This couple bought their land and are building their house all for just $10,000.
I'm Rob Greenfield and I am here with Kyle and Jolene
at Lake Atitlan in Guatemala and I am
here at their Superadobe dome build
and workshop. I'll get into that in
a minute, but I wanted to tell
you about them because they have an
awesome life. They are living
their dream traveling the world,
and right now building an off the grid
Superadobe home.
In about a week they will
be living here. Some cool facts about
them, Kyle has hitchhiked and
has had over 400 rides in his life.
Between the two of them over 500.
They have hitchhiked across Canada
and back, Belize, Guatemala, the USA
Alaska, and Canada. They have lived
in a school bus turned into a camper,
as well as campers,
and a sailboat for a little while.
Jolene is a certified yoga instructor
and has a Bachelor in Kinesiology,
Bachelor in Science in Kinesiology.
So really rad people doing really rad things,
and I wanted to share their story
because it is super inspirational.
To me it shows an example of being
able to get out of the rat race, or a
life that is not the most satisfying, and
really follow your dreams.
So tell me what a typical year is like for
you right now?
Kyle:
spend the summers working in Canada,
working seasonal jobs outdoors usually,
then in the winters we live in Central
America working and volunteering
and doing stuff like this, and
in the spring and fall that is our
transition time. We travel between the
two. So work half the year and travel half
of the year.
Rob:
don't live a traditional life. You are traveling the
world for a good portion of the year and
going to live off the grid in this dome.
Why do you choose to live this way?
Jolene: laughs
northern Alberta and I just got a real
first hand view and experience of
what fossil fuels are doing to our planet,
and I thought to myself,
this just can't be the only way we can
progress as humans. So I set out to
learn different ways to live off the grid
and to live in a good kind way with the
earth and with other people.
Kyle:
and it's really just about following your
heart and choosing things that make
you happy instead of just doing whatever
everyone tells you that you should do.
So that path to happiness has led us to
traveling and living in a kind and gentle way
Rob:
of people in our generation the thing
that really holds them back from living
out like you are talking about is
money. So how much would you say in a year
that it takes to be able to live this
lifestyle? Traveling, and you know being
able to do mostly everything that you want to?
Kyle:
of us for all of the traveling and all of
that stuff it's about $20,000 US a year.
Rob:
So let's talk about this little piece of land.
You got this land for $3,000 and then this
dome that we are building, which I will
show you in a second, this is costing about...
Kyle:
Rob:
and building your house it's about $7,000.
So for under $10,000 a Canadian or an
American could feasibly move to
Guatemala or somewhere else and live
off the grid, and live this life?
Kyle:
Jolene:
Rob:
and live year round or the
other thing is that they could live down
here for 8 months of the year,
work really hard during the summer or the
winter, and make $10,000
and be able to do 8 months here and 4
months back home.
Kyle:
is sort of what we are doing already.
Jolene:
Rob:
"But flying back and forth isn't really
environmentally friendly." But you can
hitchhike or you can go overland
the whole way.
Kyle:
can work on a sail boat and come down.
Rob:
Tell me a little bit, onto the Superadobe.
Kyle:
with compacted, packed earth. We take
a mix of adobe which is the right mix of clay
and earth and rocks and then we add in
a small bit of cement as well.
That is what makes it Superadobe.
And that is for extra strength so we don't
need as much support as in butresses
and rebar. So coming over here we
have the mixing area. This is where we
mix up all of the different soil we have.
We are using some combinations of
soil from the land as well as some land
and some earth that we got from the
landslide near by on the highway.
So between the two, a bit of cement,
we have a really strong mix.
Coming up over here the dome is
coming up as you can see, layer by
layer we layered the sand bags and filled
them with earth and then we tamp down,
to compact. It has to be compact so that
it can stay.
Here is the inside. It is getting very
dome like. This is the bottom floor and
we are actually going to have a loft as well
for sleeping in up above.
This is a high dome we have
a 5 foot stem wall, so 5 feet high before
it starts to dome in. So lots
of living space for this tiny home.
Over here guys we have some tools.
This is where we keep the barbed wire
and the sand bags. Barbed wire is added
between each layer to hold the bags
together with friction and to add tensile
strength to the dome. Without the
barbed wire it wouldn't work.
You don't need a lot of materials.
You don't need a lot of tools. We are doing
this all without electricity, no
power tools, hand mixing, just with a lot
of hands and buckets and shovels.
We decided to run this as a workshop
to get our friends involved and to have
more help building the dome.
It's a Superadobe workshop where we are
housing people for the week, feeding them,
yoga every morning, and together we get
to learn how to build this dome.
We have building instructors here
as well and a local crew that is helping out.
Rob:
it's about a 5th or a 3rd of an acre right?
Kyle:
It's all going to be on solar power,
and we want to catch rainwater
for most of our water
and introduce the greywater recycling
Kyle / Jolene:
Rob:
rainwater harvesting, growing most of your food?
Kyle:
Jolene:
to try and sustain ourselves to start.
See if we can build a life off of this land
and then once we do we can grow and teach
people how to do that.
Rob:
for somebody who's really looking to do
something like this?
Jolene:
is set the Intention. You have to have
an intention, you have to plant that
within you or wherever you have to hold
your intentions and carry that forward.
And then the second biggest thing is
trust and faith that that intention
will unfold with time and the people
will come into your life when you need it.
And then the more practical side of
things...
Kyle:
So practical really what we learned is
to start small and simple.
Building modular. We are building
one step at a time, maybe one
year at a time we add a building here
a building there. Instead of trying to
build it all in one go and count
our catastrophes we are taking it small
and learning from our mistakes.
That way it is easier to think about and
easier to accomplish. Small steps.
Definitely want to find people who
are doing something similar in your area
and link up with them. That is what
we have done.
And over the years we have
found things like this, we wanted to get into
natural building so we did some studies
and courses and volunteering.
That has led us to finding out about
the people here. So we found people
doing natural building, we volunteered
with them and now here we are as
partners running a workshop together.
Lastly I would say just do it as a
community and invite your friends.
We can't do this on our own
We invited our friends, doing the
workshop, it's a great way to
make it happen and it's a win-win for
everyone involved.
Rob:
simply because the less you need the
easier it is to have everything that
you need.
Putting solar on this if you aren't
powering a 55 inch TV, it is easy to
solar power this.
But if you need all of this stuff it all
makes it so much harder.
And what about resources for anyone
who is interested in Superadobe or
adobe natural building?
Kyle:
Earthship Academy, so that's a good
resource. Earthship Biotecture
you can google and Earthships
you can hear all about that.
Cal-Earth is another good one too
in California. That is where they pioneered
and are building these domes.
Jolene:
Rob:
involved with your adventure
how can they follow you on the Internet or
find you If they want?
Jolene:
Lewis and the Fireflies is our label
and we also have a website www.lewisandthefireflies.org
and then I have an instagram account
that I use called SustainablePresence
Rob:
description
Check it out! www.lewisandthefireflies.org
Again they are doing incredible things,
a couple of people down here with
about $10,000 turning it into having
their own land off the grid sustainable
living and really living out their dreams!
Follow Kyle and Jolene's Adventure!
Video by Rob Greenfield
Subtitles by the Amara.org community