@novacadian: Looking good! Are you still adding the fireplace?
Dugout Shelter Stairs by @cahlen on 3Speak
I finished the stairs leading out of the dugout shelter using railroad ties with rebar to hold them in place set on thin layers of gravel. --- DONATE: CONTACT: SUBSCRIBE: GEAR LIST: NOTICE: --- ▶ W...
Tags: #homesteading #diy #survival #prepping #offgrid #minimalism #outdoors #life #lifestyle
Hey everyone, Callan here, and I finished the stairs to the dugout a few days ago, so I figured I'd show you what I did there. Okay, so first of all, you can see I put a door in, but I'm not done with it yet, so I'll do another video in a few days about that once I finish it up. At the bottom of the door frame here, I put a railroad tie cut to two feet. Actually, this one's cut longer than two feet because it actually extends under. and under over here, okay? Then down here, this is basically a pit, which is about a foot deep, filled with gravel, which then connects to the gravel pits, the trenches, which go along underneath all the walls into the back corner of the building going out through a French drain out the side of the hill, okay? So if water or snow melts and comes down here, and collects here, it's just going to end up in that trench and it's going to drain out without coming into a shelter. Also, as you can see, the actual part of the building that I'm living on, on this dirt, which actually, in most parts of the shelter, come up to almost the top of this, is quite a bit higher than down there, okay? So all the water is going to not come up to my living space and get in my bed and any of my various other things, okay? So then for the steps, It's just railroad tie cut to two feet. It might be better if I show you on an upper one, but basically there's two holes drilled down through them and a two foot long piece of rebar, which was pounded down into the ground, which holds it down, okay? So for the most part, underneath each step is mostly dirt, but then a thin layer of gravel that it is sitting on, okay? So basically there is a layer of gravel. which goes all the way up, alright, so that's going to connect all the way down here, and that's going to end up in the drain system. Okay, so there are nine of these railroad ties cut to two feet long, and the sun's going to get our way, so we'll go to the top and talk about this. And while we're going up, I'll show you, this is one of the rebar pounded down through the railroad tie. Here's another one, and another one, okay? Alright, so at the top of the stairs, you can see there's a little bit of a decline, you know, between the dirt here before we actually get to our first step, and then it declines pretty quickly down into the shelter. So a few things worth talking about is this dirt wall is something that I had to basically cut into. So originally we dug it with an excavator. but we didn't dig it quite to the right dimension, so I needed to cut into it. You could see, I had to cut into it to get the stairs here and all that type of stuff. And this stuff is actually pretty solid, right? So it's not like I actually need to reinforce this with the wall. Even if it is going to start falling apart, it's only going to be little chunks like you see here, right, and not like big sections. Because I think there's a lot of clay or something in here, which keeps it all. pretty well together, okay? As we get lower down, I had to put these boards in, which connect to the actual shelter, you can see, which extend out, and then I filled them with clumps of clay, which had bonded together, okay, to kind of fill in this gap that we had here, so that when we filled in the dirt, it would basically catch on these things and not. fall down in so eventually i want to actually build a wall which comes basically where those guys are which comes out pretty much to the top of the thing and maybe isn't much higher than the first step okay and i don't think it's necessary really to have a roof because we don't get that much rain here it just gets really cold and windy mostly And even when it did rain a few days ago, it wasn't a problem at all. That gravel pit down there barely got wet, okay? So, anyways, while we're up here, that's the stairs, but while we're up here, I'll just show you progress on bearing this thing. You can see there's a layer of dirt on the top and a mound on the sides. So anyways, back to the stairs. When I actually... put these walls in, it'll probably be next year before I do that, because I want the dirt that's pushed in around the sides of this thing to get solid like the dirt down here before I start doing that, because I'm going to have to take those boards out, or at least find a way to push them, you know, but I think that'll be pretty difficult, so I'll probably have to take those boards out, and when I do that, dirt is going to fall in, and so the harder of a dirt is, the less dirt is going to fall, so. I think it'll last me basically through the winter, and then next spring or summer, that'll be a project of, you know, buying a bunch of two-by-fours or two-by -sixes and putting that in a little wall, basically pulling that out and putting a little wall. So anyways, also I want to mention that with the door and the extra bearing and the dirt on the roof, that even when it gets down to freezing outside at night, it's still in the mid-50s, inside the shelter. with no heat source at all. So things look pretty promising for me surviving this winter. So anyways, that's the stairs. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you guys later.
@novacadian: Looking good! Are you still adding the fireplace?