[Danny] Here we are, in the middle of nowhere.
[Karen] And we're building our strawbale house
at the foothills of the Mule Mountains.
You ready?
-[Karen] The wind's gonna get pretty rough. -Oh!
We got a little bit of a bulge right here.
-[Danny] Look out! -[Karen] Whoa!
It's gonna fall on you!
[Karen] Yeah, let's go! Back!
The cows have discovered that we have straw.
It's a black tail rattlesnake. Whoa!
This heat is killing us.
It's dirt. It's no longer mud. Look at it.
[Karen] It's monsoon season
and all the water just came down into our straw bale
and rotted it out.
[Danny] We're reaching the end of the budget.
But not the end of the build. Oops!
[narrator] Are you ready to go off the grid?
[upbeat instrumental rock music playing]
[Danny] Now, what do you think of this stuff, honey?
I like this spot.
[Danny] We're still a little close to the road over there.
Maybe we wanna go over that way a little bit.
So here we are, in the middle of nowhere,
in southeast Arizona, on 20 acres we call Roadrunner Flats.
We get about 10-12 inches of rain a year,
so we are not in the desert.
And we're almost at 5,000 feet elevation.
We have 360-degree views.
We've got five mountain ranges we can see.
We got an excellent view of Mexico right there.
So if you ever want to know if it snows in Mexico,
it does.
[Danny] The views are spectacular.
We just fell in love with the place.
-I'm Karen. -I'm Danny.
[Karen] And we're building our strawbale house
at the foothills of the Mule Mountains.
Our build site is in Bisbee, Arizona,
about an hour-and-a-half southeast of Tucson.
So we're currently living in our RV.
We've been doing that for a couple of years now.
But RV is like, what, 200-300 square feet?
[Danny] We've had a lot of fun in this RV.
But I would rather have a kitchen.
And a place to stand.
Well, I'm the cook around here. Tell me about it.
[both laugh]
It's comfy, it's great. But it's temporary.
Here's to living in a house, eh?
-Soon. -[laughs]
[Danny] What do you think? Somewhere around here?
-It feels like home. -Feels like home.
[Karen] What do you think, Charlie girl?
You wanna live here?
She's the decider.
[chuckles]
So, we're building a strawbale house.
We kind of were inspired by the earthships.
But with the earthships, they recycle tires, and to do that,
you have to sledgehammer dirt
into the tires as you're building the wall.
-Karen said... -"I want one of these."
Yeah, so, I said, well, I'm not pounding tires.
But I will help build a strawbale version of it.
And so, that's what we're doing.
[upbeat music playing]
[Danny] I've always liked the idea of being off-grid.
We don't have to rely on anyone else for anything.
[Karen] We can take this piece of land
that everybody else just kind of saw as wasteland
and we can turn it into our home, into this masterpiece.
I used to work on boats
so a lot of carpentry skills there.
I've remodeled houses and had side jobs as a carpenter.
[Karen] We're ready.
We're building a strawbale house
with an attached greenhouse on the south side.
And when you walk in, it's gonna be the living room,
and the big masonry heater that's gonna keep us toasty warm.
And then behind that is the kitchen and the dining room,
with a bedroom and bathroom in the back.
We're totally off-grid.
So we've got solar power for all of our power needs.
We've got a masonry heater and passive solar for our heat.
We've got well water for our water.
And we've also got rain catchment.
We're building a 1500-square foot house.
Our budget is about $100,000, but he wants a little more.
And we're hoping to get it done by about six months from now.
We've got some challenges.
We've got the monsoon season coming up.
It's in the middle of nowhere. What if I had a heart attack or something?
If you've seen the roads coming in here,
it would take somebody so long to get here.
So hospitals are pretty far away.
[Karen] It's our forever home.
And it's gonna stand for 100 years and we're gonna pass it on to the kids
and have something to be really proud of, you know?
You better watch what you're committing to.
[upbeat music playing]
The first thing we had to do was clean the land.
But we had snow on day one.
I only have one thing to say about this white stuff here.
Get off my lawn!
[laughs]
So, we canceled day one.
[Karen] So once that snow melted,
we went right into digging the footers.
After that, it was time to frame 'em up!
So, you know, we're off to a good start.
[Danny] All right, so got our footers in.
And the next thing we have to do is a stem wall.
[Karen] There's the concrete footer and this is what connects it
to the slab that's on top.
Because we're doing passive solar,
one of the things we would have to do is insulate our stem wall.
