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00:00Hi everyone, so my name is Chris Harbour. About six years ago I bought a piece of agricultural
00:06land, 18.5 acres to be exact, with the intention of turning it into a sustainable off-grid small
00:14holding. I built this house which I've now been living in for five years and I thought it'd be
00:19nice to just show all of the different things that I've built in the last five years and how
00:24far we've come from just a field where I was staying in a tent to having a house, workshop,
00:32greenhouse, garden and varying other things. It has been a huge improvement on my life generally and
00:39my well-being is far greater than it ever was before. Mental health, my physical health and my
00:46abilities have increased massively since I built even this house here so I thought I'd give a
00:51general overview and tour of all those things. So let's get go. So this is the house from outside,
00:57it's the first thing I built. It's kind of it's mostly round with like a square porch on the front
01:02for taking your shoes off and stuff. It has a round wood timber frame and a reciprocal round wood roof.
01:09It has cordwood walls that sit on a gravel bag foundation and some stone and obviously a turf roof.
01:18the wood was all mostly free I didn't pay much for it just some of the round wood poles that
01:23the frame
01:23are made of and everything else was off cuts and the binder between the logs is just clay sand and
01:30straw which is known as cob. So the entire building cost approximately three thousand pounds to make
01:36so it was incredibly cheap and which was needed because at the time I didn't have any money at all.
01:42So it was built very much to that cost of how much I had which was basically nothing. I was
01:48using the
01:48money that I was getting from filming it at the time to buy the things I needed but like I
01:53say it
01:54was only around three thousand pounds and it's built on like a log foundation that sits on top of the
02:00ground on some tires and gravel bags and it's all everything I did I did by hand well basically just
02:07with the chainsaw and hand tools and it took me around about a year to build and it was
02:14I was working at the time and going backwards and forwards from London at the time so that's where
02:18I came from as that's why it took so long but it's actually about six months work mostly alone and
02:24I've been living it now for five years and it's excellent it's never been built designed to be a
02:30permanent house that's gonna be here forever it's gonna rot at some point it's not a house for a lifetime
02:37but I built it with the intention of it lasting around 30 years so all of the wood is durable
02:42naturally durable and has a long life in it without treatment and stuff but I do still maintain and
02:48treat it. I'll show you around. So as I walk up to the house this is what I see
03:01so the house is raised up off the floor and it has the reciprocal spiraled roof with a window in
03:10the
03:11middle we have a small kitchen and wood stove and log burner in the right hand side and hot water
03:21which is
03:22heated by the wood stove I have my desk at the back which I do my editing from and generally
03:28running my
03:30work around the side mostly dots area she has a harp and a spinning wheel and where she keeps her
03:37clothes
03:37and things we have like this mezzanine floor up here where we sleep and behind me is the porch area
03:45where we take off our shoes and stuff
03:49so and we also have a bath in the side on the left hand side there and it's an open
03:56bath
03:57so it's quite communal but that's okay because it's only me and Dot and that is the area the square
04:03area on the front where we take off our shoes
04:10the house is completely off grid it's powered by solar and hydro and we don't use any gas or anything
04:18like that we cook on the wood stove and use the electric cooker for when we have plenty of solar
04:25power or hydroelectric power and it's a very very lovely very cozy place to be and we shall be living
04:35in here for at least another five years yet until I build another house
04:42so that's the house the next thing I built was a shed to house all of the power situation because
04:49when I built this I just had some batteries in the corner and a small inverter so the next thing
04:54I built
04:55was a shed to put all that stuff in and to keep everything away from the house because in here
05:00we
05:00have normal 240 volt power as if it's just a normal house there's no 24 volt or anything like that
05:07in here
05:07we just have normal plugs we switch things on as you would normally in a house and all of the
05:12batteries and 24 volt stuff and solar and everything is out in the shed which I'll show you now
05:18so the next thing I built is this small shed again it's a round wood frame and built for basically
05:24almost nothing it's built from ash wood that we cut down from the trees that are directly behind it
05:32and I've got the cladding for very cheap hardly anything at all and I built this to put my tools
05:38in and to house all of the power and everything it's where all the solar and the hydro electric
05:43comes into and where all the batteries are so it's a round wood frame cladded it's a bit messy in
