics of laying a “course” or section of hyperadobe bag look like this (note, please watch the embedded video at the top of the page for a better visual explanation).

1. First you’ll want to measure how much bag you need for the section you’re laying. The simplest way to do this without any additional tools is just to walk it off with one foot right in front of the other.
   
   For circular walls be sure to walk along the outer edge or else your length will be too short.
   
   Add at least 3’-5’ to the total because you have to tie off each end of the bag.
2. Head over to your roll (you should have it on some kind of spinning stand), grab the edge and walk out the same number of feet plus the extra for the ends.
3. Cut the bag, make a knot, and turn it inside out. This is important so that the knot stays inside the bag and you have a nice clean edge. 
4. If laying the bag by hand, roll the edges down as far as you can so you have something to hold on to.
5. If you’re using the bucket system you’ll want to scrunch the bag on the bucket as far as you can (we can fit about 70’ with 2 five gallon buckets end to end), but stop a bit before the end, pull it through, tie the knot on the inside, then finish sliding the back until it’s tight.
6. With the bucket you’ll also need an elastic band to go around the end so the bag doesn’t slip off too quickly when filling.
7. Over at your cement mixer, add your ratio of materials, mix dry, then add water. Remember we said we’ve found 1/3 Clay, rock and sand is a great mix, and you can always stabilize with portland cement.
   
   The amount of water you add is important. Too dry, and nothing will stick or tamp together. Too wet and it won’t fill the bag properly or hold its tamped shape well. As always do lots of tests before starting on a permanent structure.
8. Once you get the mix right, it’s time to start filling the bag. If filling by hand, set the bag vertically a few inches from the end of the wall and add material until it’s about 1’ tall. Pick the whole thing up and let it fall on the ground a few times to flatten and tamp the end, then pick it up and lay it on its side to get started.
   
   Note, dirt gets heavy very fast. I like to have a decent weight of material to really flatten the end, but filling too much and trying to pick it up you can hurt yourself so be careful. Also, flatting the end too much will expand and fill the bag larger than it should be, and may make it difficult to tamp level later. You’ll get a feel for it after a few tries.
   
   As you fill the bag by hand you’re going to want to roll the top as tight as you can to keep tension on it, and with each scoop use your other hand to smash the dirt in and fill the empty space. We’ll cover finishing bags in a minute.
9. If holding the bucket by hand, set it vertically a few inches from the end of the wall, and start filling. Once you get the bucket half full you’ll want to lift up and let the bag extend at least 6 inches. Lift and drop a few times to tamp the end. Keep filling until a few inches from the top of the bucket.
   
   This is one of the more complicated moves. You’ll want to grab the tamped end of the bag with one hand, put your whole arm around the bucket with the other, lean it at about a 45 degree angle and pull the bag out and flat so that it’s about 1-2” from the end of your wall. Keep the angle on the bucket and keep filling, slowly shaking and moving the material down and filling the cavity left by the bucket. This is to try to get the cavity out of the bag that you’ll see from making that initial tilt.
10. The key to a perfectly expanded and evenly filled bag is gravity. So before you pull that bucket up anymore you want to fill it as much as you can again, shaking so the material fills the space, and gettin the bucket high enough so that it sits above the top of the bag. Otherwise your bucket will keep making big cavities and indentions in the bag. Once you get in the groove, and people are bringing you dirt you’ll really start to find that rhythm of filling, stepping back, and filling again.
11. With the bucket on the dolly, you’ll want to move the whole thing at least two full steps back from the end of your wall. Start filling, and you’ll watch it fall naturally as it gets heavier. Once there’s 5-6” of material in it, grab the bag lift and drop a few times to get that flat end, then keep filling until you get near the top of the bucket. Brace the wheels or have someone hold the dolly while you grab the whole bag, and in one fluid motion flip the end out and pull it to within 1-2” of the end of the wall. You should have had enough material in the bucket to not have any cavities.
    
    Now you can let the dolly sit there waiting for material while you roll it back slightly each time it gets full. You will have to keep a closer eye on the bags as you fill and pull, the dolly has a tendency to wander and remember you want hyperadobe bags to be perfectly plumb and vertical with the layer below. It’s much easier to make adjustments before tamping so just roll or shape the bag as needed.
12. Ending your bag is also an important step. If laying by hand you’ll want to get it as close as you can to the end, smash it flat with your hand, then lift up and have a friend grab the excess bag, pull the pinch point down to the bottom, twist at least 5x, then push under the bag while your roll it back down over top.
    
    With the bucket by hand you’ll have to slide the bucket off near the end, fill the last bit by hand, and then follow the same procedure.
    
    With the dolly you’ll have to do this complicated dolly dance to get it out of the way at least 3-5’ before the end of the wall, then fill the bucket while holding by hand, then remove the bucket, fill the rest holding the bag, then tie it off.
    
    We lay a lot of bag without the dolly and you can probably see why - if your walls are too short then the dolly just gets in the way and adds extra steps. You have remove it almost as soon as you get started. But the dolly is really great for long unbroken runs.
13. Congratulations! You’ve got yourself part of a wall! But you’re not done yet. Step back and give everything a good look. Bulges, curves or uneven sections should stick out. Take a minute to massage the bag back into place before you tamp.
14. Once the wall looks right, Grab your tamp and start working on the top. Don’t tamp too much - remember once it’s been compressed you can’t uncompressed it and make it taller again. So start slow, do a light pass to get some of the poof out, then a secondary pass to get it even, then a final hard pass to really get it locked in.
15. Use a long 2x4 to smack the sides and compress those as well. Not only does this mean you’ll have less to plaster later, but the sides of the bags are where you see the most breakage of material. Locking in the sides is important for the structural integrity of the wall.

Advanced Techniques

The basics of laying hyperadobe earthbags are very simple, but of course there are always additional tips, tricks and considerations.

The first is how you protect your lower foundation layers. We mentioned that we think it’s important to create a “toe hold” or foundation trench to start your bags in. After building multiple structures and talking to lots of other people who have run into different issues, we’re recommending a few additional steps for any essential buildings like your house.

1. Consider protecting from flooding by bringing in material, raising up and leveling and compacting the foundation to start. The amount you need to raise it up depends on your annual rainfall and flooding potential.
2. Dig your trenches at least 18” down - consider the frost line in your area, too
3. If your land has a slope, the 18” should be the shallowest part of the trench - use a level to get it all the same
4. Create a rubble trench by filling with gravel - at least 5” and tamp into place - this will help with drainage and settling over time.
5. Rodents can be a big problem - they can burrow through the walls and bags over time. Use hardware cloth to wrap the first several layers of bags until you get out of the ground to floor level.
6. Similarly, any exterior walls should have a vapor barrier. Your fill material should have a decent amount of clay in it which wicks moisture up like a sponge. Over time as water runs down the side of the walls during storms, it could pull that water in and up the walls which isn’t good. Use a heavy duty vapor barrier that wraps just like the rodent barrier.
7. You’ll wrap both of these up over the floor level bag and lay the next layer on top to lock them in.
8. We definitely recommend stabilizing your lower layers with portland cement. 10% should be sufficient.

The next technique is what to do when your building gets tall! Laying bags is very easy when you can reach everything - but once it gets taller than you things slow down and get complicated. Personally we just use scaffolding. One person hands up a scoop, the next person puts it in the bucket. Some people use machinery like a bobcat or tractor to raise up the material and hold it in place while filling. This works good for exterior walls, but can be tough to get machines into tight spaces for interior walls.

Either way expect your progress to slow down once you get to this point. It’s perfectly normal.

What happens when you mess up? Sometimes you don’t measure the bag right, and it’s too short. You can either end it early and lay an additional small bag or slip more bag over the end and extend it. The hyperadobe bags are so stretchy we don’t recommend making long unbroken walls like this - only use the slip on extendsion as a last resort.

And speaking of broken and unbroken walls - keep in mind that the “seams” should never be right on top of each other. So if you have a wall that is 50’ long and you can only do 25’ max with your bucket don’t do the same thing every time. Go shorter or longer and stagger where the bags butt up against each other. Just like laying bricks…

Windows & Door Openings

There are two basic ways to build spaces for windows and doors. 

The first is a form. A form can be built out of cheap wood like pallets and plywood, and must be deep enough to go all the way through the wall. You will lay your bag up to it, and then remove the form when finished. Because of the forces pushing in on it, make sure to brace the form horizontally in multiple places. Forms are often used to create arches or organic shapes so you should heavily stabilize the ends of the bags and especially the ones that go over top with Portland cement.

Once the form is removed, you can install a traditional frame for your door and window to be mounted into.

You can also build the frame directly into the wall. We recommend large boards - 2x8 or 2x10, double bucked and supported by crossbeams and held in place with supports. As you build the wall you’ll integrate cleats to lock it into place.

Cleats or velcro strips are small pieces of 2x4 and plywood with nails going up and down. They get hammered into the lower bag, screwed into the frame, and then the next bag layer locks them in. You should do this every 3 or 4 layers all the way to the top.

Keep in mind that traditional building techniques like headers apply here, too. You can’t just run thousands of pounds of bags over top of your frame and not expect it to sag, mess up doors or break windows over time.

If your arched form is built properly it should be self supporting, but a square frame needs heavy duty lintels over each opening. Like huge beams of wood that extend at least a foot past the wood frame and never touch the top of it.

Since earthbag building takes a long time, we recommend preserving your wood frames since they’ll be exposed to the elements for so long. Shou Sugi Ban is a cool Japanese technique we use often - go check out this video if you’d like to learn more. Or you can screw the frame into the cleats from the inside so you can replace the whole thing later if it starts to fall apart.

Roofing & Plastering

We’ll touch briefly on two last items - roofing and plastering.

Since hyperadobe is meant to be built vertically and capped, you can easily integrate more traditional roof building techniques right on top of the bags. We recommend hurricane strapping at least 5 layers of bags down that will come up and over your beam structure. This uses the weight of the bags to keep the roof tightly attached.

Some pour a concrete bond beam on top of the bags to connect their roof, and some attach directly with cleats and screws. There are lots of ways to do this. Most regular roofs are going to be pitched which means you’ll have space left between where you stopped laying bags and the beams. Consider filling this space with cob and bottle bricks for a beautiful light show each day.

You can also check out mounting a geodesic dome on top of the bags for a unique and cost effective structure.

For plastering the nice thing about hyperadobe bags is that 1. they are UV treated so you won’t need to feel rushed to get them covered as quickly as possible and 2. the mesh bag does act as a lathe for applying the material directly so it should save you time.

We recommend an earthen plaster on the inside (see our most recent plaster mix video here for the dome) and a much stronger waterproof covering on the outside. Personally here in our climate with winds, hail and rain we’ve had to resort to a fiberglass based stucco and elastomeric waterproof covering. It’s not as natural as we’d like, but so far it’s holding up much better than our first earthen cement based attempts.

Plastering applies to so many other natural building techniques that we just can’t get too detailed here. There are lots of resources out there for plastering earthen buildings if you’re interested in the subject.

How We Can Help

We hope that this deep dive on hyperadobe has given you what you need to go forth and make your own awesome creation. But if you still need some help we have some options.

If you’d like to get some hands on experience, we do run paid workshops here on our homestead pretty regularly, and have a special email list that you need to get on to be notified before everyone else. These usually happen in the spring and fall when the weather is accommodating.

If you need your own hyperadobe bags we highly recommend getting them from Volm Companies. They are by far the highest quality bags available and made here in the US. 

Finally, we’re officially taking the wraps off our off-grid homestead coaching. After 4 years of researching and experimenting with earthbag building, solar systems, permaculture, water catchment, septic and composting, community building, and extreme weather prep we finally feel like we have some wisdom to offer in paid one-on-one video Q&A sessions. Plus you’ll get access to all our downloadable products like solar wiring diagrams, water pump plans, recipes and more.

Lots more info over at tinyshinyhome.com/coaching if you’re interested.

Wrap up

Oh my goodness friends, we feel like we’ve covered so much, but if you still have questions about hyperadobe earthbags leave a comment, and we’ll do our best to answer. Who knows, we might end up with a followup video.

Update: See the Q&A video below covering:

• Wet & Cold Climates
• Earthquake Zones
• Tornadoes + Hurricane Zones
• Permitting
• Utilities
• Material Between Layers
• Mounting to Walls
• Insulation
• Rebar Reinforcement
• Automation
• Underground
• Insurance + Mortgage
• Cost
• Microplastics

Anyhow, lots more earthbag building is coming up - make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss the next one. Until next time!

Since moving to Arizona 4 years ago and starting our own natural building journey we’ve seen an explosion in interest, ideas, methods, creativity, and community - all around creating a life that’s more natural and sustainable than the one we left behind.

Hi there, we're Jonathan & Ashley - aka Tiny Shiny Home. 

Our family is building an off-grid desert homestead from the ground up - literally.

Today we're here to ask why? Why are so many of us searching for something simpler? Why are we drawn to these alternative building methods? And why is this movement so important?

Image by: Shellapic76

Localized Materials & Transportation

First, let’s talk about how we got here. Because historically when we used to build stuff we relied on the local environment and its resources.

• The Great Pyramids of Giza used local limestone quarries for the majority of their blocks 1
• Early sections of the Great Wall of China were made using local rammed earth - with some parts still standing today 2
• The Pont du Guard brought in over 50 tons of rock from a nearby quarry 3
• and the Temple of Petra is literally carved out of a mountain 4

But as we moved into the industrialized age, this all started to change. Coal mining gave way to the steam engine which allowed locomotives and steamboats to transport building materials quickly over long distances.

A company that made 2x4’s locally could now ship them anywhere, which meant production needed to increase which meant factories and trade routes and infrastructure and building codes now that everyone could get the same things to build with.

And at the time this wasn’t a bad thing. The progress that was made during the industrial revolution dramatically increased our quality of life. We got electricity, modern medicine, and running water. Did you know that our lifespans have more than doubled since the 1700’s? 5

But however good those intentions were all those years ago, the industry has reached a scale that has started to tip back in the other direction.

Image by: Blaine Hust

Chemicals & Toxins in Modern Construction

We’re starting to see the true cost of massive manufacturing scale, and it’s not good. The construction industry accounts for:

• 40% of worldwide energy usage
• 23% of air pollution
• 50% of climatic change
• 40% of drinking water pollution
• 50% of landfill waste. 
• Not only that, but it’s been estimated that the construction industry also accounts for 25% of non-industrial waste each year. 6

That’s just what it takes to make the stuff. And the stuff we’re making? Also full of chemicals and toxins.

The paint we put on the walls are full of VOC’s (Volatile organic compounds) which can cause cancer and birth defects. The fire retardants in furniture and textiles have PBDE’s (Polybrominated diphenyl ethers) which can cause tumors and thyroid issues. Formaldehyde is still used in particle boards, plywood, and can cause respiratory problems. 7 8

You know before I started researching for this knew it was bad. But this bad? I had no idea.

But we aren’t here for doom and gloom. We want to see a better way forward. We know the current way of building a house isn’t good. So let’s talk about how we can make it better.

Cost + Accessibility

The average cost to build a house in Arizona in 2024 is anywhere from $300k to $600k dollars! One website I ran across said to set aside $100k just for framing. I think it’s safe to say we’ve reached a point where being able to build a traditional house is out of reach for most of us. 9

Which really sucks. Being able to build a safe, permanent dwelling as cost effectively as possible shouldn’t feel impossible. It contributes to the homeless population, adds tons of stress on those of us trying to play by the rules and get a mortgage.

I think natural building can help put the power back in our hands to build ourselves, and not spend the next 3 decades of our lives in debt trying to pay off the place we’re living in.

Programs like the Owner-Builder Opt Out where we live in Cochise County Arizona allow individuals to design, construct, and create their own structures with limited inspections and oversight. 10

This means you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars in fees, permits, or engineering plans - nor do you need to be a licensed contractor, plumber, electrician, or professional to create your home.

And as we all know, alternative building is a perfect way to offset many of those costs since we can source local and natural materials at a fraction of the price.

So I think we can all agree that natural building is an important step towards creating affordable and accessible housing for those who don’t want to incur massive amounts of debt.

Efficiency

We said earlier that the construction of our houses and businesses account for about 40% of global energy usage. But just living in them adds another 20%-25%. So between the two over half of our worldwide energy usage comes from these buildings. 11

So the second way we can make this better is not only finding more energy efficient ways to build, but also more efficient ways to insulate, heat and cool what we’re building.

This makes total sense. Taking dirt from your own property and shoving it into a bag to make a wall saves gas, transportation, money, and by not relying on big machines or generators you’re creating a safer, quieter, and less polluted work environment.

There is something pretty magical about working with your hands in the dirt, soaking up the sounds of nature around you. Feels good, right?

That doesn’t mean it’s faster, though. Yes there are tradeoffs my friends. Choosing the path less traveled may come with some obstacles, and the sheer amount of physical labor is definitely one of them. That’s why community is so important, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Natural building can also be more energy efficient.

Strawbale and cob create a densely insulative wall structure. And earthbags use thermal mass to pass energy through while keeping temperatures stable.

Combine that with solar power, natural heating and cooling elements, and we have a real opportunity to build a house that performs better than any modern stickbuilt house.

