Desert Homestead: Electrical Prep & Freedom Philosophy!
In this episode of Occupy the Land, we dive into
In this episode of Occupy the Land, we push forward with our Arizona desert dome build, planning electrical outlets, light switches, and PEX water lines within earthbag walls and two-by-four framing. We prepare for custom cement countertops and map out drains for the kitchen, bathroom, and laundry areas, ensuring proper slopes for septic drainage. Amidst a sudden desert rain, we tackle a rutted road with the tractor, highlighting the challenges of monsoon season and the need for preparedness. Join us as we balance utility installation with navigating flash flood risks in our off-grid homestead!
Transcript:
00:00:00:00 – 00:01:03:26
Unknown
We’re going to be doing some more bags. One of the things is we have to make sure we know where the electrical outlets and stuff go. We’re going to have for the kitchen and some of the areas under the wall. We’re putting a refrigerator and so on. It’s going to be two by four framing. So where are we putting the counters?
00:01:03:28 – 00:01:32:22
Unknown
We’re going to be building and pouring our own cement countertops and playing with that. I’m looking forward to doing that, everybody. Yeah, whatever. Get over it. We’re going to be experimenting with that. So the support for that is going to be two by four construction, which means as we penetrate the earth, bag walls which are 16in thick, as we, bring in the electrical from outside, we’ll run it in through that two by four regular framing up to about waist high.
00:01:32:24 – 00:02:01:13
Unknown
So that will be traditional. But when we get up to, the higher ones where we have the light switches and so on coming in through the masonry, we’re going to need to have the cleats like this one here. We’re going to be doing, cleats inside the bedroom area over here. Now these are going to be hot glue done down real quick so that when we bring in the lines, we can fish them through these openings and then come out and go through and whatever.
00:02:01:14 – 00:02:33:04
Unknown
This makes it a lot easier. So the bags out that dig it out and stuff like that. We’ve had problems in the past and we actually did that. But so in the bedroom, we’re going to be using these cleats to run the electrical wires around where it comes in from the utility room. Now we have on the outside in here and over there, we’re going to have outside electrical outlets, and that will come through the utility wall through this three quarter inch, PVC.
00:02:33:07 – 00:02:57:10
Unknown
We’ll be running room lights out to the outside. Now we can have conduit that comes on the inside and run it that way. But I want to try and run it around the outside, and I have to worry about that and see if that works. I’m sure it will. Because when we do this, you fill these gaps and the ro max will just have staples, you know, these big, you nails that will go in and hold the ro max inside here.
00:02:57:15 – 00:03:23:17
Unknown
You also do that with the, the pex water. Red and blue, hot and cold water lines. So that’ll be embedded into the masonry that we’re putting here. Now we were going to put a cleat over here that was going to be inside the kitchen area. I mean kitchen inside a little closet that we’re going to have here going up to the bathroom entrance.
00:03:23:20 – 00:03:47:15
Unknown
But because we’re going to be doing a, wall here out of two by four construction, we’ll just run the wire in and just do a traditional, wall box for the outlet and light switches and so on in here. So I don’t have to do that. Now, this wall is going to be a two by four construction, and it’ll go up at least eight, ten feet.
00:03:47:15 – 00:04:04:10
Unknown
Whatever we’re going to, you know, be a high wall. Now we’re thinking of doing a loft, and they may make it in such a way that we can add it later, but we’re probably not going to do it this time because, you know, more easy construction. I want to experiment with the dome and a little bit different things I want to do before we do the home bill.
00:04:04:13 – 00:04:25:07
Unknown
So, we probably won’t be doing too much of a loft, but we will have some storage up there. On top of that, we’ll see how that goes. Now, the blue lines, what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to be bringing in the water. We’ll come in from the outside when we’re having our pressure, the pressure tank and the water.
00:04:25:13 – 00:04:47:10
Unknown
And this is where we’re going to build a little, house kind of from the elements and so on for putting our batteries and inverters and so on outside because, we don’t I’m not really worried about it, but we did have a, and a, charge controller fire. And don’t it rather have it outside? So we’re going to do that, and I doubt it’s going to make it through here.