But we found a product.
It's an insulated concrete form.
So it actually acts as your form to pour the concrete into.
It's made out of polystyrene, so it's your insulation as well.
[Karen] So there's two pieces and they go together
and then there's these plastic inserts
that you use to keep the distance between 'em.
It makes it one solid piece.
[Danny] Go down a little bit more. There you go.
They're very light and maneuverable.
[Karen] And I can do this.
[Danny] The complicated part
is we have some wind conditions today
and it's gonna get up to 16 miles an hour.
So I'm a little concerned with that.
There's that wind we were talking about.
[Karen] It's a-coming!
I think in the next hour or two, the wind's gonna get pretty rough.
And this stuff's all gonna start blowing away.
So ideally,
we're gonna have it in place before then.
-[upbeat music playing] -[drilling]
We gotta pick out the corners.
I think it's gonna be perfect.
Once we figure out the corners, we're gonna get 'em glued down.
And they won't fly away.
[groans]
All right, last piece!
[Danny] There we go.
Bam! Done-zo!
And that... is a day.
[Danny] All right.
[upbeat instrumental rock music playing]
[Karen] Yesterday, we put in our ICFs.
Today is the day of our pour.
Cement truck's coming and... here we go.
-These ICF forms... -[Danny] New to us.
I mean, they say they're great.
But, we'll see. They could blow out.
We're gonna know real shortly here, right?
[Karen laughs]
The worst possible scenario I guess would be a breach
in one or more places,
that the concrete forms don't hold.
Here we go, folks!
Seems to be holding.
[Karen] We get the first bit done, it's like,
-"This is working!" -"This is holding just fine."
"It's doing good!"
So far it's gravy!
-No jinxing here. -[laughs]
[Karen] And then we turn the first corner.
And there's a bulge.
Hold!
We got a little bit of a bulge right here.
-[Karen] Stop, stop, stop, stop! -[Danny] Up, up, up!
[Karen] We started out so good!
[Danny] Hold!
-[Karen] Stop, stop, stop, stop! -[Danny] Up, up, up!
[Karen] And we're like,
is it gonna? Is it gonna? Is it gonna?
-And it held. It did great. -It held.
-Those ICFs, they're handy! -Yeah, they're working.
[Karen] Ooh yay!
-[Danny laughs] -It's holding.
[Danny] Here comes some more. You ready?
-All right. -[Karen groaning]
[Danny] So we're doing good.
The level's looking good for a foundation.
We're well over halfway with our pour
so I think everything's gonna be perfect.
[Karen] Whoa! We got so much.
[Danny] Forward!
We got 'em in!
[in deep voice] I love pouring concrete first thing in the morning!
[Danny groans]
What a team, man. We're working good here.
-[Karen] We're working fast. -Yeah.
So we have this dog, and she's a rescue.
Her name's Charlie Girl. But she loves me a ton.
In your face 24/7, pretty much.
What are you doing?
Silly girl. Come on. Out you go. [laughs]
Well, the dog wanted to be memorialized.
She's got some paw prints.
She will forever be remembered. It's kind of sweet.
[Danny] We're done, man.
We managed to get through it with the help of friends.
Look at us!
First time through the front door!
[Karen] Are you gonna carry me?
-No! No! -[laughing]
I am not!
[upbeat music playing]
[Danny] Since we poured the foundation wall,
we've moved 62 tons of pea gravel by hand
inside of that perimeter.
And then we poured a four or five-inch slab
over the top of that.
And it's just smooth as anything.
That's gonna be our permanent floor
as part of the passive solar arrangement.
[Karen sighs]
Yay!
It feels so good. It's all... it's all up from here, right?
-Yeah. -Yeah.
[Danny] Today, we're gonna put walls up.
[Karen] So what we're building is a 1500-square foot strawbale house.
And so, the walls that we're putting up are actually wall trusses.
Instead of your typical two-by-four, two-by-six wall construction,
ours are actually 16 inches wide
and the way it works is,
that wall truss stands up
and then the strawbales just press up against it.
And so, they're the width of the strawbale.
[Karen] Whoa!
The wind will take these.
[Danny] We'll put some serious nails in the bottom.
On top of these walls, we've gotta put box beams.
Basically, what I'm building is a three-sided box.
And that's a beam that's gonna be on top of the wall trusses
to support the roof.
[Karen] They're heavy.
-They're very heavy. -They're heavy.
[Danny] Yeah, they weigh 200, 300 pounds, somewhere in there.