A lot of these ideas are ancient, weird, they’re very non-traditional. But that is what makes them so powerful. At a time when the construction industry needs a shakeup, it’s going to need people like you taking big risks and asking big questions to help move us forward.

Image by: Mike Lewelling

Fire and Earthquake Resistance

How else can natural building can be better than traditional builds? Earthquake and fire resistance.

Earthbag buildings, especially domes with barbed wire reinforcement, have been shown to hold up remarkably well to seismic activity. 12 Anything circular and interlocked is going to fare better than a bunch of sharp corners. When we build with the earth and into the earth, we create a strong, but flexible structure that allows the quake to move through it.

Let’s talk about fires. Recent research has shown that forest fires are burning twice as much tree cover as they did 20 years ago. 13 And with increased droughts and stronger winds, we are all aware of how dangerous a small spark can be here in the desert, too.

Good news is, dirt doesn’t really burn. So earthbag, rammed earth, and cob walls are all inherently very fire resistant. Properly packed straw bale walls shouldn’t have oxygen for combustion, and most of our natural builds will also have an earthen or cement based plaster layer that will also slow down ignition. 14

Since we’re more in tune with what our land is doing, we’re likely adding additional protection like berms and swales. These are trenches on contour that stop sheet flowing water and grow trees quickly to slow down wind and fire in front of primary buildings.

Again, we’re reaching back into the past for many of these ideas, and finding they are still incredibly relevant.

Image by: Lacee Curtis

Longevity + Breakdown Over Time

Speaking of the past, natural buildings have proven to be incredibly resilient to time as well.

At least 175 of Unesco’s world heritage sites are built with earth.

• The Grand Mosque of Djenné in Mali was built in 1907. It remains one of the largest mud brick buildings in the world. 15
• Like we mentioned earlier, parts of the Great Wall of China have several kilometers built from earth where stone wasn’t available. These sections are nearly 2500 years old. 16
• Here in the US, Mesa Verde is home of the Cliff Palace - an incredible cliff dwelling made of local stand stone rocks, mortar and wooden beams over 800 years old. 17
• Taos Pueblo features sun dried bricks making up walls several feet thick, timber roofs packed with more dirt, and thin washes of white earthen exterior. It’s believed to have been built between 1000 and 1450 AD. 18
• Bandelier National Monument remains one of the coolest places we’ve ever visited with cavates carved out of the volcanic cliffs that are over 800 years old. 19 20

Now that’s some natural building.

Modern stickbuilt homes are estimated to last anywhere from 30 to 70 years. 21 I don’t know about you, but our goal on our homestead is to build something that lasts for generations. Something that hundreds of years from now is still standing and strong.

Yes, it takes longer to build this way. But when you put it up against a house that costs 10x as much and barely lasts a single lifetime, this is what we’re fighting against, right? The investment that is unsustainable for most of us. The declining quality and longevity after we’ve spent so much of our lives paying for this thing.

Natural building is opening the door to change all that. Who knows, our properties might end up being national monuments one day cause they just won’t fall down. It could happen :)

Mental & Physical Health

Another reason many of are looking to get back to a simpler life is just the overwhelmingness of modern society. Everyone seems to be stressed, sick, depressed, unhappy, out of shape.

Choosing to build alternatively sort of naturally puts us in a position to sidestep a lot of that. We get to be outside in nature.

Did you know that nearly 4 out of 10 people in the US have a Vitamin D deficiency? And did you know that Vitamin D affects everything in your body from bone and joint pain to muscle cramps, tiredness and depression? 22

We’re breathing clean fresh air, feeling the wind, and letting our bodies adapt naturally to the changing seasons. We’re building and making important things with our hands that give us purpose.

Even better, we know that we’re building in sustainable ways that will help preserve our local ecosystems and keep us feeling good about the choices we’re making.

All of those things add up to a much healthier outlook on life, better physical and mental health, and the knowledge that we’re taking action and making a difference.

Experimenting & Creativity

Traditional building requires a ton of math, and rules, and sameness.

So something that really excites me about natural building is the opportunity to experiment. To be creative. To find the art in what we’re making, and not just the function.

Whether that’s designing an entire space specifically for how you want to use it - or experimenting with recycled bottles to create something beautiful and unexpected - the wonderful thing about all of this is that while there are plenty of people that have gone before you and shared their wisdom, there also still plenty of room for you take that, remix it, and call it your own.

Most of us aren’t working with a large crew on a tight timeline focused on squeezing every bit of profit out of a build. So we get to sweat the details, make our art, and hand craft something personal and special.

This is increasingly being lost - that a human touches the thing they’re making with purpose, intent and meaning. Natural building is always going to make sure we’re getting our hands dirty.

Better Future + Community

Finally, I believe that building alternatively creates community and helps us grow towards a better future.

Over in our neck of the woods we’ve seen several “barn raiser” type communities spring up. Everyone comes together to help an individual with a specific part of their project, making massive progress in a short amount of time.

This happens on a regular schedule, and everyone is more than happy to help their neighbor get through a difficult part of a build. There’s a shared sense of knowledge and community that just isn’t present in a suburban neighborhood because we’re all working towards the same goal.

We’ve also found community online. As we’ve shared our journey on YouTube, we’ve been amazed over and over at the support of those watching, and even coming to our workshops and events to learn more about what we’re doing.

What Now?

Well, that’s up to you! We hope this whole idea of building naturally and alternatively inspires you to think differently about the buildings we live in. There’s so much opportunity to find a better way to build - and the good news is it can look different for everyone!

Here on our off-grid desert homestead we've spent the last 4 years experimenting with hyperadobe earthbags, superadobe earthbags, natural plasters, and recycled bottle bricks. This includes our solar shed office, chicken garden, dome home, and composting toilet outhouse. We’re even in the middle of a gigantic earthbag roundhouse build for our family home.

But we’ve also worked on re-building storage tents, putting up a recycled steel metal truss RV cover, and rehabbing a shipping container into a goat barn. Most of our earthbag buildings even have traditional roofs on them so we can catch rainwater and add solar panels for power.

I guess what I’m saying is there’s no one right way to start building more naturally. Different projects have different requirements, and everyone is welcome. Because if we all do a little bit it can make a big impact.

So let’s band together and start working towards safer, more natural and sustainable tomorrow.

References

There are lots of numbers, stats, and claims in this article. I've taken the liberty of linking them here if you'd like to do more of your own research.

1. Great Pyramid of Giza
2. Great Wall of China
3. Pont du Guard
4. Temple of Petra
5. Industrial Revolution
6. Construction Stats
7. Health Benefits of Natural Earthen Construction
8. Flame Retardants Cancer
9. Cost to Build a House in Arizona 2024
10. Cochise County Owner-Builder Opt-Out
11. Global Energy Consumption
12. Earthbag Seismic Safety
13. Forest Fire Trends
14. Straw Bale Fire Resistance
15. Grand Mosque of Djenné
16. Great Wall of China
17. Cliff Palace Mesa Verde
18. Taos Pueblo 
19. Bandalier National Monument (history)
20. Bandalier National Monument (carved in stone)
21. New Home Construction
22. Vitamin D Deficiency 

A project to rehab an old shipping container into the coolest goat barn you've ever seen. Dreamed up by our oldest daughter Adali.

From the very beginning of our homestead journey Adali was totally invested in the animals. She basically raised all our chickens for eggs, pigs and chickens for meat, and goats for milk. She took on the responsibility of feeding and caring for them, waking up early every morning, and getting her own great pyrenees guardian dog to protect them.

By last season we had 4 potential goat mamas, and she wanted to breed all of them. That’s a lot of goats, and our existing infrastructure was not currently up to the task.

Adali came to us with a big proposal - a brand new building that would provide a safe shelter for all the goats, stalls to keep the new kids separate so we could milk, a proper insulated and sanitary milking room, and better feed storage. Plus all new fencing to encourage rotational grazing and create more protection for the animals. 

So we sat down with Adali, created a set of kickstarter style donation options with really fun goodies, and gave our viewers a chance to support her dream. They showed up in a huge way, and funded the project so much that we moved to phase 2, and added even more goals. See below :)

The Plan

Adali didn't want something we had to build from scratch. We needed it functional as quickly as possible. Shipping containers had finally come back down to reasonable prices here, so acquired a standard 40’ container to use as the base structure.

We’re calling it the Legend Dairy Goat Barn Container!

Using a shipping container means all we have to do is get the area leveled and compacted, have it set in place, and then we can get to work building out the inside.

Speaking of the inside. First up we’ll be creating a feed storage area on the East side of the container using the existing cargo doors. This way we can do bulk loading easily.

Then we’ll create a “hallway” in the middle section that the animals can take shelter in during storms or cold weather. Inside the hallway will also be 3 gated kidding stalls for keeping new mamas and babies together, separate during weaning, and the ability to lock them up to keep them safe from Predators.

This area will also have some additional storage and two new doors for access from the North and South sides of the container.

The far west end of the building will be framed out and insulated to create a closed sanitary milking room. The long term goal here is a small gray water sink, milking fridge, and possibly AC window unit during the summer. To start it’ll just have a milking stand, though.

Then we’ll install all new field fencing connected to the container. While we love our exterior high tensile electric perimeter fence, we’ve found that we need a tighter weave to keep predators out and baby goats in. Over time we plan to expand off the initial fence and build smaller paddocks for rotational grazing and separating kids and mamas during milking.

As part of phase 2, we're adding framing and full insulation for the entire building, a 10' roof awning overhang, small solar power system, and rainwater catchment.

We hope you enjoy this project - videos of each phase are down below.

THIS COMES FIRST - Prepping our Homestead Perimeter for Container Delivery

The Legend Dairy Goat Barn Container project has officially begun! Before we can bring the shipping container in, we have to deal with surveying and preparing to re-fence our homestead perimeter. Let's do this!

IT'S HERE! Adali's Goat Barn Shipping Container Gets Delivered

The shipping container gets delivered and we have to re-fence our perimeter in record time.

Surprise Guest TRANSFORMS the Shipping Container in One Week!

A surprise special guest comes to the homestead for a week to cut door and window openings, weld frames in, and build the coolest sliding barn door you've ever seen.

Turns Out She REALLY Loves FRAMING! Goat Barn Shipping Container Continues

Time to learn something new! We’re framing the inside of the goat barn shipping container, adding new walls, and preparing for electric and insulation. Spoiler - Ashley really loves framing :)

DITCHING Traditional Insulation for Something BETTER?

The next important step is to insulate the goat barn container. Our friend Kyle brings his spray foam gear to the homestead, and we get the area prepped and run electrical in the walls.

Get in Touch with Kyle for spray foaming or geodesic dome builds.

Will We FINISH the KIDDING STALLS in Time? Baby Goats are COMING!

With baby goats fast approaching it’s time to turn our attention to finishing the walls and building the kidding stalls in the center section of the goat barn container. This entails days of cutting, measuring, and experimenting to get it just right.

We Tried Building Our First Metal Field Fence...Success or Flop? (Part 1)

The goats can’t move to the container without a protected area. So with the stalls finished, we begin the process of learning how to build metal field fencing - an entirely new process for us. Step 1 involves setting the corner posts and then cutting, grinding, and welding it all together.

Goat Birth SURPRISE! Rushing to FINISH the Protective Field Fence

Our first goat babies are born before we can finish the Legend Dairy Goat Barn Container, so we kick into high gear and do our best to finish closing in the metal field fencing.

The Goats are HOME!

Fences need gates, and gates need latches! Today our friends at Best Gate Latch save the day by sending us 3 of their awesome weldable latches. We do our best to hang the gates and get the goats moved before the last kids are born, but nature has other plans :) One way or another we will get the goats moved to the container barn!

TRANSFORMING the Milk Room For Happy Goats (& Happy Daughters)

Even though the goats are in the Legendary Goat Barn Container, that doesn't mean the project is finished yet. We still need to cover the milk room walls, get the feed room functional, and begin the long process of finishing the milk room which includes painting, staining, plumbing, electrical, and more. Part 1 of the milk room remodel starts now.

Are We FINISHED with the Goat Barn Container?

The goal today is to get Adali’s milk room operational so she can actually use it. This means we have to build the power closet, set the fridge in place, finish installing our Pioneer Mini Split AC, and get some temporary solar panels up to keep the Legend Dairy Goat Barn Container running. Then maybe we can focus on some other projects around here!

Packing Cute Goat Goodies for Our Goat Barn Supporters ❤️

It's time to ship out the goodie packets to our Legend Dairy Goat Barn Supporters! Come along with us as we print, pack, and mail over 200 envelopes with the cutest goat stickers, pins, and shirts you've ever seen :) We're moving into the final phase of the container project, and we can't wait to wrap this one up.

P.S. Get your Leftover Packs Here →

This Was NOT Part of the PLAN 😱

The next step in the goat barn container was SUPPOSED to be the roof awning. Turns out Ashley & Adali had other plans. This week we build an entirely new field fencing paddock to keep the goats safe while we build the roof and begin rotational grazing. Will it take 2 days like Ashley thinks? OR 4 days like Jonathan predicts? Shout out to Justin and Leslie for their help on Day 4!

We've Been DREADING This STEP of the Goat Barn Container 😬

It's the start of the last major piece of the goat barn - and the one that we've been dreading: the awning roof. Today we start the first step setting the concrete piers that will support the main posts. Then our friends at Best Gate Latch hook us up with two weldable latches to finish the new paddock.

HOW STRONG Does the Shipping Container AWNING Need to Be?

We're picking right back up on our Legend Dairy Goat Barn Container roof awning project, we move to the next steps - setting & prepping posts, installing the main beam, and fabricating custom brackets to attach the rafters to the side of the container.

WAIT - Did We Just Get Good at ROOFS?

With the custom metal brackets fabricated, we turn to our friend James to help us structurally weld them to the shipping container. Then it's rafter go time! Are we actually doing all this on camera? Are all the cuts actually working out? Are we roofers now? What's going on?!

We’ve Got SHADE & a New PAINT Job? 🎉

After test fitting our rafters, it's time to prep them for installation. But wait! We're taking a quick detour and painting the container before we put the roof up. Then it's back to decking...will we get it finished?

We FINALLY Have WATER in the Milk Room! 💦

After finishing the roof decking on the shipping container awning, we turn our attention to plumbing the rainwater catchment tank, and plumbing the gray water drain. We FINALLY have water at the Legend Dairy Goat Barn Container!

We Built WHAT for the GOATS?

We're waiting on metal roofing panels so let's knock some things off our punchlist. There's a goat swing, water line insulation, fancy LVL cuts, and more. The Goat Barn Container is almost finished!

This SOLAR SETUP Changes Everything!

Huge progress made today! The metal roofing panels are installed, and we rack up all 3,000 watts of solar power on the new IronRidge solar mounting system. Finally the milk room in the goat barn container is nice and cool with no worries of running out of power.

The project is finally completed! What a journey this last 4 months has been. Thanks again to the project supporters - Adali is so happy with how everything turned out, and the goats love their new home.

Let's tell you the wild story of how our family of 6, a new friend from Australia, and the natural building community came together to build our oldest daughter an adorable little superadobe earthbabg dome home!

Back at the end of the summer, we shared our hyperadobe roundhouse plans for the very first time. It was years of designing, experimenting, and planning finally becoming a reality. And a huge inspiration for our design was the WillowEnd RoundHouse, the first permitted earthbag structure in Australia.

Turns out this guy Hayden from Curvatecture was hired to manage the earthbag construction of that house, and we both already followed each other without realizing the connection. A whole lot of excited messages later, Hayden arranged for us to jump on a video call with himself and the family that actually designed the house and live there.

We had a great conversation with them that you can watch here which shaped some of the final important changes to the floorplan, and the more we talked to Hayden he started floating the idea of coming to help us work on our house.

I mean first of all, who does that? He was offering to fly across the world, stay with our family who he’d never met, and help us build our house for like a month. So incredibly generous. But you know, sometimes you just talk to people and know there’s something special happening.

So we started to see if we could figure out a way to return this huge favor. And the more we talked, the idea of running a small dome workshop here on our property seemed like a perfect fit. We could raise some money to cover his travel costs, and even better, he was planning a superadobe video course, and this would be a great way for us to film the entire process for him.

And with that the superadobe workshop was born! 

The videos below are a compilation of our planning of the dome, picking up Hayden, the full 7 day workshop, and then the work we have to continue to do to complete the dome home. Enjoy!

We Went WHERE? It's a SuperAdobe Roadtrip!

We are gearing up for our very first Superadobe Dome Workshop! Led by Hayden from Curvatecture, this week long event will cover everything from education to classes to building a superadobe dome from bottom to top. Join us on our epic journey as we pick Hayden up, visit Cal-Earth and the Mojave Center, and get prepped for the workshop.

The Story Behind the Superadobe Workshop

Today Hayden helps us get our door and window forms built, and we run a few last minute errands before the workshop starts.

Building a Superadobe Dome Home - Day 1

We're excited to bring you along for the first day of the Superadobe Workshop! Hayden from Curvatecture teaches dome geometry, bag laying techniques, and more.