00:04:47:12 – 00:05:12:03
Unknown
So we’re going to go ahead and have the water come in, the PEX lines. And then it’ll go back in to hot water heater a B in the corner here. And then it goes to the faucets and so on through the two by four walls. Now this is drain that’s coming in. And you can see that we can the whole drill through the two by four, wall and everything and put the drains where we want.
00:05:12:05 – 00:05:37:06
Unknown
So this is going to be the drain from the kitchen sink. Then we have a, you know, stove top, pot filler, faucet that I want to have here be for convenience. Then the water lines will run along the wall and go through this wall to have water to go to the refrigerator for the icemaker and, whatever else we want to do with that.
00:05:37:06 – 00:05:59:19
Unknown
But we just need a little water line for the refrigerator. Now, this is the main thing, is the sink over here, and then it goes into the bathroom. So as we bring through the wall, we’re going to do this at another level. And it’ll come in through the two by four wall here. And we’ll go to, we have the shower and so on.
00:05:59:19 – 00:06:20:19
Unknown
That’ll be here. And maybe a bath I’m looking at. It’s going to be a big shower. You know, or a bath. We’ll see. You know how much you never want to put it into there. Because once we get the outside shell done, we do whatever we want on the inside and take time of whatever. Now then we’re going to go over to the, of course, we need the water for the toilet.
00:06:20:19 – 00:06:44:01
Unknown
And this is, toilet drain. Then we have the vanity will go here, and it might be pretty, pretty big. We’re going to, you know, have some room. Then we need it for the washing machine. That’ll be way over here. Now, these drains, as the drain for the washing machine. We did everything in two inch. Now, normally for sinks, you have.
00:06:44:07 – 00:07:03:27
Unknown
You know, some two inch, you know, for the shower and the, tub and maybe the washing machine and then your sinks and vanity and so on. We’ll do inch and a half and it kind of steps down into to ask, we’re just going to do all two edge. You don’t have to worry about it. So and we’ll have the venting on the ends here that will vent everything sort of drain.
00:07:03:27 – 00:07:26:19
Unknown
Well and then it goes down. You get like an eight to a quarter bubble. Now what that means is this drain when you have the, bubble and there’s an eight, it’s about like that. And then a quarter is about like that. So you need at least an eight to a quarter.
00:07:26:21 – 00:07:50:19
Unknown
Drop in this to be able to, make sure you’re getting it fully drained from the sink into here. And then it goes down into this one. This is the main drain for the sinks and so on. That would be here. This one is for the bath and shower. This is for the, toilet. And then I have another one.
00:07:50:21 – 00:08:12:29
Unknown
That is there that we’re probably going to do. The washer dryer will come in the here and we have the drainage all to go in to that. That goes to our septic system over there. So this is what we’re doing now and what we have as we do the electrical panel. It’s probably going to go here inside a two by four framed wall.
00:08:13:01 – 00:08:46:04
Unknown
Now, originally I had planned on putting it over here behind this door that was open, going to the outside, my preference would be here. But now inside the, earth bag walls and everything. You could do it, but it’d just be an unnecessary thing, you know? So I’m thinking we’ll just make it, you know, cosmetically cool and frame it and make it, you know, whatever, and put logos on it or whatever and have the, door here for the circuit breaker box.
00:08:46:06 – 00:09:10:21
Unknown
Now we only need to bring one line or two lines over here, one that goes to the outside outlets and one that goes into the bedroom outlet. Now, because we had this framed and like, it was, one inch by four inch PVC baseboard that we tried, and using the framing on doing the, pour of the concrete here in this room.
00:09:10:28 – 00:09:36:08
Unknown
I really like that idea, that stuff. And you see, it’s a thicker stuff over there and, and it bends well. And we moved well, but it left a groove here about, three quarters of an inch wide that we can run all our electrical down here. Now, I can put some foam in the bottom, press it in there, foam it on top, have, the two by fours going inside here.
00:09:36:10 – 00:10:00:12
Unknown
I think that’s what we’re going to do. I want to try that because the other option is you use little staples that go into the walls and these grooves, and you put all your own micromax there. So we may do that. We may not. We may just run it through the wall. And so on. But the lines that are coming in from the inverter over there, just where our utilities will be, we have our water and electrical coming in.