That's the situation we're facing today.
Luckily, we have a neighbor with a tractor.
And we're gonna put these forklift arms on it
and hopefully that'll give us enough height.
So we're gonna lift these box beams
precariously on top of these wall trusses.
We'll have some ropes on the end.
But we gotta perch them on these trusses,
and there's only an inch-and-a-half on each side.
So it's gonna take a little maneuvering and it's this windy day.
[man] It is, indeed.
[Danny] I don't know if we're gonna be able to do it or not.
-[Sheryl] I'm ready. -[Danny] All right.
-You ready? -Let's do it.
All right.
So the big challenges that we have today
is not only that these box beams
-weigh like 200 to 300 pounds... -[Danny] Yeah.
[Karen] ...but they say our winds are supposed to be 10 miles per hour.
But 10 miles per hour means
-20 to 25 on a normal day. -Yeah, there's always gusts as well.
Okay.
[Karen] My number one concern about lifting this up is the wind.
You know, we're holding it with guide ropes
and I've done that before and that's cool.
We've got good knots on the end to hold it together.
But a good gust
and you're not holding that guide rope,
that thing might swing and hit you in the head.
Might knock your ladder out.
I mean, it's 200 pounds flying in the air.
-On a windy day. -[Danny] Yeah.
[Karen] I need to come forward.
-Whoa! -[Danny] Whoa!
[Danny] Whoa. Hold it right there.
Actually, bring it up just a hair.
Yeah, I know. I'm trying to do it slow.
[Karen] Well, wait for the gust.
[Danny] Oh!
It needs to come your way.
Yeah. We have to lock that side down,
then it's push the whole thing over this way.
Sheryl can drive.
-She's pretty good, yeah. -She's so good.
[nail gun firing]
Here comes the wind!
Right now, it's way too windy to be doing this.
-You want it down some? -[Danny] Yeah.
[Danny] She came in, lowered that thing down nice and slow.
I was amazed how slow she could lower it.
-[Sheryl] Oh, yeah. -[Danny] Right there.
[Sheryl] There you go.
-[nail gun firing] -[Danny] Okay, that's good.
-Will you unhook that strap? -[Danny] Yeah!
[groans]
Boom! First one locked down.
-Wow. Nice driving, babe. -[Sheryl laughs]
Look at that.
-Looking good? -Looking good.
[Danny] Once we get another side on,
it'll be stronger and then the third side will be stronger yet.
Well, we can try it again.
The wind's picking up again.
[upbeat music playing]
Ready? Pick it on up.
[Karen] I'm on it.
-[Danny] Look out! -[Karen] Whoa!
[Danny] We're right in a critical stage up at the top.
Karen's trying to maneuver her side,
I'm trying to maneuver my side.
And the next thing you know...
-Look out! -[Karen] Whoa!
This gust of wind just jerks the rope.
I was like...
-Whoa! -...falling backwards and almost tripped over a pipe.
Let's give this wind a minute.
-It was just a gust, so... -It was a doozy.
I'm sure glad that it didn't hit anybody.
-Okay, we're ready now? -[Danny] Yeah.
She's coming.
[Karen] After that, it went really smoothly.
[upbeat music playing]
[Danny] And once we knew what we were doing, too,
-it went a lot quicker. -[Karen] Yeah.
But, I mean, that's always the way.
-The first one always takes the longest. -Yeah.
[Danny] So we got this set of walls up.
I have to duplicate that on the other side of the house.
And, wow, within two weeks, we're gonna be putting strawbales in,
we'll have walls. That's amazing.
We ended up getting all our perimeter walls up.
Everything's solid. That was pretty cool.
[dog barking]
You know what time it is now?
It's strawbale time!
-Oh right, that's true. Strawbales. -[Karen laughs]
-But what did you order? Hundred and-- -Hundred and thirty-five.
Hundred and thirty five bales.
And so, those are all unloaded onto the slab.
But a lot of them have to be cut to size
and they've got to be wedged in.
And we gotta tie them all in to each other.
If we were to do this by ourselves, it'd probably take us two weeks.
But luckily,
-Karen once again... you got some resources. -We have friends.
[Karen] You spread out the word, people come.
[Danny] All right, so our mission today is to put these strawbales
into these trusses.
Right in here.
We're gonna stuff those in there.
Some of them are at the exact size they need to be.
And some of them are not.
And sometimes, that fourth bale up on top
needs a little bit of persuasion.