05:49here
05:49because it's been used as a storage a lot now and I'm building a new workshop at the moment to
05:55put all
05:55the stuff in but I've built all my metal work projects from in here it served me very well
06:02and it's also housed all of our internet and all of our power which I'll show you now
06:10so this is my power setup it's in a constant state of evolving and changing and it's going to get
06:17upgraded soon to lithium batteries but it's the main source of power dot source sorry the main storage
06:22is a large forklift battery which is second hand and in need of sorting out really because it's
06:29losing capacity I've got hydroelectric that comes in here I have my hydroelectric control so I can
06:36change my nozzles and that's all connected to the internet I have breakers and stuff for the round
06:42house and a breaker for the workshop that I'll show you later two solar charge controllers from two
06:48strings of solar panels all my stuff was second hand and bought just here and there off ebay and
06:54stuff so nothing matches and I just use what I've got and so that's why there's two controllers
07:00yeah it's actually not that complicated we just have two kilowatts of solar and the hydroelectric system
07:06which runs for about seven months of the year and produces around 10 kilowatt hours of energy per day
07:13in the winter that's our main source of power in the winter and the solar is our main source of
07:18power
07:18in the summer and it all comes into here and then it's diverted off down the hill to the roundhouse
07:24and up the hill to the new workshop I will show you the hydroelectric system now because it's quite cool
07:31so this is where the hydroelectric power starts this is the intake the small dam as you can see there's
07:38not a lot of water there now but come winter this is a raging torrent sometimes and you know a
07:46vast
07:46amount of water flows over here average every day the water comes into this intake and the leaves and
07:52stuff are cleaned off of it and excess water when flowing brushes the leaves and self cleans the intake
07:58screen the water goes down this pipe and as it moves downhill it gains in pressure the pipe is always
08:06full
08:07and so as water leaves the bottom more water is replaced at the top so the water is always the
08:13pipe is always filled to the brim the water isn't flowing down the pipe you know like a stream the
08:19pipe is full and pressurized the whole time this intake is around 18 to 19 meters above where the turbine
08:28is
08:29and we flow full around five liters of water per second and it all comes in here it all starts
08:36here
08:36and it goes off downhill that's where we're going now so the now pressurized water has made its way
08:42from the intake down about 19 meters and it's now at nearly 30 psi of pressure coming down this pipe
08:51and it enters into this small building that i built it's a timber frame with cob walls and oak hand
08:59split oak shingle roof which i built with basically hand tools all hand tools i think actually and for very
09:06little money because it was basically all free again and the water enters into there and it goes
09:12into a manifold and then splits out and powers the turbine let's show you that now so here is the
09:18turbine
09:19the turbine the turbine has it's a turgo turbine an impulse turgo so the water sprays out of jets hits
09:26into what look like spoons really and that causes rotation in this permanent magnet alternator on the
09:33top it has four nozzles and two are manual at the moment that's usually controlled by a motor it's a
09:39spear valve which means it's adjustable there's one manual one at the back which is just manually turn on and
09:45off it's a fixed nozzle there's two that are actuated that i can actuate on my phone or from the
09:50shed
09:51it produces nearly 500 watts when it's running full flow and 500 watts over the course of a 24-hour
10:01period
10:01results in approximately the same usage so around 10 kilowatt hours maybe a little bit more sometimes
10:08as your average three bedroom house in the uk so this for seven months a year produces as much power
10:17as your average three bedroom house uses which i think is quite amazing yeah so that's what powers
10:23everything the house the workshop all my big tools and everything for seven months of the year and the
10:28solar for the rest of it so i'm sure a lot of you would like to see this running i
10:33don't actually have
10:34enough water at the moment to sustain it but it will turn on with what's in the pipe and so
10:39i'll just
10:39put the two manual nozzles on there's one that's the smallest one there's the second one
11:13so
11:18so
11:19so
11:19so
11:19so
11:34here are my solar panels there's uh two lots of four and they go into the power shed and into
11:40those separate charge controllers that i showed you earlier they're all second hand i didn't pay any
11:45more than 80 pounds each for any of them there's around two kilowatts of energy here in full sun
11:51and this is what we use to power everything workshop house the lot for uh the rest of the year
11:58that the
11:59hydro isn't on um they're just sort of resting on temporary stands and stuff just bits of wood in the