First TRUE Earthbags? Day 2 Building a Superadobe Dome Home

Yesterday was all about teaching the fundamentals of dome and earthbag building, but today we really "dig" in, start our buttresses, and lay a bunch of bags - including our first true earthbag!

DOOR FORM GOING IN! - Day 3 Building a Superadobe Dome Home

Today we install the door and wood stove forms, and learn about stabilized and unstabilized mixes.

HOW MANY LAYERS? - Day 4 Building a Superadobe Dome Home

Today was an epic bag laying day. The team rallied and laid 5 WHOLE COURSES!

WINDOW FORMS Good or Bad? - Day 5 Building a Superadobe Dome Home

After an epic bag laying day yesterday, today we install our window frames and slow down a little bit :)

TOGETHER WE ARE ONE - Day 6 Building a Superadobe Dome Home

Many of y'all have been wondering how in the world these windows are going to work with the dome shape. Today Hayden introduces the "eyebrow," and it should all start making sense.

DID WE MAKE IT? Day 7 Building a Superadobe Dome Home

Welcome back to the FINAL DAY of the Superadobe Workshop! Let's try to cap this dome - and try not to cry that it's over!

P.S. Make sure to check out the School of Superadobe.

Superadobe MEETS Hyperadobe!

The Superadobe Dome Home build continues as we add a hyperadobe bench and try gravel bags for the first time. We also give you a walkthrough tour of our hyperadobe roundhouse.

This Part Gets COMPLICATED! | Superadobe Dome Home

We're continuing to make massive progress on the superadobe dome home while Hayden from Curvatecture is still here. Door vaults, window installs, exterior plaster (I mean, render). Whew!

Hyperadobe MINI DOME!

Today we're installing the door on our Superadobe Dome Home and building a mini hyperadobe dome out of 8" bags.

TATTOOS & TEARS 😭 - Hayden Heads Back to Australia

It's a sad day, friends. Hayden from Curvatecture is finally headed back to Australia. We commemorate the occasion by getting tattoos together and doing some final work on the Superadobe Dome Home.

The PLASTER MATTERS! Changing the Shape of the Superadobe Dome Home

The Superadobe Dome Home continues! Ashley and Adali work on bottle bricks over the self supported window and door openings, we get our cubic mini wood stove, and the whole family pitches in to keep working on the exterior plaster.

PERFECTING DOME SHAPE Before Stucco (We're a Little OCD)

Today is all about trying to complete the exterior base plaster before prepping for the final stucco coat. We continue to put multiple layers on up top to create that iconic dome shape, cover the buttresses, and get frustrated plastering the inside of the mini dome.

RUSHING to Finish Superadobe Dome Exterior Before FREEZING TEMPS

We're using lathe and stucco on the exterior of our superadobe dome home for the very first time. Let's see how it goes.

The COZIEST CORNER in Our Superadobe Dome Home - Come See!

It’s finally time to install our cubic mini wood stove in the superadobe dome home. This adorable fireplace is offset into its own mini hyperadobe dome with a penny tile floor, and making sure it’s installed correctly is the last step to drying in the building.

Adali's COLOR CHOICE For the Superadobe Dome

With the winter weather coming in, we're looking for a window of opportunity to get the elastomeric waterproof seal painted on the superadobe dome home. Once this is complete we can turn our attention to the interior. What color will Adali choose?

Ecoflow POWER in Our Superadobe Dome Home ⚡️

Thanks to Ecoflow for sponsoring today's video! After getting a little distracted by the Legendary Goat Barn, we're back at the dome! With the outside protected, we're turning our attention to the inside, running electrical and starting the base interior plaster.

Get up to $2,796 Off on EcoFlow Member's Festival Annual Membership Mega Sale!

GOODBYE Superadobe Earthbags?

Today Ashley absolutely crushes an incredible amount of earthen plaster on the inside of the superadobe dome home and completely transforms the interior. The superadobe bags are no more!

Her SECRET for Perfect Earthen Plaster

Time travel with us as we go back to early April and pour the concrete steps to get into the superadobe dome home - then come back to present day as Ashley shares her secret plaster recipe and sculpts the beautiful interior.

Unique Custom FLOOR + FUN DIY Solar Ground Mount

The Superadobe Dome Home gets a unique floor and a DIY custom mini solar ground mount!

The FINISHING TOUCHES Begin

Today we start the finishing touches on the inside of the Superadobe Dome Home!

The Completed Dome Home

Thanks again to everyone who helped us complete this project!

The final touches includeed hand finished earthen plaster, hyperadobe steps, a separate mini dome and tiny wood stove to keep it warm in the winter, an off-grid solar system, bottle cap and penny floors, a custom built bed, and of course as many reclaimed materials as we could find.

Our family spent the last month building an open air outdoor shower out of hyperadobe earthbags and glass bottles. So many glass bottles.

This was a fun little project that included our first exposed aggregate concrete floor, a drain that flows directly to our permaculture berm and swale, a ridiculous amount of glass bottle bricks, a multi day earthbag workshop, a portable outdoor water heater, and the fanciest shower head we’ve had in over a decade.

After showering in our renovated vintage airstream for the last 6 years we are ready to spread our arms, enjoy the view, and not have to wait on someone for a shower ever again.

The Design

Our goal with this shower was to design a unique shape out of a single wall that would provide a killer view of our high desert homestead while keeping the person showering modest and protected from the wind. Using a natural curve we were able to make the wall very strong, turning in on itself to create an entry way and enclosed shower section

The Materials

While the design of this outdoor shower is pretty unique, the materials are very simple. We're using hyperadobe earthbags for the base and recycled glass bottle bricks higher up on the wall.

Hyperadobe bags are just a UV treated mesh tube that you can fill with water, soil, and clay or cement, tamp down, and turn into a super solid wall structure. So far we’ve used them to build a solar shed office, a chicken garden, a composting toilet outhouse, and we’ll be using them in our huge family home project starting soon. We really like them.

The floor of the shower is a simple concrete pad sloped to the center with a drain going out to our berm & swale. We decided to use exposed aggregate and glass beads to give it a different finish.

The star of this build is definitely the 700+ bottles that were cut, cleaned, taped together, and meticulously put into place to create a wall of light that shows off every time you're inside.

To finish it off, we used mortar between the bottles and a fiberglass one coat stucco and cement sealer to protect it from the elements.

The Shower Elements

First off, to shower you need water! We strategically placed this outdoor shower right next to our rainwater catchment tank and solar water pump house. So we had pressurized water available close by.

Then we used a portable outdoor on demand water heater connected to a propane tank to provide beautiful warm water as needed. Of course, we had to upgrade the shower head, too. 

This rainfall disc and handheld wand should help us keep ourselves sand our dogs clean.

Finishing Touches

From there it was just a matter of adding some hooks for our clothes and towels, cleaning up around the outside, and enjoying our magical outdoor shower. It's going to be hard to go back to a regular shower again.

Cost Breakdown

How much did this life changing outdoor shower cost? Well, a little more than it should have. If we had gone with cob instead of mortar we would have saved a good chunk. But either way it was relatively cost effective.

After 3 years of building, preparing, learning, and experimenting on our off-grid homestead, it's finally time to begin work on our home.

This is by far the biggest project we've tackled yet! Behind the scenes we've been planning, designing and organizing everything, trying to get to a point where we can actually break ground and share the process with you. 

We'll use this space to share each step of the process.

Step 1 - Laying the Foundation

Join us as we share the months long pad preparation, and dream big about our next step on our off-grid homestead.

Step 2 - Hyperadobe Earthbag Roundhouse FLOOR PLANS!

We're talking house plans...and changing them. But we wanted to show you where we found inspiration for this design. Check out @willowend_round_house on Instagram to see their sweet home. We also visit Clay's incredible hyperadobe house and come away with more ideas to incorporate so we can finalize our layout.

Step 3 - Utility Planning in the Hyperadobe Roundhouse (This is STRESSING US OUT)

Designing a hyperadobe roundhouse from the ground up is so much work! Before we can break ground we have to finalize all our utilities: Rainwater, pressurized water, solar, electric, septic, propane, internet, and more.

Step 4 - We're Hitting PAUSE ⏸️

Ashley heads to Indiana to see her family, and we pause on the house planning. Jon & the kids work on a few small projects before she gets back.

A New BEGINNING and a Much Needed Reset

Jon leaves for the day to get the truck worked on, and Ashley takes the kids on an adventure to de-stress about the house build. This could be the start of something new.

We're FINALIZING our Hyperadobe Roundhouse Floor Plans!

Thanks to our new friends at Willow End Round House, we're making some important final changes to the floor plan of our hyperadobe round house. Promise we won't change anything else (jk/lol!)

Breaking Ground - Hyperadobe Earthbag Roundhouse BEGINS!

After months of researching, planning, and preparing, we finally complete the steps to break ground on our hyperadobe roundhouse!

Are We REALLY Trenching Our Huge Earthbag House by Hand?

As we begin digging our sewer trenches we make a big announcement - daily videos are back in October! But oh do we have so much to plan to get ready for it. Come along with us as we prepare.

We Had a Little HELP? Hyperadobe Roundhouse Trenches by Tractor

The backhoe makes quick work of our trenches, but we still have so much to do before daily videos start in October. We're getting closer!

Daily Videos BEGIN! Cleaning the Trenches on our Hyperadobe Roundhouse (Day 1)

It's the very first day of our October daily videos, and we're starting by cleaning the trenches on our hyperadobe roundhouse. We also might be visiting our favorite coffee shop and making some delicious mac & cheese for friends :)

Working & Learning TOGETHER as a Family (Day 2)

Welcome back to Day 2 of our hyperadobe roundhouse daily video challenge! We're fortifying the earthbag trench, doing water runs, making delicious food (https://tinyshinyhome.com/recipes) , and taking a moment to be thankful that we get to do it together each day.

WHAT COULD IT BE? More Trenching & Unboxing Something Delicious! (Day 3)

Welcome back to Day 3 of our hyperadobe roundhouse daily video challenge! We continue to do handwork on the main sewer trench line and get a special delivery from @FontanaForniUSA.

Maestro 40 Gas Oven →

This is NEW! Pizza Oven Modeling & Sewer Trenches (Day 4)

Welcome back to Day 4 of our hyperadobe roundhouse daily video challenge! We're all over the place today, doing a photoshoot for that awesome Fontana pizza oven that showed up yesterday, getting well casing pipes for our sewer lines, and digging more trenches. Oh, officially announcing our very first superadobe workshop!

Is It TOO LATE? (Day 5)

Welcome back to Day 5 of our Hyperadobe Roundhouse Daily Video Challenge! Today we're continuing to dig the sewer trench to the kitchen and start leveling the slope on the main run. We also finally have shirts available!

Serious SETBACKS & Loosing Multiple Days (Day 6)

Welcome back to Day 6 of our Hyperadobe Roundhouse Daily Video Challenge! Or maybe it's actually day 6, 7, & 8. Honestly friends, the last couple of days have been pretty rough. We're really tired of digging.

Pulling TOGETHER & Pushing Through the Trenching (Day 7)

Welcome back to Day 7 of our Hyperadobe Roundhouse Daily Video Challenge! After struggling the last several days feeling overwhelmed with trenching in our compacted foundation, we band together as a family and make huge progress. Bird Hooks →

We PROMISE We've Thought About It - Digging the Last Trenches by Hand (Day 8)

Welcome back to Day 8 of our Hyperadobe Roundhouse Daily Video Challenge! Today we get an added boost from our friend Dan, and finally finish digging our additional trenches. Whew!

We MISSED an Important Measurement! (Day 9)

Just when we thought the trenches were done, we measured the circles, and they need some cleanup work. Will Jon make it? Also, the Passion to Profit Bundle is coming soon.

MARKING MILESTONES as a Family (Day 10)

Today we check on the new buck, build a chicken ramp, celebrate our trench milestone, and then get back to it. Final leveling and prep for gravel in the rubble trench!

DETERMINED to Make it to the NEXT STEP! (Day 11)

Today we have one goal and one goal only. To start putting gravel in our trenches. Can we do it?

Don't Judge Us, We're Tired 😂 (Day 12)

Today we clean and organize our storage unit, move to a large one, and yes finally start adding gravel to our trenches!

RUBBLE TRENCH Progress + Lunar Eclipse Party (Day 13)

Today we continue to add gravel to our trenches, and check out the ring of fire lunar eclipse!

BIG MILESTONE - Plumbing our Hyperadobe Earthbag Roundhouse (Day 14)

Today we PLUMB! And check out some rad geodesic domes from our friend Kyle.

We WASTED A WHOLE DAY Doing This 🙈 (Day 15)

Today cut some well casing to cover smaller pipes, replace the battery in our solar pump house, and try to leak test our new plumbing.

UTILITY TUNNEL - Protecting Water & Electric Lines Under Earthbags (Day 16)

Today we take a side quest while waiting to see if there's any leaks in the plumbing. Before we lay bags we need to setup the utility entrance and support it with metal casing.

Ok We're A LOT Irritated 😡 (Day 17)

Today we have a few setbacks, but manage to finally start filling in the sewer trench.

DID YOU KNOW? Flashback Edition ⏳ + Geodesic Dome Update (Day 18)

Today we help Kyle move his massive 3 story dome, continue to fill in the biggest deepest sewer trenches, and ask each other a lot of questions.

She HAS TO DO THIS Before Family Comes :) (Day 19)

Today we cleanup in anticipation of Jon's parents arriving, and make more progress filling in the sewer lines.

Family Helps FINISH Hyperadobe Roundhouse DWV Trenches (Day 20)

Today is a big day! Jon's parents come visit, and we all rally to finish filling the sewer trenches.

The LAST STEP Before Laying Bags? (Day 21)

Today we fill in the last of the gravel over our sewer lines and show my parents our property.

REBUILDING Our Hyperadobe Earthbag Dolly Bucket System (Day 24)

Today we spend our last day with Jon's parents and build a new dolly bucket in preparation for laying our first hyperadobe eathbags.

THE MESSIEST Pallet of Portland Cement We've Ever Seen 😱 (Day 25)

Today we get our gnarly pallet of portland cement unloaded, and rearrange the staging area to start laying our first hyperadobe earthbags on the roundhouse.

HYPERADOBE EARTHBAGS BEGIN on the Roundhouse! (Day 26)

At long last, we lay our first bags on the hyperadobe roundhouse!

Daily Video Challenge ENDS + Laying More Bags (Day 27)

Today we continue to lay our first earthbags and look back at what we did in October.

CAN'T BELIEVE We Did This! Hyperadobe Roundhouse Foundation

It's time to catch you up on our progress on the hypderadobe roundhouse. The first full foundation course is laid!

Holidays & Hyperadobe on the Tiny Shiny Homestead

Today we make great progress on our 2nd course of the hyperadobe roundhouse and celebrate Christmas.

Hyperadobe Roundhouse FOUNDATION: Perfecting the Dolly Bucket System

It's time to tweak our dolly bucket system a bit more and finish laying the 2nd course on the hyperadobe roundhouse. 

Problem SOLVED! How We Installed Ramps Over Our Hyperadobe Walls

With the hyperadobe earthbags coming out of the ground, we can't continue to build our roundhouse until we create some ramps to get over the walls and install them. Let's solve a problem together!

Our Family DREAM HOME Just Hit A Major Milestone!

Come celebrate with us as we finish course 3 of the hyperadobe roundhouse and finally get those walls above ground! This is a huge milestone in our family house build 💪

How to Hyperadobe with Gridlessness!

We're back at the roundhouse! Today we catch you up on marking walls, starting buttresses, and teaching our friends @Gridlessness how to lay hyperadobe earthbag walls.

Our First Buttresses, BIG STEP in Our Roundhouse Build?

The hyperadobe roundhouse build continues! Today we spend time prepping trenches and laying our first buttresses. This is an important step in getting the entire house to floor level and ready for door frames.

We’ve Been DREAMING of this Milestone!

FINALLY. The Hyperadobe Roundhouse reaches floor level. That's 4 full courses of earthbags in our rubble trench. The foundation is laid. Now the real fun begins.

Want to know what happens next? Check out Phase 2 of the project: building the earthbag walls.

Hello friends, today we’re going to tell the story about how a rogue lighting strike cost us thousands of dollars, left us without power for almost a week, and the changes we’re making to our system to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

If you’re not familiar, we installed a large fully off-grid solar system for our desert homestead about two years ago. All DIY, pieced together ourselves.

It’s got 7200W of solar panels, a 28kwh lithium battery bank, and a 5,000w AC Inverter.

The video explaining this system has racked up well over half a million views, and we continue to sell the high res version of the wiring diagram to this day.

Now when we installed the system we did put in lightning protection. The solar ground mount from IronRidge was grounded by design, and our combiner boxes also had lightning suppression built in to shunt to ground.

However, last Summer was a historically strong monsoon season with epic storms, and a rogue indirect ground lighting strike took out our Victron inverter, one of our charge controllers, and our BMS display.

This cost us thousands of dollars to replace, and we were without power for nearly a week. It sucked. Real bad.

It also led us to a months long journey researching additional lighting protection, desert soil conditions, warranties and even insurance.

Now that we’ve got some distance, perspective - and new gear - I’m going to walk you through the additional steps we’ve taken to hopefully secure our system against another storm.