This is the Thor hammer.
And this gives us enough weight
to knock that bale around a bit.
Okay, guys, we'll turn you loose.
Nice. Like a glove.
Now, see how easy that was,
when you got the right size.
Let's try going in together. [grunts]
-Like a glove. -Yeah.
Push it this way a little bit, Mike.
There you go, you're coming.
[Karen] All right, now the hard part.
[Danny] Ooh, that one's way tall.
I think I'm gonna chainsaw it.
[Karen] Oh, that was too easy.
-[Danny] How about that? -[Karen] Good job.
-How'd you like that chainsaw thing? -That was pretty good.
-Right? -[chuckling] Yeah.
[Karen] So we did an introduction.
We showed 'em how to stack and where to put 'em.
And then they just did it.
[Danny] They broke up into little units.
And just moved in. They started doing this wall.
Another unit started doing this corner.
-It was amazing. -Yeah.
[upbeat music playing]
[Danny] Well, I'm using the knuckle buster.
We're just an inch or so wide.
Usually, if you can get down to where the strings are,
you're pretty clear.
Let me get the hammer on there while you push.
Another successful operation by the Thor hammer!
[man 1] Whoo!
-[grunts] -[laughs]
[Danny] All right, everybody, be careful.
These bales that are stacked up high,
we don't want 'em falling on you, they're about 90 pounds.
They could break a leg or a hip.
And I know it's important to you young folks.
Moving them around, it could be dangerous.
There's straw all over the floor, it's slippery.
You're carrying 60 to 90 pounds on you.
You can't see what's in front of you.
Whoa!
Guys, look out, it's gonna fall on you!
-Look out! -[indistinct shouting]
One, two, three!
Whoa! Look out, it's gonna fall on you!
-[indistinct shouting] -[man 1] Near miss.
Holy cow, man. That was lucky.
Somebody was trying to stack a bale, and it fell over.
I guess we shouldn't stack 'em that high.
[Danny] Luckily, they were able to get out of the way.
Nobody got hurt on that, I'm so glad.
-I suppose you need a little hand, lifting that. -[Mike] You could.
[Danny] Once everybody saw that there could be potential problems,
they started paying a little bit more attention
and safety conscious and all that stuff
and it was smooth sailing after that, everything went well.
Oh, yeah, look at this.
It's amazing how quick it went up.
But this team worked.
Like, little separate units just worked all together
to make this stuff happen, it was awesome.
That's it.
We're calling it.
Whoo-hoo!
Touched my heart when all these people turned up.
Boom!
Yeah, everybody's gonna be invited here forever.
Because, you know, they're all a part of it.
It's kinda cool.
You know what time it is?
-Quittin' time. -Quittin' time.
[upbeat instrumental rock music playing]
[Karen] Good morning!
Welcome, everybody. We are super excited
to introduce you all to the wonderful world
of industrial hemp building.
[Danny] Today's gonna be a great day.
'Cause we got Micaela and Vince to come out
to do some hempcrete work for us.
But at the same time, they're gonna provide a workshop.
[Vince] We use a product that is sustainable,
non-toxic, mold resistant,
-and good for the planet. -[motor starts]
[Vince] We take hemp powder, lime, porcelain, water,
and depending on the method of build,
we create different ratios of that recipe
that fit what is needed.
All right, so first, I'm gonna need you
to fill up my smaller bucket here.
-Right. -With the pre-mix that Vince has made for us.
[Danny] We're just doing one part of the wall that connects our bathroom.
We don't want any mold or mildew going on in there.
So I feel we're sealing off that potential problem.
-[Karen] How's that look? -[Micaela] That looks great.
[Danny] Okay, I see you've made a form out of the wall.
Yeah, so we've taken your existing framing...
-Yeah. -...and we've just made a cavity.
-Okay. -Right? So we've got some plywood on each side.
-Yeah. -And what we're gonna be doing
-is taking our hemp-lime mix... - [Danny] Yep.
...you're gonna take your tamper,
-give it a good smash. -All right.
And we're gonna continue the process over and over.
[Danny] You basically put the hempcrete in between,
tamp it down
and once you've filled that up, you can move the plywood up
and just continually move that up your wall.
-Cool. -[man whistles]
[Danny] And your wall is complete when you're done.
It's still wet. It still has to cure.
But it's right there in place.
It's getting pretty tight here.
I'm gonna have to do it sideways.
I'm loving this!
-[Danny] Look at that! -Whoa!