12:05ground and i'm hoping this winter to consolidate these onto a nice timber frame stand at some point
12:11yeah that's what we use it's uh as simple as that so after all of the things were in place
12:17that i
12:18needed to live comfortably the house and the power and such i decided to go on this elaborate journey of
12:24building my dream workshop it's a two-story workshop woodworking on the bottom floor and metal working on the
12:30top floor the top floor is still under construction um the lower floor is dug into a hillside excavated
12:37so on the front it's open but on the back it's completely underground um it has this lovely porch
12:43on the front which we sit under and uh store firewood and materials and things so yeah show you around
12:49so this is the lower floor the woodworking workshop
12:53come through the small hobbit door come into uh my woodwork workshop so it's still very much a
13:02work in progress i still need to do lots of benches and things like that but it's a working workshop
13:08and i use it every day and like i say i'm gradually slowly but surely getting more tools
13:15the more equipment and uh filling it up in here and this is my dream workshop
13:31so yeah this is where i spend a lot of my time these days um i made the whole greenhouse
13:36and everything
13:37in here and uh the thing i enjoy most is to be in here on a weekend making something um
13:44these big
13:45tools that i run big three phase tools they all run off the very power system i've shown you i
13:51do
13:51have to be careful about when i use them and i have to keep an eye on how much power
13:56i have and stuff
13:57but i run all of these big three phase tools through a converter off of the power system that i've
14:03showed you i also have another room on the other side of that wall just there i'll show you that
14:08in
14:08a minute it's just a partition wall and on the other side of that is an office basically and i'll
14:15take you there now this workshop has a reciprocal roof as well except it's not self-supporting the roof
14:23sits on a central oak tree on the back wall and all of the rafters lay on each other from
14:30that point
14:30onwards with the main uh window in the middle so walk over to that room now staircase here this is
14:38leading up to the building that's still under construction and some damage to the wall that
14:43needs repair then we come into this room which is a office or going to be an office at some
14:49point
14:49but at the moment it's just uh storage and uh we're hanging all of our produce from the garden in
14:55here as well at the moment but this will become an office at some point when i get around to
15:00uh
15:00finishing it so this is the top floor of my workshop the lower floor is below ground the other side
15:08of
15:08that wall just there i'll give you a view of it all in a second so this is still very
15:13much under
15:14construction i've only started this this year really although i put in the foundations when i did
15:18the lower workshop this workshop is going to be for working on a vehicle in the middle being able to
15:23lift it up into this pitched roof space and working on my hydroelectric turbine business which i'm going
15:30to be starting uh transferring all the things i learned from building my own system into hopefully
15:35building systems for others so i have the uh big door big enough to bring a van in and then
15:42the central
15:43frame in the middle where you have i'm gonna have a big workbench for assembling turbines and things and
15:52making tools and equipment that i make and then around the perimeter of the walls there will be all of
15:57the tools lathe mill stuff like that i suppose i just uh walk around in here just to give you
16:05a bit of
16:05perspective of size it's quite large more than big enough to work on a van and have lots of tools
16:14and
16:15equipment in it so we've also established a pretty successful garden we've grown hundreds of kilos of
16:24food out of here now for a couple of years and this year i managed to get the greenhouse built
16:29behind
16:29which i will show you shortly yeah this garden is a no dig type garden with inspired by charles dowding
16:39and we're planning on once i get these solar panels moved and put in place over there to extend this
16:47garden further over and back a bit as well we'd like to double the size of it ideally
16:52but this produces most of our vegetables for the productive months of the year
17:01so in our ongoing quest to be more self-sufficient provide more of our own food in this environment
17:08i really need a greenhouse to get things started early and to prolong the growing season so this
17:15year i managed to get this finished it's a timber frame greenhouse of my own design
17:19and it has toughened glass on the outside and it is direct glazed so it allows the wood to expand
17:27and
17:27contract it's six and a half meters by three and a half meters big with a stone foundation it has
17:36a
17:36spring in the middle which works for the earlier part of the year but goes off mid-summer about now
17:43well it's off around now this time but it is there in the earliest time of the year when we're
17:49getting
17:49plants started which is very helpful and yeah i'll take you for a tour around it so it's a timber
17:57frame