We’re updating our downloadable diagrams to reflect this, and want to share some of the details and thought behind this decision.

What did we miss?

The main thing I think we missed the first time around was the erratic ways that lightning can move during a strike. Especially with wire runs 100’ long.

Initially we assumed that the solar panel array would be the most important thing to protect because it’s a big metal target. But it turns out it’s the indirect ground strikes that can cause the most damage.

So if lightning hits the ground near your install and energizes your wire it could go either direction. In our case we were protecting our solar panel array, but our charge controllers inside the solar shed were not protected.

Even worse, our AC lines didn’t have protection on either end.

Now look, there are a lot of internet opinions on lightning and grounding, especially combined with fully off grid systems. And there are a ton of products out there that say they protect from lightning, but many of them just don't really do that much. All that to say, after a lot of research, we chose MidNite Solar’s SPD’s or surge protection devices. Here's why.

Most fuses and breakers are built for high draws, and not large, fast influxes of voltage like you’d see with a lightning strike. So while we have plenty of fuses and breakers protecting the system internally, a lightning strike just moves too fast for those to react. 

The MidNite Solar SPD’s are built to clamp down immediately when high voltage or amperage is detected, protecting whatever device it’s closest to and shunting the surge to the ground. 

If you have a lightning strike, the SPD will be unusable once it clamps and shunts to ground. You’ll need to replace it, and while MidNite Solar does have a 5 year warranty, they only cost about $100 which to replace which his a small price to pay to protect expensive gear like inverters and charge controllers.

Protecting the DC Side of our System

Let’s start with the DC side. Like we mentioned, we already had lightning suppression breakers in our combiner boxes at the solar panel array. In our case we had two separate runs and two separate charge controllers. Because the wire going into the solar shed was close to 100’, we needed to add a 300V DC SPD device to each charge controller.

So we ran the positive wire of the SPD to the positive PV connection on the charge controller, the negative wire of the SPD to the negative PV connection on the charge controller, and the ground of the SPD to the ground chassis of the charge controller. In our system all grounds are connected to the earth ground connection on the Victron Inverter and run to a grounding rod outside the building.

When connected properly, we see both blue LED lights.

My only complaint with these SPD’s so far is that they are just super large and awkward to install. For our solar panels we had to put them inside a box, but let them hang over our wooden backboard because they were too deep to sit flush.

Protecting the AC Side of our System

Things got even more complicated when it came to the AC side using our Victron Quattro inverter. Its connection system is not nearly as modular as other options on the market with holes you can pop out.

Thankfully we were able to use a free compression clamp to hold the 300V AC SPD in place upside down like this.

The AC SPD’s are a little different. They have two hot lines and a ground. In our case, with our Victron Quattro, this meant one wire to our Generator In hot wire and one to our AC out hot wire. Then of course the ground wire to earth ground.

Because of this, we usually only see one LED light turned on protecting our AC out since we rarely use generator backup power. If the generator was on, then both LED’s would be lit.

Now we’re protecting the solar panel array, solar charge controllers, and the inverter. What’s left?

Some might add another DC SPD on their battery bank - though since we’re already protecting the charge controllers (DC in) and Inverter (AC in and out) we didn’t feel it was necessary for our install. We could change our minds on this in the future.

Protecting our Vintage Airstream 30A Power

Recently we ran a 100’ AC line up to our Airstream metal truss cover, and that’s only end of our wire run that isn’t protected. So the last thing we’ll be doing is installing our 300A AC SPD on our electrical box at the Airport.

The AC SPD’s are little more confusing depending on your setup. In this breaker box we have the 100+’ hot wire coming in here. So we’ll run one of the main wires to that lug, and the ground should connect to the ground lug on the box which goes to its own grounding rod.

Since we only have 1 hot leg at 120V, we’re just going to cap this wire and not use it.

When we install the run for our house, then we’ll want to add an additional SPD at that breaker box as well.

Additional Grounding Rods

Oh, and one more thing. As we’ve researched our specific soil type, it’s become apparent that the heavy sand content doesn’t hold enough moisture to make a great connection. And if we’re trying to shunt excess voltage directly to the ground, we want to make sure it has the clearest path possible.

So we put in in at least 2 more 8’ ground rods connected by 6awg copper wire 6’ feet apart.

What about Warranties & Insurance?

Why wouldn't Victron or REC cover a lighting strike under warranty?

Well, it would be nearly impossible for them to protect against it. And really it's more of an insurance situation anyway.  

Some bundles or kits might come with a warranty, but if you're DIYing and putting multiple components together this kind of scenario wouldn't be covered.

We also spent quite a bit of time looking into whether we could insure our gear - but because of the Owner-Builder opt out here in Cochise County, and the fact that we'll never have a certificate of occupancy on this property, that shut down basically every conversation we tried to have.

If you are going through traditional building methods and inspections then you should be able to get that certificate and have a more productive conversation with an insurance agent.

What Did We Learn?

First of all, we learned we needed to update our wiring diagrams! If you’ve already bought the them you can just log back into your account and re-download the new versions with the SPD’s wiring included. And of course if you haven't gotten yourself a copy yet you can do that here:

DIY’ing your own off grid solar system is hard. And just when you think you’ve got every last bit researched and buttoned up, you never know when a storm will wreak havoc on your system and your wallet.

So what are our recommendations?

• Lots of lighting protection
• A healthy savings account
• A backup generator
• Redundant pieces of gear on site for an emergency.

We’ve learned that this journey to living more sustainably and self sufficiently can be humbling. We just have to suck it up, learn from our mistakes, and keep moving forward because those storms are always coming, and you can't let them stop you.

See you next time!

We’ve spent the last few months building a composting toilet outhouse out of earth and recycled materials - and we’d love to share it with you! P.S. The composting part of this building FAILED. See below for how we transformed the building 2 years later.

What Is It?

Our family of 6 built this adorable little hyperadobe earthbag structure that houses a unique composting toilet system for us and our guests to use while we build our house.

This is a 7’x10’ rectangle buried 3 feet underground to aid in the composting process. We used 1,000 linear feet of hyperadobe tube netting, and experimented for the first time filling the bags with only clay and our native soil. 

The project took us about four months to complete, and as you can see below there are nearly 40 videos of the daily process if you want to dive deep.

Why Did We Build It?

We wanted a way for visitors to be able to go to the bathroom. But we wanted to do it in a natural and sustainable way. So not only did we use as much recycled material as possible for the building itself, we also installed a fully compliant composting system which we’ll explain a bit later.

And of course, this project was our final opportunity to test and experiment with more natural building techniques before our house build.

Composting Toilet System Explanation

This composting system is based on the plans from Watershed Management Group and is approved for use in the state of Arizona.

The high level idea is that each barrel will be buried low enough so that you can sit down like you would on a regular toilet. Only one barrel is considered active at a time. We’ll be building a special seat that goes on top with venting, seals, and insect traps to keep pathogens out.

Each time you use the restroom, you cover the solids with wood chips. This aids in breaking down the material and keeps the smell away.

While you can have everything go in the barrel, we have modified our system to work like a more traditional composting toilet and divert the urine so that the solids and liquids never co-mingle. 

This means even less potential for smelliness and that the solids compost even faster. Which is important for family of 6 like us.

So in addition to covering the solids with wood chips the urine should be followed up with some water down the tube to dilute it. Otherwise stuff will build up and clog the lines.

Here in Cochise County, we were required by the health department to divert the urine to a septic system with a leach field. Personally we think that’s dumb - diluted urine is great for plants, and we would have preferred to plumb it that way - but for permitting it was simpler for us to pipe the liquids to our house septic system.

Back to all the barrels. Because composting takes time, you fill up the first barrel most of the way, cover it with noseeum bug screen and a ventilated lid, and then give it 4-6 months to fully compost without introducing new material. During this time you need to aerate it every couple of weeks to keep the process going. At this point you’ll know if you need to add more carbon material. If it smells, it needs more carbon material. The special toilet seat lid is moved to the next barrel and it becomes the active barrel.

We have so many barrels because as a family of 6 our goal is that by the time we’ve filled up the last barrel, the first one is ready to empty and use as compost. We’ll just shovel it into a wheelbarrow and go put it around the native trees.

I know it’s a little complicated - but the goal is a low maintenance composting system for a large family and our guests.

Daily Videos

When we work on large projects like this we record every day of the process. If you'd like additional details on certain parts of the build check out the daily step by step videos below:

Day 1 - Prepping Trenches and Holes

The first step is to mark off the area, dig out the foundation, and double check the layout of our composting barrels to make sure they fit.

Day 2 - She's Making MORE HOLES!

Today Ashley's getting started building the toilet seat for our composting system in the earthbag outhouse.

Day 3 - Level, Set, GO! - Rubble Trench Prep

It's another day at the Casa de Caca! We're testing our new Harbor Freight truck bed unloader (eh), leveling the area for the bags, and double checking all the maths for the urine diversion that will connect to our septic.

Hisea Boots - Use Code TINY15 to save 15%

Day 4 - How Do We Do This Again? - Time to Lay Earthbags

Can you believe it? We're officially laying our first hyperadobe earthbags on the Casa de Caca. While we don't get as far as we'd like, it's exciting to feel like this project is properly kicking off.

Day 5 - Earthbag Surgery? Our Bucket BROKE!

Finally finding our groove with the ol' hyperadobe bags again! But it turns out if you leave your bucket in the sun for 3 months it becomes brittle and breaks off inside the bag. Oops!

ROASTED SALSA RECIPE

• 8 Roma Tomatoes
• 10 Tomatillos
• 3 Jalapeno
• 1 Red Onion
• 1 White Onion
• Salt to Taste
• Roast all ingredients until soft and slightly charred.
• To a blender add juice of 
• 3 limes and
• 1 bunch of cilantro
• Blend up all ingredients and store in jars in fridge. Will last one week in the fridge.

Day 6 - We Might Need to SLOW DOWN a Bit!

The hyperadobe bag team is in full swing, and we're knocking out courses quickly. In fact, we're a little worried we may have to slow down so we have something left for our workshop attendees to do in a couple of weeks 😂.

Bagel Recipe

Day 7 - Now We're CUTTING Doors!

We're laying yet another course of earthbags on the Casa de Caca while heading to Originate to get a vintage front door that may or may not need some modifications.

Date Bar Recipe

Day 8 - The BUTTS are Going In

Before we can lay any more bags, we need to trench out for our buttresses around the door frame. Then it's a mad dash to finish up for the day.

Day 9 - Hyperadobe Bag Dimensions

Another day, another layer of bags! Today we talk about the actual tamped dimensions of our hyperadobe earthbags, get to ground level, and share a few tips along the way. Oh, and Casa de Caca stickers!

Day 10 - We Have to Lay This Course Before the Next Step!

Can you believe it? We're already up to door height! Today we lay the final course before installing our door frame for the Casa de Caca. Also, Casa de Caca t-shirts!

Day 11 - We Can't Believe We're Doing This!

Today is all about getting our door bucking frame installed! We also finish the vapor barrier on the West wall, and lay another course and a half of bags.

Day 12 - Double Doodles = Double the Fun = Double the Work!

Two and a half courses! That's what we did today. All while sidestepping two doodle pups. Now we're off to take a nap 💤

Day 13 - Family's ALL HERE - Two More Courses Let's Go!

The family's all here, and we're ready to earthbag! Today we power through another two full courses as we continue to prep for our upcoming hyperadobe workshop.

Day 14 - ONE LAST CHANCE to Finish Bags Before the Hyperadobe Workshop?

It's crunch time, friends! Our Hyperadobe workshop is fast approaching, and we have to get up to window height since we're teaching frame installation and bottle bricks. Let's go! Also, pancakes!

Pancakes

• 1.5 Cups Sourdough Discard
• 1.25 Cups Milk
• Whisk thoroughly 
• 3 Eggs
• 1.5 Cups Flour
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
• 1 Teaspoon Salt
• 1/4 Cup Melted Butter
• Whisk some more!
• 1 Teaspoon Vanilla
• Scoop mixture and place on hot oiled skillet
• Flip when solid and browned on one side
• Top with your favorite toppings
• Enjoy!

Day 15 - Who Else Wants a COMMUNITY Like This?

It's finally here! The two day hyperadobe earthbag workshop is in full swing. Join us and 30+ attendees as we learn about our composting setup, lay hyperadobe bags, install window frames, and cut bottle bricks.

Day 16 - Still the WORST Parents Ever? 😂

With most of us still recovering from our workshop and a bit of sickness, we try to have a leisurely day laying bags. But end up doing more than we probably should have. Jax gets a little annoyed and we take a trip down memory lane to that time he called us the "worst parents ever!"

Day 17 - We're so HIGH we Need Some Help!

How do you lay earthbags when they're over your head? The scaffolding comes back out, and we continue to lay short bags locking in our frames and new lintels. Also, we make some delicious olive oil orange cake 🍰.

OLIVE OIL ORANGE CAKE

• https://pin.it/2SZzSkz
• ICING: Orange Zest, Bit of Heavy Cream, add Powdered Sugar to desired consistency while mixing

Day 18 - Let's Make LINTELS from Scraps!

Today we're finishing up the lintels or headers over our window and bottle brick openings and locking them into place with hyperadobe bags. Also, we make some toasted coconut goat milk ice cream. Yum! 🍦

TOASTED COCONUT GOAT MILK ICE CREAM

• 6 Cups Goat Milk
• 1/4 Cup Maple Syrup
• 1 Teaspoon Vanilla
• Toasted Unsweetened Coconut (to taste)
• Chocolate Chips (to taste)
• Enjoy!

Day 19 - Everything is Running Out - Will We Finish the Walls?

Today we managed to run out of all the things! If we can't get more hyperadobe bags, we might have to get creative in the next video. Also, banana muffins!

BANANA MUFFINS

• 3 Ripe Bananas
• 1 Egg
• 1/3 Cup Oil
• 1 TSP Vanilla
• 1 1/2 Cups Flour
• 3/4 Cup Sugar
• 1 TSP Baking Soda
• 1 TSP Salt
• Bake at 350 for 16-18 Minutes
• Topping: Chopped pecans, cinnamon & sugar

Day 20 - She Has a CRAZY PLAN!

Out of hyperadobe bags? Well, we'll just improvise our way to the roof. Let's goooo!

Day 21 - Oh MATH, How We've Missed You (Not Really)

This may or may not be the second day we tried making rafters! Fortunately, even though things weren't perfect we think it'll work. Also, the kids didn't have much to do so you get to enjoy epic games of paper rock scissors and tic tac toe 😂

Day 22 - We Got What Done Now?

Today is a grab bag of small bits of progress on the earthbag outhouse. Adding hurricane ties to the rafters, installing the small windows, ordering our roofing, and more.

Day 23 - We Might FINALLY Be Getting the Hang of This 😱

Let's install a metal roof!

Day 24 - RECYCLED TREASURE Out of Trash?

We're cutting old bottles and making something beautiful!

Day 25 - Recycled Glass EXPERIMENTS in the Casa de Caca

Let's put even more trash in the Casa de Caca!

Day 26 - Ceiling Height Cob is the GOAL!

Today we're cobbing up the rest of the walls to get ready for our ceiling install.

Day 27 - This Ceiling's NOT PERFECT (and that's ok :)

Today we're installing insulation and a plywood ceiling on the Casa de Caca with the kids help :)

Day 28 - How We're Making Sure the Casa de Caca Doesn't STINK (Part 1)

Today we're finishing up our ceiling, installing vents, and starting to close up all the areas near the roof.

Day 29 - Let There Be LIGHT!

Today we're adding even more vents, cobbing the rest of the way up to the ceiling, and installing our solar lights in the Casa de Caca.

Day 30 - How Many STEPS Will it Take?

So many things going on today, but one big goal! We're drying in the building, finishing our bottle brick window, and even base plastering the inside of the Casa de Caca.

Day 31 - She's DETERMINED to Finish the Walls! (Part 1)

We're officially racing to finish the final plaster coat inside the Casa de Caca. Can you believe we're already at this step?

This Water Line HAS TO GO THROUGH our Hyperadobe Wall (Day 31 Part 2)

We continue to work towards finishing the final plaster coat on the inside of the Casa de Caca - and running water lines through our walls!

Day 32 - How do the Composting Barrels fit in our Hyperadobe Outhouse?

With the interior walls complete, it's time to move to filling in the floor, prepping for plumbing, and getting our composting toilet barrels ready.

Day 33 - Hangin' Out & Hangin' Doors with My Little Homestead

Today we get a big assist from our friends at My Little Homestead installing our reclaimed door on the hyperadobe Casa de Caca outhouse.

Day 34 - Filling in the FLOOR on the Casa de Caca 🎉

It's time to move an enormous amount of dirt to get this floor filled in on the Casa de Caca. Plus a few other fun side projects like new window screen and a sink platform.

Hisea Boots: https://hisea.com use code TINY15

Day 35 - She CAN'T STOP Smiling :)

Let's punch a bunch of things off that list! Today we finish plumbing our foot powered sink, epoxy the toilet set, make metal barrel covers, clean inside, and Ashley paints and stains the coolest door ever.