[Danny] Look at all the layers. Isn't that cool?
[Karen] Wow.
[Danny] So we've gone from dirt to walls up and bales in.
-That's pretty fast. -[Karen] Look at that.
[Danny] Yeah, it's solid as anything.
Big grin. I'm happy.
But monsoon season... it's coming, babe.
-Real soon. -It's right around the corner.
We just can't afford to take time off
and we can't afford to slow down.
So I hope you're up for it.
You remember that vacation you wanted to take in Mexico?
Yeah, I think that's out.
-Sorry. -Yeah.
[Karen] We have a really unique problem
that most builds don't have to deal with.
This whole mountainside is open range cattle grazing.
And let's just say we've had a few issues.
The cows have discovered that we have straw.
So I've literally gotta block off all the doorways
so they won't come in
and eat this precious commodity.
[Karen] Let's go! Out!
[mooing]
Let's go!
It's gonna be a long night.
If we can't get these cows to move out of the way, we got problems.
-Yeah, you too. -[mooing]
[Danny] Get! Get! Get on out! Go! Get on out!
-[cows mooing] -Get over!
[upbeat instrumental rock music playing]
-[honking] -[mooing]
[Karen] These open range cows, they haven't totally moved away.
But we've put up some preventative measures
to keep them from eating the house.
[Danny] We have stucco netting wrapped and tied around here.
We've got some boards over the doors.
I feel pretty safe now. They'll have a hard time getting in there.
[Karen] We've been working hard.
So we put on the roof. We had to do all the I-beams.
We had to sheet it.
And then we put the metal on it.
-And we've been mudding for months. -Forever.
[Karen] We're mudding the outside of the strawbales.
And we have really finely chopped straw,
and that's what protects it from just washing all away.
The straw, like, actually interconnects itself
and it makes it like a solid structure.
I think we've probably put 400 or 500 gallons of mud on the house so far.
-I think it's more like 4,000 or 5,000 gallons. -It's so much.
On the money!
We got all the windows in.
We've done interior wall framing.
We've got the electrical in there.
We've got the greenhouse framed.
We've got an awful lot done.
Success.
So, welcome to the greenhouse.
Right over here, you can see this is kind of where
our garden bed's gonna be.
I got these beams from a neighbor who was tearing down his old barn.
So it's gonna be kind of rustic.
And all of the grey water from the house
comes out at this pipe right here.
And right outside where I have my tractor parked,
I'm gonna bury that 55-gallon drum.
So water will be filtered with activated charcoal into that drum.
There is a sub pump that will, every morning,
will pump that water up to this end of the garden beds.
This is gonna take all that water that we use in our showers,
and laundry and all that kind of stuff from the sinks.
And this is gonna come out here and it's gonna go in that drum.
And it's gonna pump right back out here and grow food.
That's gonna be cool.
Ready to do this window?
All right, we gotta be careful with it, though,
because this is like a one of a kind deal.
Today's a fun day for me.
Because we bought this round window
and today's the day we get to put it in.
We found this at the salvage yard.
And Danny's like, "Do you want a round window?"
I'm like, "No, I don't want a round window."
And then there was that window I saw
in the earthships and the greenhouse
-with the cans and the bottles and... -[Danny] Yeah, once--
[Danny] Once you get those cans and bottles and stuff going in there,
I think it's gonna be that whole
earthship-py thing that we're trying to do.
Recycled windows, recycled glass, recycled cans.
And a cheap wall.
-Yeah. -Fits in our budget.
-[Danny] Yeah. This thing is only $159. -Yeah.
Yeah, if you buy these new, they're like $900 or something.
Yeah. So we did good.
So from that salvage yard,
we're pretty much getting our entire greenhouse.
We got all the south windows, our old slider.
This round window came from there.
All right! She's solid.
-It's a beaut! - [Karen] That's our free room.
[Danny] Yeah, I like that.
Something's gotta be, 'cause this budget is, ah...
-This big. -We're ahead, yeah.
We're reaching the end of the budget.
But not the end of the build. Oops.
It looks great. We'll get some bottle bricks
and some cans and we'll get this mudded in.
[Danny] It's gonna be cleaned up, of course.
[Karen] But now I have to clean.
I'm real pleased with it.
It's gonna look even better
as we build the rest of the wall around it.
We're mixing mud for our can and bottle walls.
We got three parts soil.
We got one part Portland cement.
We're adding some water. And then we got mud.
[Karen] It's time to do our very first bottle wall.