00:10:00:12 – 00:10:17:07
Unknown
It’ll go down and we’ll go around to the control box. Now the big thing is, is the drains. The drains need to go through the walls that are two by four just to make it easier. And we get the right drainage and so on, and, just make my life easier. So that’s what we’re going to be doing.
00:10:17:12 – 00:10:35:05
Unknown
So we’re going to be doing this next layer of, earth bags. And we thought we would have a lot more work to do with a lot of the, cleats that we’d have the electrical and so on, but it doesn’t really look like it looks like it’s just going to be this one, because this is going to be a masonry wall.
00:10:35:08 – 00:10:50:00
Unknown
So we’re going to have the electrical outlet that goes here with the cleat. And then the rest of them are going to be going in walls. Now when we get up, you know, to light switch height, then we’re going to need to be doing a lot more of that. So we have a lot of these available for that.
00:10:50:03 – 00:11:11:14
Unknown
So that’s what we’re doing today. You know we we can’t really hyperlapse and show stuff that we’re doing because it’s so hard still over a hundred degrees and, and you know, it’s not 120. I mean, you know, that at least average 108, you know, you know, the summer. So the cameras and the phones and everything, they just go out there.
00:11:11:16 – 00:11:42:23
Unknown
We had to put this camera in the freezer, you know, for a while just to get it go this long. So it’s, we’re going to get on this now and we’ll have another layer. And as we start adding in more of the utilities, more of the cleats for the door frames and so on, we will make sure you get the details piece.
00:11:42:26 – 00:11:55:18
Unknown
Now we’re getting a little bit of rain. Not much. Just enough to wet the ground a little bit. We’ll take it.
00:11:55:20 – 00:12:13:20
Unknown
This is Kotori.
00:12:13:23 – 00:13:16:27
Unknown
But.
00:13:16:29 – 00:13:41:28
Unknown
Yeah, I had to go get the drone. I wanted to go see how the flow was down there. We cleared off this road and everything, so it makes it. It’s pretty level. It’s only about a foot deep. And, that’s keeping it flowing pretty even. It’s going to make it a big, giant run. But, can we get some monsoons?
00:13:42:00 – 00:13:57:11
Unknown
This is just a little rain. Yeah. Big rain. We’re going to be stuck back here. This is where it’s going to be.
00:13:57:13 – 00:14:18:00
Unknown
You know, this is the North Road, and I’ve done some drain, you know, controlled here trying to do that. And this is what we call a cow tree. And, this is the corner we go down that way, you go home and then this.
00:14:18:02 – 00:14:32:06
Unknown
Whoa. Well, we got stuck there. Monitor the rest. You gotta hurry up before that rain over there comes over this mountain, and it’ll come.
00:14:32:09 – 00:14:37:20
Unknown
Yeah, yeah.
00:14:37:23 – 00:14:43:25
Unknown
It it. Then.
00:14:43:27 – 00:15:07:14
Unknown
Yeah. It just dropped down any time. Go. I knew that was just going to get worse. So I got the straps out. Probably pull it out pretty quick, but we got to get to it because the weather be a common thought. This was just a short rain here, but it’s up in the mountains and you get the, the flash flood thing going on.
00:15:07:16 – 00:15:30:22
Unknown
And it made a rut right there on the out here with the tractor. I get to it, clean all this up and have to wait. So much rain. Yep yep yep yep yep yep yep yep. And the road. This is the way that we go out. You know the main primary way. Yep. Still flowing.
00:15:30:25 – 00:15:56:25
Unknown
Yeah. All that drainage from that makes it to here. Because this road this wash trail, whatever was here, that’s what it does. And it also comes down this one. This is you know, at the end of this road is where we are. So it looks like that’s just going to come again. We could get stuck back here for weeks during a monsoon, which we were warned.
00:15:57:00 – 00:16:03:03
Unknown
We kind of knew that. But, I’ll make sure you got enough food and water.
00:16:03:06 – 00:16:10:15
Unknown
And just in time.
In this episode of Occupy the Land, we dive into
In this episode of Occupy the Land, we brace for
In this episode of Occupy the Land, we dive into