Day 36 - One Last Experiment

The time has finally come to start finishing the exterior hyperadobe bags on the Casa de Caca! Everyone pitches in to stucco the front wall, and we re-do our toilet seat lid.

Day 37 - She's a STUCCO MACHINE!

We're finishing the stucco coat on the Casa de Caca! Hyperadobe bags are no more. Watch Ashley power through the last two walls all by herself 💪.

Composting Failed, Transforming the Casa de Caca

Two years later, our permitted composting toilet outhouse failed. We'll try to figure out what went wrong, and then rip apart the inside and re-built it into a cozy modern mudroom complete with flushing toilet, washer, dryer, and hand sink.

Wrapping Up

Oh my goodness friends, we can’t believe you made it all the way to the end. You get a high five! If you like what we’re doing out here - building naturally and sustainably, living off-grid, greening the desert, we’re just getting started here on our property. Be sure to check out some of our other projects:

• Solar Shed Office
• Berm and Swale
• Airstream Carport Cover

Our next big project is our house build and we hope you’ll follow along!

What’s a gray water septic? Why would you use it? How does it work? And is it even legal? All great questions. Let’s dig in.

What’s a Septic System?

A traditional septic system is a way for a house or building that doesn’t have access to city sewage pipes to send all of its waste water - from sinks, showers, and toilets - into a buried waterproof tank that is large enough for the solids to settle at the bottom.

The remaining liquid exits the tank into the leach or drain field via perforated pipes which then uses the soil as a natural filter to remove harmful bacteria.

There are plenty of rules, regulations, and permits around traditional septic systems for good reason. If they’re not installed properly you run the risk of injecting harmful elements into your soil or overloading the ground and causing backups and tainted areas on your property.

But on the flip side of that, septic tanks installed correctly can also be great for the environment because you’re essentially taking all the water you use and filtering it back down into the ground to replenish the water table.

A gray water septic is very similar to a traditional septic, but only deals with gray water, not black water.

What’s the difference?

Gray Water - this is waste water that comes from bathroom sinks, washing machines, bathtubs, and showers. It should contain very low levels of contamination and be easy to filter and discharge.

Black Water - this is the waste water from toilets that contain fecal matter. In some states or countries, your kitchen and dishwasher are also considered blackwater because of the food particles and grease that will come from them. The level of contamination is much higher and requires more work to filter.

So when we talk about a gray water septic, this should only be for water that comes out of a bathroom sink, shower, or washing machine (and only using approved soaps).

Why Do You Need a Gray Water Septic?

In most cases, as long as you are using biodegradable soaps and cleaners, you should actually be re-using your gray water as much as possible via irrigation or watering for gardens.

But sometimes, you might want to make that gray water infiltrate back into the soil. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Stinky Smell - sending your gray water to an open air basin can definitely result in that unpleasant gray water smell permeating your area. Especially if you have a lot of wind.
2. Bacteria - Unless you completely enclose that basin, any animals you have like dogs, cats, goats, chickens, etc.. will be drawn to drink it and could get serious bacterial infections.
3. Nowhere To Go - Finally, maybe you don’t have a way to create a basin or trees to plant, and it would be simpler for your gray water to just go into the ground.

So we’ll reiterate here - if you can safely repurpose your gray water, please do that first! It’s such a better way to use it and is much better for your immediate environment. 

But if your’e in a specific situation like we mentioned above where you need all the gray water to go underground, then this gray water septic plan is for you!

Is it legal?

Obviously we can’t answer this question for every situation, but many local codes encourage gray water re-use and for single family installations there shouldn’t be too many requirements related to a true gray water septic. It’s when you start adding the black water to the system that you have to deal with codes and inspections.

Of course, as always, please consult with your local government codes to make sure before proceeding.

How does a gray water system work?

What we’ve pieced together from various sources of inspiration is an idea similar to a normal septic system, but much smaller and easier to install yourself. Because there’s no large solids or grease that needs to settle in the bottom of the tank, we can send the gray water down into the ground as quickly as possible.

The trick is to make sure we never over saturate the ground and cause it to seep up to the surface.

We’ll be using drainage gravel and plastic barrels with holes to allow quick drainage, as well as overflow tanks and a leach line.

Today we’ll be walking you through how to build a small gray water septic system. This one is sized for our renovated 1972 vintage Airstream that is permanently parked on our off-grid homestead. It has a 40 gallon gray tank, and we as a family of 6 don’t use more than 75 gallons per day.

Is there a rule for sizing your system? Not really that we could find. There are plenty of guidelines for traditional septic systems, but this is because in the US the average water use is 60 gallons per person per day. So those are operating on a much larger scale, and are dealing with the aforementioned fecal matter and food grease.

Since we’re using so little water, and because there are no solids involved, our system will include 2x 55 gallon barrels and a 10’ leach line field.

This will allow us to completely flush our full 40 gallon gray tank into the first barrel and the second barrel is used as a backup if somehow another 40 gallons came right after. With our lower pressure solar powered water pump system this wouldn’t even be possible, but any septic system should be over sized just in case.

The 10’ leach line is also extra insurance in case both were to ever fill up and the water needs somewhere else to go.

Now that you’ve got the high level idea, let’s grab the materials and show you how to build it step by step.

Gray Water Septic Supplies

Thankfully this is a very simple system. You’ll need:

• 2x 55 Gallon Plastic Barrels
• 10’-20’ of 3” Schedule 40 PVC
• 1x 90 degree 3” Schedule 40 PVC Fitting
• 2x 3” Schedule 40 Couplers
• 1x 3” Threaded Fitting + Screw Cap
• 2’ of 4” Schedule 40 PVC
• 1x 4” Schedule 40 Coupler
• Footloose Sewer Cap
• 4 tons drainage gravel
• 30 sqft vapor barrier vinyl
• 1x Tube of Waterproof sealant

Building Your Own Gray Water Septic

Step 1 - dig the hole for the system. A few things to keep in mind here. First, you need to know where the source will be. Where is all that gray water going to be coming from? Plan the septic location at least 20’ away from your source.

Ideally you want the septic to be sloped away from this output, and if you can use your land’s natural elevation drops this will make things easier.

If you can’t, then you’ll have to make sure your lines and the hole are all still sloped at roughly 1/4" drop per foot, and this will affect how deep you have to dig.

Assuming you’ve got a natural elevation drop, for this system you’ll need a hole that is roughly 7’x4’x5’ deep. The depth is important for drainage and you should allow one foot of space and drainage rock around each barrel.

Step 2 - dig your trenches for the pipe connecting from the source to the septic and then from the septic out to the leach line. These don’t have to be super deep, but for the leach line we recommend digging down at least 2’ so you have room for the pipe and gravel below grade.

Step 3 - Now that the site is prepped, start bringing in your drainage gravel. This is usually different than regular gravel - check with your local rock yard and see what they recommend. Bigger rocks mean more opportunity for water to infiltrate quickly.

Fill the bottom of the main hole with 2’ of drainage gravel.

Step 4 - Take your two 55 gallon barrels, flip them upside down, and drill at least 12 1” holes in the bottom. We used a cross pattern to space them evenly.

Step 5 - Since we’re going to connect the barrels with 3” Schedule 40 PVC get a 3.5” hole saw and cut out holes across from each other on each barrel. Keep in mind that each hole should be sequentially a little bit lower as you go from the source to the leach line.

Step 6 - Now set the barrels in the hole on top of the gravel, letting the large 3.5” holes facing each other and lined up with the source and leach line. At this point you can test fit the pipe to make sure everything is going to work - you may find you need to adjust the depth of your trenches during this stage.

Step 7 - With the barrels exactly where you want them, fill the rest of the hole with drainage gravel all around the barrels stopping right below the holes for the PVC connections. You can either tape off the holes so no rocks get inside while filing or you can leave the PVC pipes temporarily inserted.

Step 8 - Add about 1’ of drainage gravel to the leach field trench. There should still be enough room for the PVC to sit on top of the gravel.

Step 9 - Take your 10’ PVC leach line and drill some 1” holes in the bottom of the pipe. Add a cap to the far end to force the water down to the perforated holes.

Step 10 - If you haven’t already, slide all the 3” pipe into the holes on the sides of the barrel a few inches, and get them where you want them.

Step 11 - Clean off the tops of the barrels and put down a vinyl vapor barrier covering all the gravel in the main pit. Cut around the barrels so it sits right against the edges.

Step 12 - The vapor barrier for the leach line goes above the perforated PVC pipe.

Step 13 - Now it’s time to install your clean outs and finish up! We did 2 types of clean outs, but really you can do whatever you like here. The idea is that you want access to both barrels in case they need to be pumped or cleaned in the future.

This is the easiest way we found to do this. Cut a 2”-3” section of pipe and glue it to a coupler. Drill a hole in the top and push the pipe down in until the coupler stops it. Now measure from the top of the coupler to ground level and add a few more inches.

Measure and cut that pipe, glue it in to the coupler, and then install the cap on top.

We did a 3” pipe on one barrel with a threaded coupler and threaded plug cap.

On the other barrel, we did a 4” pipe with a footloose sewer cap for easy access to pour liquids directly into the septic with one hand.

Step 14 - Now that you have everything in place, it’s time to seal all your connections. Run a bead of waterproof caulking around all the places where the pipe enters the 55 gallon barrels.

Step 15 - Finally, once the caulking has set and dried, begin to fill back in the trenches and hole with your remaining dirt back to ground level. Compact as you go, and watch the vertical plumb of the clean outs.

We definitely recommend putting rocks or a barrier around the clean outs to protect them and make it visually obvious that something is there.

When you’re ready, make your source connections and run some tests! Use the clean outs to visually inspect what’s happening while the gray water comes in.

Wrapping Up + PDF Download

And that’s pretty much it! Now you have a system that will naturally filter and infiltrate your gray water into the ground in a safe and less stinky way.

If you need a permanent copy of these plans and steps, we have a PDF guide available for purchase here - otherwise feel free to reference this video or the article on our site as you build your own.

Happy gray watering - we’ll see you next time!

Looking for the simplest way to create a small, self-contained, 12V solar system that can be monitored remotely? You’ve come to the right place!

Hi there, we’re Jonathan & Ashley from Tiny Shiny Home. Our family of 6 spent many years traveling full-time in our renovated vintage Airstream before finding some off-grid property in Cochise County, Arizona to settle on.

Our dream here is to build a sustainable off-grid homestead from the ground up using solar power, water catchment, and natural building techniques to create an oasis in the desert.

Small 12V Solar System Goals

We’re already powering most of our property via our massive DIY 28kwh solar system, but in the name of redundancy we’ve also setup several small, independent 12V solar powered systems that we use for pump houses and sheds.

Now, I want to be clear - there are absolutely simpler and cheaper ways to create a small DC system. Our first pump house literally just had a small solar panel, cheap charge controller, a battery, and an RV pump. We’ve pushed thousands of gallons through that thing, pressurizing water for our trailer and building multiple earthbag buildings with it.

There is nothing at all wrong with keep things simple.

But as we started to install more mini 12V systems in various locations on our property that didn’t have access to power or internet, we felt like we should start investing in a better way to keep tabs on all of them.

Our main solar system was already setup with a Victron Quattro Inverter, Smart Solar charge controllers, and a Color Control GX that was passing data to Victron’s VRM - a remote management portal that you can access from anywhere on any device.

We’ve been super happy not only with the performance of the gear, but the VRM itself. Victron’s website and apps are well designed, provide deep levels of customization and reporting, and continue to have active development unlocking new features like widgets on iOS or enabling bluetooth connectivity for data transfers for nearby components.

So with all that in mind, we decided to use the Victron VRM as a base for all our other smaller systems as well. This would allow us to quickly see all our power installations in one spot.

Our biggest issue was that each power system or building we wanted to connect was scattered all over our 6 acre property, buried beneath metal roofs or inside earthbag walls, and not near a wifi internet connection.

We’re going to get nerdy and figure out how to make this work, but first let’s talk high level specs.

High Level Specs & Use Cases

Currently we have 4 VRM systems:

1. Solar Shed (Large Full System)
2. Feed Shed (Mini VRM System)
3. Airstream Cover Pump House (Mini VRM System)
4. Earthbag Chicken Garden Pump House (Mini VRM System)

Our Pump Houses usually run a 12V water pump, lights, and RV tank pad heater, and our Feed Shed has LED lights and venting fans. These are intentionally low power systems, and we’re not trying to pull any high draws from them.

Here's a few high level specs before we dig in:

• Battery Storage - we usually go with a 12V 100AH Deep Cycle Lead Acid Battery. These are easy to grab pretty much anywhere, fairly inexpensive, and resistant to the wild temperature swings we can get here in the high desert. They’re tough and don’t need fancy BMS’s or special protections.
• Solar Panel: While a small 100W panel is big enough for this size system, we've been using these 240W Santan Solar panels instead because they're so cheap.
• Smart Solar Charge Controller - Since we’re sticking to the Victron Ecosystem, the Smart Solar 75V/15A is the perfect size for the 240W panel without breaking the bank.
• Smart Shunt - In order to relay data about the battery’s state of charge, the Victron Smart Shunt quickly connects to the battery while also having a data connection port.

We also make sure to install fusing and protection as well as small load centers with blade fuses for each item we want to power. But we’ll cover that in more detail later.

My general goal here is just to give each system plenty of breathing room to power what it needs to and get charged back up each day. Are the oversized? Probably. But the batteries and panels are so cheap I’d rather get them setup, not have to worry about them, and have options for future expandability.

Also, a Disclaimer: I’m not an electrician. All information here is solely for entertainment purposes, and should you feel uncomfortable doing this yourself, all electrical work should be performed by qualified individuals according to local electrical codes.

Article Overview

1. Small 12V System Goals
2. High Level Specs & Use Cases
3. Remote Mini VRM Wiring Guide
4. Internet Connectivity & Victron VRM Portal
5. Self-Contained Power System Storage Tote
6. Wiring the 12V Mini VRM Victron Solar System
7. Settings
8. Ruuvi Temperature Alarms
9. Connecting 12V Loads
10. Cost Breakdown
11. AC Power Option
12. Wrapping Up

Mini Solar System VRM Wiring Guide

Wondering what this thing looks like all connected up? As part of this deep dive, we created a very detailed replica of our wiring setup.

I know I'm a visual person, and sometimes I just need to see it all laid out no matter how many words there are to explain it.

If you'd like to download a these vector PDF's for reference that you can zoom in on, grab a copy here:

Internet Connectivity and the Victron VRM Portal

The biggest hurdle in this whole idea would be connecting the various Victron components to our VRM for monitoring. To do this you need a GX device from Victron that will serve as the central “brain” for the system. Then you have to have a network to connect the GX device to so it can push the data up to the cloud.

Because our various buildings and locations were spread out all over our 6 acres and not near our wifi network, this is where things got tricky. Let’s look at our options.

1. Color Control GX - This unit has a screen built in and multiple ways to connect components. But if you’re not near a wifi network, you need a cell based modem to connect to the internet. This is by far the most expensive option at around $550 - plus the $250 for the modem and you have to use your own data plan. Definitely overkill for a small system like this.
2. Cerbo GX - This unit has even more inputs, but no display so it comes in a bit cheaper at $350. There’s also the “S” version with fewer inputs that cost $270. But you’d still need that $250 modem and your own data plan if you’re not near a wifi network. For our little 12V system, this still felt like it was overkill.
3. GlobalLink 520 - This unit was definitely more like it. It’s a very simple GX device with only 2 physical inputs, and it comes with a built in LTE-M antenna and 5 year data plan for only $230. With such a simple system, we didn’t need to monitor more than the solar input and battery SOC so this seemed like a good option.
4. Raspberry Pi + Venus OS - Not only does Victron do a great job of keeping their software up to date, they’re also super hacker friendly. Case in point, the software that actually runs on their GX devices is available as an open source download that you can then install on any computer you want. Many folks have bought cheap Raspberry Pi mini computers, installed the Venus Firmware and made their own versions of the GX devices.
   
   While this sounds cool on paper, you still need either need a close wifi signal or some kind of cell attachment with your own plan to connect remotely. And by the time you buy all the pieces you might need and bring your own data plan, it’s not much cheaper than the GlobalLink. Plus it’s so much more work to get it setup.
5. LoRaWAN Module - Finally, the most nerdy of options. Long Range Wide Area Networks - or LoRaWan use “Internet of Things” gateways to pass small bits of data very long distances for free. Like anywhere from 1-18 miles. There might be one in your area - check the map to see if you have coverage nearby. If not you can even setup your own gateway if you want for others to use.
   
   While this is fascinating that Victron even makes this module, it is pretty limited. It only connects directly to one piece of equipment so you’d only be monitoring one thing at a time. And at $80, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for our particular install.

As you may have seen in the diagram we went with the GlobalLink 520 - it hit the sweet spot of functionality, simplicity, and cost for our sized system. We could run hard data connections to the solar charge controller and smart shunt which then passes that info into the VRM for monitoring and reporting.

Recently, Victron upgraded the firmware on these units to allow even more components to connect via Bluetooth and pass the data to the VRM which expands the possibilities with this little unit quite a bit. I’ve got my eye on a compatible Ruuvi Humidity and Temperature tag. Would be awesome to know if a pump house is dropping below freezing inside and get a notification.