We've been collecting bottles for a year.
And my parents,
they had their whole neighborhood collecting their wine bottles.
It's hilarious.
Our neighbor Sheryl's here to help with the bottle wall.
Danny's cutting the bottles.
And we're ready to go.
All right, let's get this stuff cleaned up.
And we're ready for our next...
Whoa!
No, thanks.
From around the corner of my eye, I see something move,
and I'm like, "Whoa!
What's that?"
[Sheryl] It's a black tail rattlesnake. That isn't good.
[Karen sighs]
Whoa!
Uh... yikes?
[Sheryl] It's a black tail rattlesnake.
There's a darn snake in the greenhouse!
It wasn't just a snake.
-It was a rattlesnake. -It wasn't just a rattlesnake.
It was a black tailed rattlesnake,
which is a rare one.
They'll bite you, and snakes are really only dangerous
if you go into their spot.
Or if you're provoking them. That's where you have your problem.
Any chance you got some snake stuff?
I can get him.
[Karen] Luckily, Sheryl's here.
Sheryl's like the master of everything.
Sheryl's the neighbor everybody needs to have.
Go see if we can't move that guy.
This is what I try to do.
Grab 'em about this far from their head
so I don't hurt 'em.
And then I'll take him for a ride.
[Karen] That's a big one.
[Danny] I was hiding inside the house.
I don't do snake. Mm-mmm.
[Sheryl] I'll take him down to the wash by my house and let him loose.
[Karen] I think he'll like that. Thanks for eating the mice.
Good news, snake's gone.
-Bad news, Sheryl's gone. -[laughs]
So guess who has to become the assistant mud person now.
Me.
We just went from that mixer over to here.
It's 100 degrees out.
And it's dirt. It's no longer mud. Look at it.
-Ugh. -This heat is killing us.
-[Danny] Ooh, that's hot water. -Yeah.
[Danny] The hose is now a solar hot water heater.
-All right, try that. I'm gonna see-- -I think that's good, babe.
I think that's good.
I'm just gonna put that right in here.
I'm just mimicking what you've done in the past.
Well, you're doing a great job so far.
But just, uh, you know, flick your hair a little bit.
Are you saying I put my butt out or that I'm short?
-That you're short. -[chuckling] Okay, 'cause this is going in your face.
[Karen] What do you think?
It looks like it's working.
Is it gonna be pretty? Uh...
You know what? I think this is looking pretty good.
[Danny speaking]
I knew you'd like it.
Hang out with me, I'll teach you to be messy.
It looks good.
We still have to do the bottom and the sides and it's really big.
There's a long ways to go.
[Danny] Look at that. Recycled materials. You and me, babe.
[Karen] Always.
[upbeat music playing]
[Karen] We have almost got the greenhouse up and running.
We've been working on the bottle wall.
We just have a little bit left to go.
We've got ceilings in.
We've got mud on all the strawbale walls.
But the job is done and I never have to do this again.
We stained the floors. That was a week.
Try cleaning floors... in a house of mud.
These floors are pretty fancy.
It's a matte finish.
Some acid stain.
Totally worth it.
We've got the kitchen cabinets stained and installed.
To brighten up our little desert house, we stained the cabinets green.
It's beginning to feel like a house.
Better than that, it's beginning to feel like a home.
Today's a really exciting day for me,
because we're doing the masonry heater finally.
And I'm really excited about this.
It's a centerpiece of the living room.
-[upbeat music playing] -It's our only heat source in the house.
[Danny] Here we go.
[Karen] It's super-efficient.
One small fire will heat that thing for 12 to 24 hours.
And it comes with a pizza bread oven.
This will ensure that everything is... nice and level.
You don't want a leaning tower of pizza?
[Danny] Twenty-seven hundred and fifty pounds' worth of masonry.
And it all interlocks together like it's some sort of a jigsaw puzzle.
Okay. Numero uno.
[Karen] And everything's numbered.
And you just put the numbers together where it says.
And right in there. Look at that!
It's like a kid's toy, jumbo size.
I hope it's like a kid's toy, 'cause it looks a little intimidating.
All right, here's 11 and 12.
But I'm looking for 10!
[Karen] I thought we had these in order.
And we got through all the numbers until we get to number 10.
And it's like, "Where's number 10!"
I think it's gotta be that little one.
There is no number on it.
-It's number 10! -[laughs]
[Karen] Number 10 fit right in front of there. It was perfect.
And then up they went.