17:57the main frame at least is a timber frame and it's like a gothic arch sort of type design all
18:04mortised and
18:04tenon and pegged and it has a separate frame which holds the glass attached to that purlins i believe
18:13they're called and then the glass is mounted on top of the frame and then glazed with glazing strips
18:21all of that extra glazing strips and the extra frame was milled on my homemade bandsaw mill
18:28so it also has wooden guttering down the side and very soon we'll be collecting water off the roof as
18:35well for use in the garden but i believe it came out very well and again with all my projects
18:41didn't
18:42cost very much the main cost was the glass and i got that cheap via the benefits of having a
18:48youtube
18:48channel and uh total cost of the build is about two thousand pounds so not cheap but uh a lot
18:55lot
18:55cheaper than it would be to buy something like that we also keep chickens and we eat the eggs from
19:02them
19:02so we have fresh eggs every day hey chickens you better get laying some eggs i want my egg sandwich
19:10in
19:10the morning
19:12so we've also done about a kilometer of fencing and i did that using my homemade post knocker
19:21and we have around four acres of pasture land and we recently got ourselves some sheep which are
19:29currently over there by the gate might go and see them in a minute all of the fencing is bounded
19:38by
19:39the two and a half thousand trees that i planted so all the way around the land all the perimeters
19:46all uh any spare hedging anything like that is all planted with uh two and a half thousand
19:52native broadleaf trees hey sheep
19:57yeah
20:00so i also built this sawmill behind me from scratch and this has now processed 16 tons of timber
20:08that was all the external wood for the greenhouse and the top workshop and various other things chicken
20:13coop loads of stuff basically 16 tons of it and yeah it works fantastically and it was built again
20:20for very cheap a couple of thousand pounds as opposed to the 10 to 15 000 pounds something like this
20:26would cost
20:30so since starting this project i've probably done about 80 percent of it on my own but i have had
20:37some help
20:37from volunteers via my youtube channel and in order to have volunteers they needed a toilet and shower
20:44and some facilities so i built this solar shower and compost toilet it was originally heated with
20:51some hot water panels but they didn't really work that great they were too complicated and the water
20:57only ever got just slightly warm but now it has two 250 watt panels that direct heat the water in
21:03the top
21:03it's all gravity fed from water spring water and it now works really well you get hot showers on a
21:10sunny
21:11day of course so yeah it's another thing it's all timber framed mortison tenon all handmade and all natural
21:25right so just walking back down now from the top where the sawmill and the shower is walking down my
21:31track which i also put in um it's uh quarried stone from not too far away and there's about a
21:40thousand
21:40tons of it in the track uh the track's about 500 meters long and it's bordered by all of the
21:47two and
21:47a half thousand trees i planted which are starting to grow really nicely now as you can see
21:56right back at the house so a lot of women watching this are probably thinking well where
22:01do you go to the toilet it's a popular question from the ladies particularly and it's just a short
22:06walk down the path and we get to this timber framed compost toilet so it's just literally just a toilet
22:14seat with a containing area and it's just composted and then it degrades and is no longer an obnoxious
22:22substance and it doesn't smell or anything like that it's just a nice toilet in the woods built in the
22:29same style as the house again all timber framed and cordwood so yeah that's where we use the toilet
22:36oh and next to the house just not too far from it at all we've got all our firewood so
22:42there's a good
22:42few cubic meters of wood in there it's quite deep it goes all the way back here look so yeah
22:48plenty of
22:49wood for the winter keep us nice and warm so that is all of the major projects i've done over
22:54the last five
22:55years of going from a blank field with some woodland to a fully functioning uh small holding that's off
23:02grid and about 50 percent self-sufficient at this point and with uh very little money as well because
23:09i didn't start i didn't start a rich man i'm still not a rich man that's for sure um so
23:14yeah i haven't
23:14gone into too much detail about each individual project because i've done a build multiple build videos
23:20on every one of those projects so if you're interested uh go and watch those videos every detail has
23:25been shown in those videos and yeah i hope that gives a good overview of uh five years work it's
23:31been hard work but it's been the best thing i've ever done and i certainly don't plan on stopping
23:35anytime soon i have lots of things planned and uh we just want to keep going get more and more
23:40self-sufficient and uh keep on building things and living our sustainable and healthy life so i hope you
23:47enjoyed the video and thanks for watching
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