Self-Contained Power System Storage Tote

Since each of these 12V systems would be inside pump houses or dusty environments like our feed shed, I wanted a way to protect and contain all the components.

Turns out these plastic storage totes from the hardware store are a great off the shelf solution that don’t cost much. A 12"x26"x18" bin is the perfect size to put your battery and a few pieces of scrap wood for a mounting everything to for easy access.

The walls are thin and easy to drill through to install rubber grommets to run wires through, and while they aren’t water or air tight, they do provide considerable protection for everything. Plus since the lid isn’t sealed, the battery can still vent. If you want to add more venting, it’s easy to cut a hole in the side and add your vent of choice.

This allows you to put everything except the solar panel in the box carry it wherever you want, then run the wires in when you’re ready.

All 3 of our mini VRM systems live in these boxes and we’re big fans.

Wiring the 12V Victron Solar System

Alright, let’s look at how this is all connected. Since everything in the storage tote is so close together, 10AWG or 12AWG wire should suffice for most connections. But of course if you’re running a high load over a long distance that should be sized appropriately.

Use this simple chart to calculate what thickness wire you need or check out this helpful deep dive for additional info. 

* Numbers in AWG unless otherwise noted. Wire size based on a 3% or (0.36 V) voltage drop for 12V. Always oversize wires if voltage drop is critical.

I wish each connection was consistent, but you’ll be encountering everything from crimp on ring connectors to spade or butt terminals to screw clamps. I recommend having wire strippers, crimpers, screwdrivers, and a box of connectors on hand.

We mentioned earlier we were using a 240W used solar panel from SanTan Solar. It runs at 37V or 8A and generally PV wire is 10AWG.

Step 1 - You want to start by running the PV positive and negative wire to a 2 Pole 10A Circuit Breaker. This is to protect the charge controller from any spikes coming from the panel.

Step 2 - From the breaker we go to the positive and negative PV in connections on the Victron Smart Solar MPPT 75V/15A.

Step 3 - Coming out of the charge controller, the positive wire runs through a 25A Mini ANL Fuse and cover to the positive post of the battery.

This is an additional source of protection for the battery from any spike that might come from the charge controller.

Step 4 - From here we come off the positive post of the battery through a 25A DC Circuit Breaker.

Step 5 - Then we add a small fuse block or load center. This will allow us to isolate each item we want to connect and fuse them individually.

Now for the rest of the Victron Gear.

Step 6 - The Victron Smart Shunt connects its battery minus side directly to the negative post of the battery. The system minus side is where all other negative wires will connect together. There’s also a VBatt+ wire that connects directly to the positive battery post.

Step 7 - Finally, the GlobalLink 520 is hardwired directly the positive and negative posts of the battery so it always has power. At this point you can also connect the Solar Charge Controller and Smart Shunt to the GlobalLink with VE.Direct cables so they all start talking to each other.

Settings

Before we connect any loads, let’s tweak our settings on the Victron components. The easiest way to change settings is to use the Victron Connect App on a smartphone or tablet. This is done via Bluetooth so you just have to be close by and you’ll see the option to connect.

Funny story - I bought my Lead Acid batteries at a local Walmart, called up maker of the battery (Everstart) to see if I could get some specific numbers from them - and the support person I talked to had absolutely no idea what settings I should use. Didn't have a spec sheet to reference or any information online. Not very helpful! So we'll be going with generic 12v Lead Acid battery settings.

Victron SmartShunt Settings

First, we want to tell the system the voltage and capacity we’re dealing with. In our case that meant:

• Battery Capacity: 100Ah
• Charged Voltage: 13.2V

We didn’t feel the need to change any of the other settings and left them as is.

Victron Smart Solar MPPT 75V/15A Settings

Then we want to tell the charge controller how to charge the battery.

• Battery Voltage: 12V
• Tap “User Defined” for Battery Preset
• Absorption: 14.3V
• Float: 13.4V
• Equalization: 14.3V

The rest of the settings we left as is.

Victron GlobalLink 520 Settings

Finally, we would need to connect this device to our Victron VRM Portal. If you don’t already have a VRM account, make sure to create that first. Then click “Add Installation” and choose the GlobalLink 520 Icon.

It’s going to ask you for the VRM Portal ID that is located on the back of the GlobalLink. It might be on the box as well, but learn from my mistake and take a picture of this number before you do your full install.

Pop in that number, give it a name, and as long the GlobalLink is connected to the LTE-M network, you should see it load in your VRM. That’s it!

To keep data usage low, the GlobalLink updates every 15 minutes, and you’ll see your solar input wattage and battery state of charge. And now that you’re connected to the VRM you can setup your own custom alarms and notifications or turn on custom widgets and run reports.

Ruuvi Temperature Alarms

I mentioned earlier that I had my eye on some Ruuvi Humidity and Temperature sensors since Victron had updated the GlobalLink 520 to connect with them wirelessly. Well, I couldn’t contain my curiosity any longer and ordered some while I was working on this installation guide.

I wanted to use these devices to keep tabs on the temperature inside our pump houses - even going so far as to setup VRM notifications for freezing conditions.

Here’s how it works. First download the Ruuvi app on your phone (iOS or Android), then pull the plastic battery stopper out, and find the device via the app. Here you can setup some settings, and give it a name - but really what you are doing is activating it so that the GlobalLink can see it.

Now go place it near your GlobaLink. Open the Victron Connect App on your phone, and connect to the GlobalLink. Go to Settings > Smart Devices and wait a minute for the Ruuvi Tag to show up. Activate it, and that’s pretty much all there is to it. You’ll need to wait until the VRM refreshes to see anything (remember, it updates every 15 minutes) - but then the temperature sensor will show up on your dashboard.

To create custom notifications, go into that installation in the VRM, Settings > Alarm Rules. Select “Add New Alarm Rule”, choose the Ruuvi Tag as the device, then the Temperature parameter, then set your specific amounts on the next screen.

This was confusing for me - I initially set my temps in Fahrenheit, but the VRM seems to only read this setting in Celsius. So these were my final settings:

• Low: -2
• Clear low alarm above: 0
• High: 43
• Clear high alarm above: 37

Then just make sure you have your notification settings turned on to deliver via email or push on your phone. Fancy!

Connecting 12V Loads

Now that the main system is connected, it’s time to add your loads. From a high level standpoint, you’re going to be connecting the positive wire from your item to an individual spot on the load center and then adding the proper sized blade fuse (1.25x the max amperage it should draw). The negative wire will go to the system minus side of the Smart Shunt.

I’ll walk you through a few examples of how we are using our systems, but really what you connect and how you use it are totally up to you.

Venting Fans

This AC Infinity AIRTITAN T8 was the perfect size to fit over our barn doors in our feed shed, used DC motors so all I had to do was chop off the AC power brick and wire directly to the 12V system, and it has a temperature and humidity sensor with programmable alarms and settings to tell the fan to come one exactly when we want it to.

USB LED Lights with Switch

We found these super simple string lights that run very low power, have shatter proof bulbs, and connect using a USB connection. Technically USB is 5V so we needed a 12V USB outlet, and the model we found even had a switch for the whole thing. This worked out perfectly as an easy to access light switch for whoever was using the shed. We also used the same lights and switch for our chicken coop. These are very easy to wire as they come with most of the connections already installed. We just needed to run a positive and negative wire to the switch and plug in the lights.

12V RV Water Pump

Creating pressurized water from a holding tank was the main reason we even started making these small 12V systems. At the time, we didn’t even have AC power on the property and needed a way to get pressurized water to our trailer. Since then, we’ve seen the value of having redundancy and making sure our water source isn’t connected to a single main power source.

This Shurflo 3.5gpm 12v Pump is a little power house. We’ve been using one in our renovated vintage Airstream for 5 years without a hiccup. Then we put one in our first solar power pump house over 2 years ago and have pumped thousands and thousands of gallons without any issues. Highly recommended especially if you combine it with a larger pressure or accumulator tank. Anyway, we usually run these through a switch for easy access, and it’s just a matter of connecting the positive and negative wires together.

RV Tank Heater Pad

Something we’ve been trying recently is looking for a low power way to keep the inside of our pump houses warm enough in the winter so they don’t freeze. The jury’s still out on whether these tank heater pads actually do their job, but theoretically they should come on when it gets cold and provide some warmth near your water lines.

Similarly, you just need to connect the positive and negative wires, and can also run through a switch if you want.

Cost Breakdown

So what should the whole system run you? Great question. Here’s a detailed breakdown:

So it’s not the cheapest, obviously. Again, you can do this much more simply - but if you’re looking for a way to connect a small system to a remote management portal we think this is a great way to do it.

It’s great having rock solid cell based connections to pass our data to the cloud and be able to view the status of each system at any time.

What if you have AC Power?

During our most recent project - moving our Airstream to a permanent covered location - we found ourselves in a situation where we actually had AC power available at our pump house.

We could have switched the whole system to run on 120V power, but decided instead to create a dual charging 12V system. Everything would stay the same except we would add a Victron Blue Smart IP65 Charger that would plug into a standard outlet and connect directly to the battery to keep it topped off.

That way if the AC power ever went out the solar panel would continue to do its job and charge the battery.

The Charger comes in several options and sizes - we went with the 120V 5A version since it would just need a trickle charge, and kept it on the default settings.

Wrapping Up

Who knew such a tiny 12V system could get so detailed? I’m not sure how I keep talking myself into writing these super nerdy posts, but here we are again.

I hope our installation breakdown and wire guide give you a better understanding of how to build your own remote mini 12V system that relays data back to you for monitoring.

If you found this interesting I have to let you know that we’re just getting started here on our off-grid homestead. Besides building all sorts of unique, sustainable structures we’re setting up rainwater catchment, lots of fun power installs, and so much more. Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss our next project.

Until next time!

Introducing a brand new project here on the Tiny Shiny Homestead! It's time to create a permanent resting place for our renovated vintage Airstream so we can start building our family home in its place.

When we moved onto this raw land over 2 years ago, all we had was our renovated vintage Airstream that we had been traveling in for the last 5 years. We parked it right in the middle of the parcel and got to work building.

First was a fence to keep the cows out, then water storage and a solar powered water pump.

Then it was our earthbag solar shed office, off-grid solar system, and earthbag chicken garden.

We are so ready to start our house, but there’s a small problem. The Airstream is in the way!

That’s right, it’s officially time to build a permanent resting place for our Tiny Shiny Home. She’s carted us 100,000+ miles all over the US and Canada, and been a true home for our family of 6 for the last 5 years.

Step 1 - Planning & Design

So it can’t just be any old pole barn. We need to build something that protects this important piece of our family history for years to come.

Here were our requirements:

1. Open frame design - we want to provide shade and protection over the trailer, but still allow for beautiful views out it’s many windows
2. Gabled roof - Having the roof pitch to the East and West would allow us to keep most of the rain and hail off while also using the angle of the sun during different seasons to keep it warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
3. Needs to double as an outdoor living space - Since we still don’t have a house, any covered area we create during this process would be a big win
4. Withstand 100+mph winds - yes we live in the high desert with hurricane force updrafts during monsoon season as well as sustained 50+mph winds during the spring. Whatever we use needs to be rated for these conditions
5. Metal for strength and durability - we decided on steel framing and metal roofing instead of building something out of wood or earthbags
6. Catch Rainwater - Rainwater catchment, storage, and pressurization will be vital to providing water for the trailer
7. Sustainable - As we’re doing our best to build everything out here as low impact as possible, the sourcing and sustainability of the materials is also important to us.
8. DIY - Finally, we want something we can put together ourselves! As you know, this homestead journey of ours has been filled with learning and becoming more self-sufficient. Ideally we could find a company that could work along side us to design for our requirements, but then let us put it together as part of the owner builder opt-out.
9. Off-Grid Grid - Finally, since this would be where the Airstream stays permanently, we’d need to use everything we’ve learned the last two years to create our own power, water and gray water waste utilities.

Yeah, kind of a tall order, we know. But like any good off-grid homesteader we did our research. 

Watched video after video, scoured blog after blog. Even visited a few places locally. And finally settled on a company called Miracle Truss after seeing one of their buildings in person and being able to help put some of it together.

They certainly ticked all the boxes we mentioned above with a few bonus ones:

• Their buildings are American Made from Recycled Steel
• Come with a 50 year Warranty
• Clear span usability all the way to the peak
• Used in hurricane zones and massive snow load areas like Alaska
• Use metal trusses built like bridges for incredible strength
• But also use minimal standard lumber for flexibility and cost savings
• Easy to put together ourselves by renting a few pieces of equipment
• Fully engineering drawings provided for permitting, cement pad pours, and anchor bolt plan to help with out-to-out dimensions and truss locations

Let’s just say we were impressed.

So we reached out to Miracle Truss and told them what we wanted to do. They helped us work through designing the perfect Airstream cover that wasn’t too tall, but still had headroom to access the roof as well as a good sized livable outside area.

The process was very easy and straightforward, and we appreciated the knowledge and expertise they brought, asking the right questions, and making sure we were designing this thing right.

We’ll dig into the full costs of this project near the end, but if you’ve been following us for a while, you know that while we love to save money and do things as cheaply as possible, we also only want to do them once. A building like this can cost more upfront, but we felt like it’s a smart investment for the future of our homestead. As you’ll see, there are a lot of things we can do with a structure like this.

Disclaimer: Now, we wanted to make sure you know that while Miracle Truss isn’t technically sponsoring this project, we are working together. We’ll be creating marketing videos for Miracle Truss to help us offset some of the material costs of this build. We do also have an affiliate relationship so if you end up getting your own Miracle Truss building and tell them we sent you, we’ll receive a small commission.

But otherwise, all costs associate with the project - the metal trusses, the roof, the cement pad, equipment rental, rainwater catchment system, electrical, and lumber - all came out of our pocket.

We’re going to take you through the entire process step-by-step and you can decide if this kind of building makes sense for you. 

Ready? Let’s get started.

Design Process

Like we mentioned, the design process was pretty straightforward. Besides our basic list of requirements, from a design standpoint we only had a few things we wanted.

The first was a gabled or double pitch roof. The goal was as much shade as possible for as much of the day as possible. While we love the look of single pitched roofs, we’ve been in the Airstream through enough seasons here to know that early morning shade is very important for keeping the inside naturally cool as long as possible, and that the setting afternoon sun is the hottest part of the day. With the long side of the Airstream facing East and West, we could use a gabled roof to shade it during those important times.

The second was that we wanted access to the Airstream roof for maintenance. Now the cool thing about Miracle Truss’s clearspan design is that the trusses allow for clearance all the way up to the pitch. Which meant we didn’t have to build something super tall which was also one of our design requirements. We love our views out here and don’t want to create things that obscure it.

So most of our conversations centered around finding the right height for the side trusses and pitch for the roof. In our case we ended up going with a 12’ vertical truss which worked out to almost 11’ of clearance on the inside of the frame. Our Airstream is only 10.5’ tall and it won’t be parked all the way to the edge so this should work out perfectly.

By building at a 3:12 pitch, the full structure only ends up being about 14’ tall at the peak.

We also went through a few iterations of the square footage of the building, trying to decide how much outdoor space we wanted covered in addition to the trailer.

Here we settled on a 19’x36’ cement pad which should give us extra space to the front and back of the Airstream as well as about 8’ of covered living area out to the front of it. This is close to the size of the deck we currently have, and we love that extra space. Of course now it will be covered and open up a lot more possibilities.

Anyhow, like we mentioned, Miracle Truss was super helpful especially in working with us to understand the right height of the building. Once we settled on a size and price, they put together full technical drawings which also went through an approval process.

Cement Pad Planning & Equipment Rental

These buildings are really cool because you can put them together yourself! But that doesn’t mean it’s simple. There are a lot of moving pieces, and things to think about if you’re going down this road. Let’s cover the high level basics here, and we’ll get into the details in later videos.

First is your foundation. One of the benefits of a metal truss design is that you can just pour footers for the trusses to bolt into, or you can lay an entire concrete pad. In our case, since we wanted to park the Airstream under the cover, a full pad made the most sense.

And while we’ve poured a few small cement pads, engineering one this large and strong enough to attach an open air building was out of our comfort zone. So in addition to working through the design of the cover with Miracle Truss, we also had to work with a local cement company to have this pad poured right. That included leveling the area, bringing in A/B mix and compacting it so things wouldn’t sink over time, digging the footers and reinforcing where the trusses would go, installing rebar, setting bolts, and more.

In addition, you will need some decent sized equipment to put this structure up. So we also needed to coordinate renting both a telehandler to set the trusses in place and a scissor lift to install purlins, roofing, and more.

Compared to most of our projects so far where we’ve built nearly everything ourselves from the earth on our land, this is a whole different ballgame. And we are learning A LOT.

Permitting

One major thing we forgot during this process was permitting! For the solar shed, we kept it under 200 square feet so in our county, permits weren’t necessary. And the chicken garden is mostly just a wall so it doesn’t really count. But even though we are in Cochise County and part of the owner-builder opt-out, any structure over 200 square feet that costs more than $1,000 still needs a permit.