[Danny] But that's just the core.
Now we have to do the facade.
We need another four inches of masonry block on the outside.
Then, we get to make it pretty and plastered.
I'm just, uh, planning our first dinner.
[Danny] Get your pizza here!
[Karen] I'm gonna go back to plastering the walls
because we have a long ways to go and a short time to get there.
Well, you get to it. What are you doing here, talking?
So we've already done the long straw, we've done the short straw.
We've flattened it all out.
And now, this is the color coat.
Clay plaster is clay,
sand, fiber, glue. Four ingredients.
Next is our toilet paper. We're using this for our fiber.
Because the clay in the sand won't hold together
without some kind of fiber.
This is the way I like to roll.
[upbeat music playing]
So the secret is, when you pull your mixer out,
if it holds that little circular pattern, you know you have it.
So you wet the walls.
And it's what makes the clay and the mud stick together.
And when you apply it,
you just hold your hawk up and spread it on.
So you can buy clay plaster at the store and online,
but it's crazy expensive.
I made this for... $10?
Enough to do the whole room.
We chose to plaster our house with mud
because everything else is mud, so why change now?
[dramatic music playing]
[Karen] It's monsoon season.
We didn't have the greenhouse roof on
and all the water just came down into this one point
and went straight down into a strawbale and rotted it out.
[Danny] It was so bad we had to remove that section of strawbale.
[Karen] But now that it's dried out, we made some slip straw
and then I'm gonna shove it into that hole.
It's all gonna kind of intertwine with each other
like one solid mass.
Perfect for filling gaps in strawbales.
-What do you say we check the moisture? -[Karen] Fingers crossed.
[machine beeps]
[electronic voice] Moisture value... 13.4.
-Ooh, that's way better than 56, eh? -I'll take it.
[Danny] We can go ahead and fill this up, babe.
And call it macaroni.
[Karen] I call it slip straw, but okay.
It's gonna dry in about two or three days.
[Danny] More.
[Karen] And when the mud hardens, it's a solid brick.
That will be all we need for this section.
Oh, I'm so glad to have that filled in.
[Karen] Note to self.
Don't wait on the roof until, you know, the week before monsoon starts.
We're six months in already and it's getting a little stressful.
We're gonna be working some really long days.
[Danny] We have the porches on both the east and west sides.
[Karen] We've been building the hot tub, and I gotta say, it's gonna be epic.
And my hands are tired and my back is tired
and my legs are tired.
But we're getting really close.
[Danny] We're gonna get her done.
[Karen] We got this.
[Danny] We're finally done.
[Karen] I think it turned out really great.
Way better than I had anticipated.
-Yeah. -I love it.
[Karen] Our original budget was $100,000.
And that was wishful thinking.
He was right. It was $120,000.
Wood cost more. Metal cost more. Prices have just gone crazy.
Our original timeline was six months.
And we went for seven because we've just put a little extra love into it.
And you know what? It was worth it.
Today, Dan's brother Sammy and his wife Jackie are coming
and we're gonna show 'em the house.
I think they're gonna love it.
-I mean, what's not to love? -Yeah.
[Danny] I think we're gonna blow them away with what we've done here.
-[Jackie] Hey! -[Karen] Hey!
-[Karen] You made it! -[Sam] Guys, so nice to see you.
How you doing, big brother?
[Sam] So knocked out to see this.
-[Danny] What'd you think it was gonna be? A shack? -[Sam] Yes.
I mean, I've built shacks with you before.
So I know you can do it. I didn't know you could do this.
Yeah, just started one layer after another, you know.
[Sam] And these walls we're looking at,
-these are actual strawbales? -[Karen] That's it.
-[Danny] Yeah. -[Sam] Wow.
[Sam] It's rustic, but it's sort of got a modern look about it.
-It's really beautiful. -[Danny] Yeah, natural building in a modern fashion.
Wow, I can't wait to see the inside.
Yeah, you guys want to come in? Get out of the wind.
-[Jackie] Yeah, we do. -[Sam] Let's see it.
-Can't wait to see it. -All right.
[instrumental music playing]
[Danny] Come on in, guys.
-[Sam] Wow. -[Jackie] Wow.
-[Sam] This place is beautiful. - [Jackie] Yeah.
- [Sam] Wow. -[Danny] Yeah.
-This is not what I thought-- -And you thought I was gonna make a shack!
[both laugh]
So what's the covering that I see on the walls?
That's a clay plaster that's on the walls.