The process was pretty straightforward - we called first to get some direction, then filled out the application online. This was considered an accessory structure, and we were able to opt-out of inspections for this building as well. We needed to provide a sitemap showing where it would be, making sure were at least 20’ from our property lines. We included Miracle Truss’s engineered drawings, but for an opt-out permit they aren’t even necessary.

All in all it cost us about $150, was approved within a few days, and only required an initial inspection to make sure we were properly setback from our fence lines. We should be able to email or text photos of the completed structure within 6 months for final approvals.

Next Steps

So with our materials on order, our place "cemented" on the schedule for a newly poured pad, and permit in hand we were ready to get going. But again, nothing is as easy as it sounds, especially in 2022. Between cement rations here in Arizona, gas prices slowing down shipments, and unavailability of the equipment we need to do the job, things quickly got complicated. But all this is a story for future videos.

Speaking of, what's coming up in this series?

Project Overview

1. Planning & Design
2. Cement Pad Pour, Footings
3. Receive Materials, Shou Sugi Ban Wood, Erect Vertical Columns
4. Put Main Trusses into Place, Rent Scissorlift, add Cabling, Purlins
5. Metal Roof & Trim
6. Gutters & Downspouts
7. Utility Holes, Trenching & Planning
8. Gray Water Septic
9. Bury & Plumb Rainwater Catchment Tank
10. Solar Pump House Planning & Foundation
11. Solar Pump House Build & Electrical Run
12. AC Power Plugs
13. Plumbing Pump House
14. Leak Testing + Airstream Wash Party
15. Moving the Airstream
16. Designing Outdoor Space
17. Cost Breakdown

We cannot wait to get our Tiny Shiny Home protected and covered from the elements.

Keep scrolling below to watch videos of each phase of the project as we complete it!

2. Cement Pad Pour & Footings

The next phase in building our Airstream Metal Truss Carport was to get a concrete pad poured with anchor bolts for the prefabricated trusses. Instead of doing this ourselves, we brought in the pros at Willcox Rock & Sand, and we're so glad we did.

3. Receive Materials, Shou Sugi Ban Wood, Erect Vertical Columns

With the concrete pad poured, it's time to officially start raising our Miracle Truss Airstream cover. But first we need to take delivery of the materials, order lumber, Shou Sugi Ban it for longevity, and begin the process by setting the vertical columns in place. Wish us luck!

4. Set Top Trusses, Level, Plumb & Square Building, Tighten, and Install Purlins

With the vertical columns raised it's time to set the top pieces of our Airstream cover. But with equipment rental shortages we have to get a little bit creative. Then we take time to square, level, and plumb everything before tightening the bolts and installing the purlins.

5. Install Metal Roofing & Trim

Metal roofing is never our favorite, but we enjoyed having a scissor lift and working with the smaller panels for this gabled roof. Just because the main structure is complete doesn't mean the project is over! There's still gutters, rain tank storage, electrical, and so much more to do. Keep watching!

6. Gutters & Downspouts for Rainwater Catchment

With the main structure built, it's time to turn our attention to utilities. First up is gutters and downspouts for our wet delivery rainwater storage and collection. This involved installing gutters at the proper pitch, building 4" downspouts and fabricating custom brackets while digging a trench to allow the water to flow underground to our storage tank.

7. Utility Holes, Trenches, & Planning

The Airport project continues! With the metal truss building finished, and our gutters and downspouts installed we turn our attention to utilities. Planning water, power and septic all in a small space was massively complicated, so let's see what we came up with.

8. Gray Water Septic

The next step in our metal truss Airstream cover is to design and build our very first gray water septic system or dry well. This will drain all our unused gray water out of sight and smell from the trailer for years to come.

9. Bury & Plumb Rainwater Catchment Tank

After filling in our septic hole, there was one last big hole to fill. The rainwater catchment tank. We'll be burying it 3' below ground, plumbing it, and running the gutter downspouts into the top to catch water.

10. Solar Pump House Planning & Foundation

Join us as we start planning and building version 3 of our solar water pump house! This iteration will include a concrete pad, 6" walls, AC and DC power, and an overflow drain. In part one we build the frame, pour the pad, and set the main structure in place.

11. Solar Pump House Finishing & Running Electrical

The solar pump house build continues, but first we go back in time to show you the process of running 120V AC power up to the Airport. Then we pick back up where we left off with the pump house and add walls, hinged roof, trim, insulation, and the solar panel. We're getting close!

12. Running AC Outlets

I don't know what was going on today, but everyone was in a mood 😂. Mischievousness abounds as we run all our power lines from our freshly installed AC power.

13. Plumbing Pump House + Building Mini VRM 12V Power System

Time to get nerdy, friends! Today we plumb the water system AND build the mini VRM 12V power system for the Airstream Carport Pump House. Hold on to your pocket protectors!

14. Leak Testing + Airstream Wash Party

And the two systems shall become one! The water pump is finally connected to the 12V system, everything is wired and cleaned up, and that concludes our utility work until the trailer is in place. Speaking of, it's time to get it shined up and ready for its big move. Let the Airstream wash party commence!

15. Moving Day

The day is finally here, friends! It's time to move our Tiny Shiny Home from its original location for the last 2.5 years to its brand new permanent home under the Metal Truss Carport. Let's do this!

16. Designing Outdoor Patio Living Space

The day after we moved the Airstream to the metal truss cover, Ashley and Jonathan go to town to gather materials to design the outdoor living space. Let's see what they come up with.

Cost Breakdown

So how much did this project cost? It definitely turned out to be the most complicated and expensive project we’ve worked on so far.

Now we’re going to try something a little different here - instead of overwhelming you with every single individual thing we bought, we’re just going to share the high level costs associated with this build.

So we spent about $38,000 on this project from start to finish, which sounds like a lot to us, but when you factor in the 50 year warranty on the Miracle Truss building, the entire pluming/pumphouse/electric/septic setup, and the concrete pad and finishing work. If we had hired this whole project out it would have cost so much more.

How's it Working Out?

It’s been about a month since we finished the Airport so we wanted to give a few updates.

First, we love it so much. The outdoor space, the added protection and shade, It all feels good. So far the shade vs. sun is working out just like we planned - parking the trailer on the SouthEast side means it is getting warmed during the winter, and should be shaded more in the summer.

The structure itself is super sturdy, and we’re not worried at all about the high winds here.

The pump house is working out great, too. The descaler has stopped almost all our calcium deposits, and the 4.5” of insulation, buried tank, and heated hose means we don’t have to worry about water freezing anymore.

Being able to relax outside checking our amazing view of the mountains while stoking a fire in our chimnea is pretty awesome. And so is having some overhead lights for when company is over.

And finally the graded and graveled area round the whole thing feels like home. For now at least.

Like we mentioned, the whole point of this project was to move the Airstream so we can start on our house. Which will be happening in the coming months.

So make sure you're subscribed because there is so much more to come. We’re just getting started and hope to see you again soon!

It's time for a new, very important project here on the Tiny Shiny Homestead! Berms and Swales will help us protect our property from flooding, wind, and fire while providing a way to catch, store, and divert water.

Because we live in the desert of SE Arizona where water tables are dropping and wells are a poor investment, we're turning to permaculture inspired designs to catch rainwater not only off of roofs, but with the ground on our property as well.

Berms and Swales are ancient techniques making a big comeback, showing us the way forward to create a sustainable, beautiful oasis in the desert that perfectly blends with the natural topography of the land.

These work by creating depressed trenches or swales on contour with your land that catch flowing water, as well as mounds or berms on the opposite side that can be planted with trees and grasses.

By planting native trees along our berms we can create fire and wind breaks, privacy screens, food forests, and even mulch and firewood over time. Their roots fortify the berms, and allow us to catch, store, and most importantly divert water during heavy monsoons to safe areas on the property.

This means we're creating more organic matter which leads to the soil storing more water which leads to sequestering carbon and reducing greenhouse gases. Plus the concentration of trees leads to increased diversity of animals and habitats which creates a symbiotic relationship with the land.

So yeah, berms and swales can be pretty awesome, and we’re excited to start this process.

Permaculture Plans - Our Big Dreams of Greening the Desert

If you’ve watched our Permaculture Plans video, you know we’ve already been working with Rudy Poe planning our entire property, and he’s used topo maps and sheet flow calculations to help us plan where our berms should go.

This article and the following videos will be focusing on the berm and swale installations on our property, so let's get started!

Step 1 - Planning & Marking the Main Berm & Swale

Today we’re focusing on the main berm and swale that cuts right though the middle of our 6 acre parcel and will help us determine our final house placement.

Rudy’s going to help us mark this important berm and swale, make sure we’re on contour, and fine tune our plans as we start implementing on the actual property.

Step 2 - Excavating the Main Berm & Swale

After marking where our berm and swale should go, it was time to bring in the heavy machinery! Let's take you through each step of the dig, and show you the process.

Step 3 - It's NOT WORKING Right? Half of the Swale Isn't Catching Water

The next step in our berm and swale project is to bring Rudy back to help us figure out why the North half of the swale isn't catching any water. We check contour and do some detective work further up past our fence.

Step 4 - CHIPPING OUR OWN MULCH in the Desert? 

Before we can seed our berms and slopes, we need mulch to lay down to help prevent wind and water erosion as well as retaining moisture. But we live in the desert! Mulch is very hard to come by so we invested in a small wood chipper to make our own.

Champion Chipper Shredder

Step 5 - WE BOUGHT SOME TREES!

What an exiting day, friends! We head to Parkland Tree Farm and buy the remaining 65 trees for our berm and swale. Can you believe it? We're so close!

Step 6 - TREE PLANTING PARTY- Community Helps Plant Berm & Swale

Such a huge day for our homestead! Our local community volunteered to help us smooth the berm and swale, lay the grass seed cover crop, and plant our trees, and work on various other digging projects. We could not have done this without them!

Step 7 - WHAT'S LEFT? Cleanup Work on the Berm & Swale Project

The berm and swale wasn't finished yet! After our big planting party we still had more trees to plant, secure, and mulch around. We also fortified our culvert area with rocks from our wash.

Step 8 - DRIP IRRIGATION? Yes, please! Berm & Swale Project

The last major final step in our berm and swale project was to run and connect drip irrigation to all our trees. This was important to save us not only time, but water as well since we're limited to how much we can haul in.

Step 9 - THEY MADE IT HAPPEN! Tree Sponsor & Donor Thanks for the Berm & Swale

Our berm and swale project would not have been possible without the support of our Tiny Shiny Tree Collective! These amazing folks sponsored trees and donated to help us realize our dream of greening the desert. Today we show you the process of sending them tiny instant photos and donating the trees we couldn't plant to those in our community.

Fujifilm Instax Mini 90

Full Project Build

Don't have time to watch all 9 videos? Here's a 1.5hr recap of the whole thing from start to finish with additional thoughts seeing the swale in action after a month of monsoon rains.

Welcome, friends! We've spent the last several weeks re-building our ShelterLogic Garage-in-a-Box tents to withstand the high UV and 100+mph wind events of the high desert here on our off-grid desert homestead. We did this by building barn door facings, hyperadobe earthbag walls, adding metal roofing panels, and giving them their own mini solar powered systems for good measure.

But first a little backstory. Our family is building an off-grid desert homestead from the ground up here in Cochise County, AZ. When we moved onto our raw land, we were coming off 5 years of full-time travel, and only had what we could fit in our truck and renovated Airstream.

But building property from scratch means your minimalism quickly goes out the window. Literally the day after we parked our trailer, we setup and installed a ShelterLogic Garage-in-a-Box to house our tools, water tank, and what we knew would be a whole lot more stuff in the near future.

At the time, this was the fastest and cheapest way to get a 12x20 covered structure up, and it was exactly what we needed. But over time the cracks in this product began to show. Literally.

While the metal frame that makes up the skeleton of the Garage-in-a-Box is super heavy duty, the vinyl zippered fronts and overhead canopy do not hold up well in a high desert climate.

If the zippers themselves weren’t breaking and making it impossible to get into or seal up the front and back, the main overhead cover itself was in a constant state of rips, tears, and leakage.

You can only gorilla tape it so many times guys. Trust us, we tried.

We even got a second one to act as a feed shed for our animals, and within less than a year it’s cover began to deteriorate as well.

During this time we were storing animal feed, the gear for our massive off-grid solar system, our tools, and so much more in these structures. And we always felt like we were a monsoon or windy day away from disaster.

We finally reached our breaking point, and had to decide if we were going to trash them and start over, or find a way to re-build them to withstand the rain, UV, wind, and weather events that are common in our desert environment.

The base model 12x20x8 Garage-in-a-Box only cost us $500 at the time, and a quick look around the internet told us that a pre-built shed or shipping container was going to run anywhere from $6k-$12k for something similarly sized.

So we put our heads together, and came up with a plan to rebuild the shelters ourselves!

Like we mentioned, the frames of these structures are actually really solid. So our plan was to use the existing skeleton, and replace all the vinyl.

Two important things before we jump in:

1. A huge thanks to Ecoflow for sponsoring this video! We’ll share more about their portable power station which we used in this project later.
2. Just in case you missed it, we’re re-building two ShelterLogic Garage-in-a-Boxes - our feed shed and garage. Both are very similar, but have a few key differences.

Alright, let’s get started.

Article Overview

1. Shou Sugi Ban Wood Preservation
2. Barn Door Wooden Plank Front Wall Build
3. Hyperadobe Earthbag Back Wall Build
4. Metal Roof Installation
5. Solar Panel Mounting
6. Feed Shed 12V Power System
7. Garage Ecoflow Solar Generator Power System
8. Final Soil Cement Plaster Application
9. Recap + Feature Highlights
10. Cost Breakdown
11. Wrap-up

Shou Sugi Ban Wood Preservation

The first step was to re-build the front panel with barn doors and wooden planks.

If you were wondering about the longevity of using wood here in the desert, you're on the right track. Using untreated lumber on any surface that the sun will hit causes that wood to warp, twist, crack, and quickly degrade.

Thankfully we learned about an ancient Japanese technique called Shou Sugi Ban that we’ve used successfully on a number of other projects. It preserves and strengthens the wood for much longer periods of time. Here’s how it works:

1. Using a propane torch, char all sides of the board
2. Take a stiff bristle brush and scrape off the char, pushing it into the pores of the wood
3. Brush on boiled linseed oil and let cure overnight

This process takes some time, and is super messy - but once finished you’ve got really well preserved wood that should hold up to the high UV and low humidity in the desert.

With the Shou Sugi Banning complete, it was time to start piecing together our new front.

Barn Door Wooden Plank Front Wall Build

A major selling point of the ShelterLogic tents was a nice wide opening for easy access to everything inside. So at least one of our walls needed a large, secure door to get stuff in and out. While these barn doors aren't as big as the original opening, we think they're a good trade-off for the increased stability and durability they provide compared to rolled up vinyl.

Step 1 - Build a door frame

Use 2 4x6 posts and a 2x6 header to create a frame for your door to hang in. Notch the top of the 4x6 posts so the header fits perfectly. Decide on the width of your door and the height of the header, and temporarily screw the 3 pieces together. Measure side to side and corner to corner to get everything square, and add another brace in the middle.

Step 2 - Cement the Door Frame in place

Lift your frame up, and finalize exactly where you want it to go. Use a stringline and level to set its depth in relation to the front of the tent. Make sure it’s centered, and then mark where the 4x6 posts should go.

Use an auger to create 2’-3’ holes for the posts to sit in. Their depth will be determined by how high you want the header to sit. Put the frame in the holes, add some gravel in the bottom for drainage, make adjustments for level and plumb. Once you’re ready throw some Quickcrete and water in the holes to lock the frame in place.

Step 3 - Bolt Door Frame to Metal Frame

Now comes the important part. We need this central frame to lock into the Garage-in-a-box frame. We do this by finding the spot where the header meets the metal frame, and drilling all the way through the pipe into the wood.

Then we secure with bolts, washers, and nuts. Before tightening everything up, scribe a line on the header where it goes past the edge of the curved frame. Then take a jigsaw and trim it to match. Now you can tighten the bolts, and we recommend 4” lag screws that go through the header into the posts for good measure.

Now you have a cemented, bolted, and (hopefully) square door frame that you’ll use to attach everything else to.

Step 4 - Install Steel Screw Hooks

Measure a few feet from the top and bottom of the frame, drill and screw in 4 Steel Screw Hooks. It’s ok if they go all the way through the 4x6 posts. If you can put these in at a slight upward angle it will help the Steel High Straps look more level for the next step.

Step 5 - Attach 2x6 to High Straps

Set the Steel High Straps on the Screw Hooks, and cut a 2x6 board that stops right before the hook. Get the 2x6 level, and then drill and bolt the High Strap to the 2x6. Do this for both the top and bottom.

Step 6 - Install Vertical Planks

With the 2x6’s in place, begin to install your 1x6 vertical planks. Cut them to the vertical height you need, and screw from the back into the 2x6’s. Start from the middle, and work your way to each end, leaving a little extra space between the middle boards.

As you get to the end where the bolts are, you’ll need to cut or drill out holes for them to poke through.

Step 7 - Cut Down the Middle

With all planks installed, you can now cut your 2x6 boards down the middle, and you’ve got swinging doors! Note, you may need to cut at least 1/2” out of the 2x6 for no pinching.