Everything about 'em is just mud from our soil...
-[Sam] Wow. -...clay, sand, straw.
-[Sam] So awesome. - [Danny] Yeah.
[Sam] I was just wondering about the floor.
[Karen] This coating is an acid stain.
-[Sam] It's very pretty. -It's called shifting sand.
So we don't ever have to clean.
-It'll just look like sand. -[all laughing]
[upbeat music playing]
So what's the story behind this?
So this is a masonry heater.
The concept is you build a smaller fire
here down in the fire box.
It actually goes up through a baking oven on the other side
and then it radiates from-- for 12 to 24 hours.
My worry is we won't need it because of the passive solar from the greenhouse.
Let's go out there.
[Karen] And this is our greenhouse.
-[Sam] Oh, fantastic. -[Jackie] Wow.
[Karen] We have the bottle wall.
[Jackie] So unique.
In the morning, the sunlight just pours through it
and it's like little gemstones all lit up.
[Sam] What a perfect place to have breakfast.
-[Danny] Yeah. -[Sam] Have your morning coffee.
[Danny] All of our grey water comes here to water this.
And then it drains into a 55-gallon drum over there.
[Sam] Okay.
And then it's pumped back, so it continually cycles.
So think about all the things we did to recycle here.
-Can walls. -[Sam] Yeah.
[Danny] Recycled bottles.
Rocks to build the outer wall out there.
And this is also part oof our passive solar.
The sun is heating these flagstones
and we can open the doors
-and it'll heat the house. Yeah. -[Sam] Lets the heat right in.
[Karen] You guys want to see the kitchen?
-[Sam] Yes. -[Danny] All right, let's go.
Notice that it's bigger than the living area.
-[Sam] Ah. -'Cause we're kitchen people.
[Karen] You know our priorities.
[Danny] You know, we hang out here, we like to cook.
We like to eat, like to entertain.
[Sam] How do you get power for your stove and...
[Danny] Oh, yeah. So this is an induction burner.
But it's all electric.
And all of our electricity comes from our solar panels.
-[Sam] Wow. -[Danny] And...
the most important thing is the hot tub.
-We need that power for the hot tub. Yeah. -[Sam laughs]
[Sam] And it's so colorful.
[Jackie] I love the color of the cabinets. It's gorgeous.
[Karen] We needed some color out here in the desert.
[Jackie] Well, with that view, I think...
-I don't mind washing dishes all of a sudden. -Yeah.
I would need it.
-[Karen] Wanna see more? - [Jackie] Yes.
-[Sam] Yes. -[Karen] Let's go.
Wow. Dan, are we standing under an arch?
You are actually standing under an arch.
[Jackie] Bathroom?
-[Danny] Yeah. -[Sam] Oh, it's beautiful. Awesome.
-[Sam] So the water comes in from your well? -[Danny] Yes.
So well comes to that big tank outside.
-[Sam] Yeah. -And then it's pumped over here.
[Karen] And here's our bedroom.
[Sam] Wow. So much light, so beautiful.
It's very simple.
All of our dressers and what-not are in the walk-in closet.
So all we needed was space for the bed, a place to sit down,
place for the dog.
[Sam] I really love the lighting that you guys have throughout this place.
-[Danny] Oh, the hanging lights? Yeah. -[Sam] Yeah. It's really nice.
-I love how you have patios on each side, too. -[Danny] Yeah.
You have to have a morning patio and an evening patio.
-It's very important. -[Sam] It is important.
I think, with these views, it's mandatory.
[Sam] So you're gonna wake up to this everyday.
Somebody's gotta do it.
[all laughing]
[Danny] We're happy with it. We really are.
And I believe this is gonna be our forever home, don't you think?
-That was the plan. -Yeah.
[Sam] I'm used to Dan building shacks but this is not a shack.
It's beautiful. It's got heart. It's got soul.
I'm so proud of those two pulling this together.
It's just amazing.
When I heard you were making a strawbale house,
I was picturing something from Three Little Pigs.
And this is definitely not that.
[Karen] It's party time.
We're having some friends over.
A lot of the people that came and helped us, volunteered with this build.
Just a little way to say thanks.
-Hey, you guys want some pizza? -Yeah!
Building off the grid is tough.
But it's so rewarding.
[Karen] We took a piece of land that everybody thought was worthless
and we built a masterpiece.
We're not out here to just survive. We're out here to thrive.
And we're gonna do that.
-By golly, I'm already. -Let's start right now.