Step 8 - Install Facing Planks

Now that the door is finished, we need to close up the space above and to the side of the door frame. You’ll need two kinds of fasteners for this. Wood screws and self-drilling sheet metal screws.

What you’re trying to do is match the depth of the metal pole to a 2x4 you’re going to install on the side of the 4x6 post. Take a small piece of 1x6, set it against the metal frame, and mark where the 2x4 should go. If your Screw Hook went through the post, you’ll likely need to break this up into a few pieces. That’s ok, as the ShelterLogic frames tend to spread out a bit, and you’ll likely need to make adjustments the further you go down.

Put in your first 2x4, set a 1x6 in place, and scribe the curve on the back. Cut it off, bring it back, and you’re ready to install your first piece! Use the wood screws on the door frame side to screw into the 2x4, and a metal sheet screw to go straight into the metal pole. Since 1x6’s are so thin, we definitely recommend pre-drilling all the holes.

Once you get going on this, it’s really straightforward - mark the curve, cut, and install. The top boards will be a little different, but it’s basically the same idea.

Step 9 - Adding Door Supports

Remember those crazy winds we talked about. Well, they could totally push our brand new doors inward and start messing things up. So we like to add another 1x6 on the inside attached to the 4x6 posts far enough down to keep them from ever swinging inward.

We’ve also put a vertical door support on the left hand door for the right hand door to butt up against. Optional, but it will help stop water that might want to come through that large gap between doors.

Finally we created some angled 2x4 supports on each door that go from the top 2x6 to the bottom 2x6 for additional strength.

Step 10 - Add Door Hardware

Now we’re getting somewhere! Install whatever hardware you like. We used handles, swivel eye hasp latches, and cane bolt rods. For our feed shed, we made sure to instal the swivel latch and handles on the inside as well, since we often take goats in for milking and need to keep other animals out.

Finally we used some poles we had laying around and pounded them into the ground for the cane bolts to lock into for both closed and open door positions. With the wind we get here, both were important.

Earthbag Back Wall Build

The decision to fill in the back walls with Hyperadobe Earthbag came from a desire to keep costs down more than anything. Plywood or metal are not cheap right now, but hyperadobe rolls are only .15/linear ft. Using the soil on our property and leaving out the portland cement meant we spent a grand total of about $40 for the back walls of both structures. Not bad!

Even better, by laying the bag in the middle of the pole, the material would wrap around it as tamped into place, locking each layer in all the way up. This combined with the arched shape proved to confirm our theories - the completed back walls were super solid and structurally sound.

For these bags we just used our soil and some water, filled the bags, and tamped in place. Because of the tight spacing we could only use our bucket delivery system, and had to tamp with large pieces of wood as the metal tamps just kept running into the frame.

We also broke the wall build into multiple days to make sure we didn’t go too many layers high without letting them dry.

Halfway through the build, we decided to add a vent fan and window to the back wall. This was easy to do - it just required building the frames and cleating them in place, using the weight of the bags to lock them in.

The top portion was too difficult to fill with bags so we used some left over bottle bricks from the Chicken Garden project, mixed up some cobb, and filled the space.

For the feed shed, we decided to mix things up - we installed two lower pipe vents on the back wall while building the walls, and planned on putting the vent fan at the front.

Once the walls were built, we needed to start covering the bags. This was a two step process. The first scratch coat of plaster was a 9 parts sifted soil 1 part portland cement ratio that we made up in our cement mixer with water, then chinked between the bags before applying a 2” layer all over, filling in the gaps and trying to get the wall relatively uniform. We’ll come back to the final plaster coat in a bit.

Metal Roof Installation

With the front barn doors installed and the earthbag back walls built, we were finally ready to get rid of that stupid vinyl cover, and replace with something more permanent. We considered a few materials, but settled on custom metal roofing panels from our friends over at Thunder Mountain Metal.

The first step was to measure, measure, and measure again. While the panels are about 3’ wide once overlapped, they can be custom made to just about any length. To protect the wood and earthen plaster, as well as provide some shade we decided to go with 23’ long panels. And by our calculations we needed at least 8 panels to span the 21+’ distance from side to side when wrapped over the curve.

While we wanted this roof to be fairly waterproof, we didn’t feel like using butyl tape between each overlap was necessary. A few drops coming in wasn’t going to hurt anything.

Instead of the usual metal to wood screws, Thunder Mountain sent metal to metal self tapping screws. They even have a protected gasket to seal up the holes.

Before we could start, we had to remove the old vinyl covers and remove and re-install the 4’ augers to make sure they wouldn’t interfere with the metal panels.

The hardest part of the panel install was really just lining up our holes, and hitting the frame dead on. Because just a fraction of an inch to the left or right, the bit would slip off the rounded pole and break. We definitely messed up a few times, but found that pre-drilling helped.

The ShelterLogic pole ribs were 4’ apart, and we felt ok just screwing into those at each ridge on the panel. Where panels overlapped, we also put in an additional metal screw through both into the rib, and a shorter stitch screw on each overlapping ridge.

Usually you pick a direction for your overlaps, and lay all the panels accordingly, but because of the curve we had to reverse the overlap once we got past the half-way point. So we started at the bottom on one side, put the panels up until one when over the curve, then slide the next one underneath, and continued to put panels under so that water would flow correctly.

The final panel underlapped at least 2 or 3 ribs, but it worked out perfectly, with the metal sheet touching the ground on both sides. Screwing these panels in to the already secured front door frame and earthbag wall really locked in the whole structure, and gave it a super clean, professional feel inside and out.

Solar Panel Install

Like we mentioned earlier, each Garage-in-a-Box would be getting it’s own mini solar power system. We’ll get to the nerdy details of that soon, but the first step was to mount the solar panels themselves.

If you’ve seen our massive off-grid DIY solar power system video, then you know we’re big fans of SanTan Solar. They buy used residential and commercial panels, test them, and sell them for massively reduced costs.

Our 7200W panel array used their budget 240w panels, and we liked them so much we decided to buy some more for these buildings. And maybe for a few other projects coming up :). This helps simplify things here on the homestead - by having the same panels everywhere it’s much easier to keep track of their technical details and switch out panels if one were to break.

Here’s the thing - these panels are BIG. They’re 65”x35” and weigh almost 40lbs. And in case you hadn’t noticed, these ShelterLogic tents do not have flat roofs!

So how did we mount a massive solar panel to a rounded metal roof?

Thankfully we had dealt with a similar problem when installing solar panels on our renovated vintage Airstream. We found these Rocker Mount Feet from AM Solar, and they worked so well on that project that we used them again.

This was our process:

Step 1

Temporarily attach the mount adapter to the frame of the solar panel and then connect the L-Shaped Foot with the Knob. But don’t tighten it too much!

Step 2

Set your panel in place and adjust the feet to the curve of the roof. In our case we had to move the mounts inward a bit to make sure all the feet were touching the metal panels.

Step 3

Mark where the mount adapters should go, then drill and bolt them in place. Re-attach the L Foot Mounts (still loose), and set the panel back in place.

Step 4

For most installs you can just clean the metal surface and use the attached VHB tape to permanently stick it down. But in our case, the metal roofing panels had some small ridges that would have kept the feet from sitting flat on the entire surface. So we screwed the panels down as well.

The southwest side of the panel was the side that would get the most wind, so we made sure to screw those feet directly into the ShelterLogic Frame. Then for the back feet we screwed into some scrap pieces of wood for stability.

Step 5

An important part of the VHB tape actually working long term is to caulk around it and protect from UV rays. So we used some outdoor silicone to seal the feet and any additional holes we may have made during the roof installation.

Step 6

Finally, we made up our solar wires, connected them to the panel, and ran them through the wall, making sure to use zip ties and mounts to keep the wires held down tight.

With both 240W solar panels securely installed, it was time to tackle the power systems for each building. And both couldn’t be more different.

12V Feed Shed Power System

Our power goals for the feed shed were pretty simple. There needed to be a vent fan to keep air flow circulating, and lights so we could see when milking goats early or late in the day.

We decided to stay with a fully 12V system for the feed shed, buying USB lights and switches, and a DC based vent fan that we installed on the front of the building.

We also wanted to use this as an opportunity to test out connecting an additional power system to our Victron VRM Portal. Which was tricky, because this building wasn’t close enough to a steady wifi signal to get it to connect to the internet.

After a bunch of research, we settled on the GlobalLink 520 - a cell based VRM device that you connect to your charge controller and shunt, and it syncs the data with your account.

Now I’ll be honest, this power system is overkill for what we needed it to do - it was kind of more like a proof of concept for what we’ll be trying over in the Chicken Garden. There will also be a more detailed breakdown of this setup in a separate video and article, but here’s the basics:

240W Solar Panel (37V 8A)

This used 240W panel from SanTan Solar just had a positive and negative wire that we need to connect to the charge controller.

100AH Deep Cycle Lead Acid 12V Battery

Because the shed has temperature extremes of hot and cold, a Lead Acid battery would work just fine for our install. I grabbed a cheap Deep Cycle Marine battery from Walmart.

Storage Container Setup

We were going to build a power box for this, but found a plastic storage tote from the hardware store to put everything in. It was about 12"x26"x18", the battery fit perfectly, and we just cut a few pieces of scrap wood to mount everything to.

2 Pole 10A Circuit Breaker

We drilled a hole for the solar wires to come into the box, and added a 2 pole 10A circuit breaker in case of a power or lightning event.

Victron Smart Solar MPPT 75V/15A

From there we go through the solar charge controller. The SmartSolar MPPT 75V 15A is sized specifically for the solar panel. Positive and negative wires go to PV in, battery wires are detailed next. We also connected a VE.Direct cable to the GlobalLink 520.

25A Mini ANL Fuse

Coming out of the charge controller, the positive wire runs through a 25A Mini ANL fuse and cover for additional protection, and to the positive post of the battery.

Victron SmartShunt

The negative wire runs to the system minus side of the Victron Smart Shunt. The battery minus side of the shunt connects to the negative post of the battery. And the VBatt+ wire goes directly to the positive battery post. A VE.Direct cable connects to the GlobalLink520 as well.

DC Circuit Breaker and Fuse Block

From the positive battery post, we added a 25A DC Circuit breaker and fuse block to connect each item to so they could have separate fuses. The block has a few extra spaces should we decide to power more things in the future.

GlobalLink 520

The GlobalLink 520 needed power, so it is hardwired to the positive and negative post of the battery. And of course, the VE.Direct cables from the charge controller and shunt both connected here as well.

Loads

Finally, we ran the positive lines of each load to it’s own connection on the fuse block, and the negative lines to the system minus side of the shunt.

Vent Fan

This AC Infinity AIRTITAN T8 was the perfect size to fit over our barn doors, used DC motors so all I had to do was chop off the AC power brick and wire directly to the 12V system, and it has a temperature and humidity sensor with programmable alarms and settings to tell the fan to come one exactly when we want it to.

USB Lights and Switch

We found these super simple string lights that run very low power, have shatter proof bulbs, and connect using a USB connection. Technically USB is 5V so we needed a 12V USB outlet, and the model we found even had a switch for the whole thing. This worked out perfectly as an easy to access light switch for whoever was using the shed.

Again, this system is built to grow with us, and there’s plenty of headroom to add more things to power as we need them.

Garage Ecoflow Solar Generator Power System

We approached the power in the garage very differently. The fan we chose was higher power and AC based - plus it’s a garage! 120V power is kind of a no-brainer.

We wanted to charge our power tool batteries, have some lights, and run pretty much any other tool we might need. But this quickly got more complicated since it would involve an inverter.

And this is where I get to talk about our sponsor, Ecoflow. They sent us a DELTA Max 1600 Portable Power Station to review. An all-in-one unit that does DC power, AC power, and can be charged via solar panels was a perfect fit for our use case. Here’s a few other cool features of the DELTA Max:

1. EcoFlow power stations charge at 1,600W when plugged into AC Power - and you can combine up to 800W of additional solar input to charge it even faster.
2. Even though the DELTA Max 1600 acts as a 2000W generator, it can actually run 2,800W appliances thanks to X-Boost. It can even surge up to 5,000W. Let’s see your gas generator do that! With 6x 20 amp outlets, you can power all the things.
3. The Ecoflow app lets you monitor charge levels, usage data and adjust deep level settings via your smartphone.
4. Our unit shipped with about 1.6kwh of lithium battery storage, and you can expand with optional battery banks up to 6kwh. The plug and play nature makes it easy to assemble a small lithium battery bank and inverter based system quickly.
5. The unit is totally portable - it only weighs about 50lbs or the same as a small gas generator.
6. You can even use the DELTA as emergency backup power. With its high surge capacity you can still run many appliances in your house worry free.

Now let’s look at specifically how we set it up in our garage.

Solar Panel

Just like the feed shed, we used the same 240W solar panel mounted to the roof with wires run though the wall to connect to the Ecoflow unit. Now obviously the solar charges a lot slower than a direct AC connection, but the goal was that the solar panel would provide enough wattage to run the vent and intermittent power tools and keep the batteries charged up most of the time. So far, so good on that front.

Next we used Ecoflow’s special solar adapter which has an XT60 on one end, and two MC4 connectors on the other. I appreciate that they stuck with a standard solar connector that I was easily able to wire and connect myself.

120V AC Power Connections

On the AC side, we got a laughably long power strip at Harbor Freight, mounted to our work desk, and plugged in. This gave us easy access to power everything else without having to reach around the back to find the outlets each time.

We connected our AC Infinity AIRLIFT T10, an higher powered AC version of the vent fan we installed in the feed shed, ran its cables and sensor, and mounted the separate display so we could program it to come on when we wanted.

Then we plugged in our Dewalt battery charger so we would have a single place to charge batteries (hallelujah!).

Finally, we hung the same USB lights from the Feed Shed, but plugged them directly in to the DC panel on the front of the Ecoflow. If we want to turn them on or off, we just us the DC button.

The only thing I really needed to do out of the box to make this worked was to open the Ecoflow app and set the AC power not to shut itself off automatically overnight. Otherwise it’s been chugging along, running the vent fan, and powering tools like a champ!

Since the DELTA Max is still portable, we’ll be doing a more in-depth review later this year, using it for all sorts of projects. But for now we’re really loving having high wattage AC power in our garage that’s powered by the sun.

Final Soil Cement Plaster Application

Oh my goodness, it’s the final step! We headed back to those earthbag walls with their scratch plaster coat, and started applying the final coat. For this layer we went with an 8 parts native soil, 1 part portland cement ratio. 

Instead of applying by hand, we used a trowel to really compress and smooth the final layer, then came back across with a wet sponge moving in circular motions to bring a bit of the sand back up to the surface and add a subtle texture.

We made sure to mist these walls down a few times the next day, and went back with the sponge again to patch any hairline cracks that showed up.

These turned out to be a great final plastering test for our upcoming  larger chicken garden project, and we really like how it turned out.

Recap + Feature Highlights

Whew, what a rid this has been, friends! Our flimsy ShelterLogic Garage-in-a-Boxes got a complete high desert makeover. Let’s recap!

• Front facing barn doors and Shou Sugi Ban wooden planks provided a beautiful finished look
• The doors can be locked, held closed with fasteners from both sides, or held open with ground poles
• Vent fans helped circulate air so it doesn’t get trapped and heat up to dangerous temperatures
• Earthbag walls saved on material costs
• Windows and bottles provide beautiful light and views in the morning
• The metal roofing panels are securely mounted to the frame, keep the water out, and make it feel like a truly finished building
• Lights are super handy for working on projects at night or early morning animal feedings
• The feed shed 12V system is running well and connected to our VRM so we can see stats anytime
• The garage Ecoflow DELTA Max Power Station gives us true AC power for tools and projects while being charged back up by solar
• The whole thing is super solid now, we never have to worry about it leaking or blowing away

Cost Breakdown

We’re quickly learning that no matter how much work we do on a project, everyone just wants to know how much it cost! That’s fair. This whole re-build was definitely a cost benefit analysis, and we were constantly questioning whether we wanted to invest a chunk of money into these things or start over.

But like we mentioned, by the time you start researching other options like pre-built sheds or shipping containers, we felt like we could do it cheaper this way.

Let’s find out.

Feed Shed Materials

Feed Shed Power Gear

Feed Shed Total Cost

Garage Materials

Garage Power Gear

Garage Total Cost

So as you can see the base materials of these buildings came in way cheaper than anything else out on the market. Of course, a whole lot more elbow grease was involved. But that's not anything we're scared of. And with an extra investment we were able two add two different kinds of solar power systems as well. Sweet!

Wrap-Up

Whew! Can you believe you made it this far? Can you believe we made it this far? What a project this turned out to be! Maybe one day we’ll have wads of cash laying around that we can throw at pre-built sheds and shipping containers, but for now we’re happy to roll our sleeves up, use our brains, and come up with better solutions.

If you’ve enjoyed this project, you may want to check out a few of our other full builds here on the homestead:

1. Hyperadobe Solar Shed Office
2. DIY Off-Grid Solar System
3. Earthbag Chicken Garden 
4. Solar Powered Water Pump

We’re just getting started out here, and there’s lots more to come. We hope to see you again soon!