hey there welcome to my channel where I take you on tours of tiny and alternative
homes this week's video is sponsored by husk stay tuned to the end of the video so you can
learn more about their exceptional knives today we're traveling to California to take
a tour of a professional snowboarders handmade Rock House this incredible home took the owner
several years to construct including hand picking every single rock that you'll see in the build
and while his Rock House is his full-time home he also has an incredible Overlander tiny home
that he's going to share with us today if you like these kind of videos make sure that you
subscribe and hit that notification Bell so that you know every single time we publish a new tour
I'm a professional snowboarder I've been doing this for about 30 something years since the
mid 80s my long time passion is woodworking so I've been around when I was 34 I started this
project and that kind of was a very fulfilling achievement for me to bring in my passion for
building and being off-grid something that I never got to bring in a snowboarding before
so I grew up in California and After High School I traveled the world for 20 years after seeing
what's out there I realized I love California I love the granite so this is where I landed
it's been 20 20 years now I feel very rich being up here you know
clean water no one's bothering me no one's telling me what to do I feel safe
I started this project by just getting rocks everyone would come up and have a blast my
crew shifted throughout the projects my mom was always there she was a big helper of this project
and this probably took five years to where it was comfortable probably another two years to
kind of fine tune things which is a lot of time for you know 200 and something square
foot structure but I don't think it's going anywhere I think it's here to stay for a while
I think it costs about 20 25 Grand this is in 2005.
when I first built it I was trying to be here full time the other times I wasn't
I was traveling so it was more of a home base about half of the year it is a little bit like
camping just to put that word in this lifestyle you know you're dealing with your trash you're
dealing with cleaning dishes slowly nothing fast there's no toaster these things add a
lot of time I truly that's what I want my day to be like and I definitely want to teach my
kids that so it fits me perfect what's next will be interesting because I have
two boys and my ladies so we'll see what we all do together and shape something new
I decided to build My Little Dream Rock cabin up here on Donner Summit
we're on 84 Acres at 7 100 feet and I've been living up here since 0-4
so this is kind of my little bit of a front door this is actually a milled and waited five
years until it's ready to build I had a temporary door before come and check out the inside foreign
the sun heats all the rocks in the morning over here
and then in the evening these rocks heat up it holds a lot of the heat which means less
firewood much comfortable living radiant heat is actually a beautiful heat especially from the
Sun like what else can you ask for like it's an amazing experience you get to really understand
how we're moving through space and being in sync with all these things that you want to
enjoy I mean that's a big part of why I would be up here this floor plan down here is based on my
birthday there's a little metal thing over here in the window looks like a stretched out Star
based on the golden ratio 29th of October at 302 there's a shadow that meets all the points of the
Pentagon that's my floor plan big inspiration of learning about that and that gave me a little bit
more of a celebration of me you know that's what this place was really about to do is understand
myself what I need to move in life and so this is kind of a result of what I've discovered about me
so this is my kitchen this is a piece of granite someone gave me from an old job some leftover
stuff some projects I've built you know in my travels just understanding Rock a little bit
this is actually my first project that I did with metal wood and Rock so normally it was wood then I
became a masonry but just force and I have a lot of rocks here I got electricity which just in a
power inverter for the 110 but most everything we all use these days is actually 12 volt
so a lot of things you can buy you just cut the inverter off hard wire it into a 12 volt battery
my windows open here this gets buried in the winter so this is my winter refrigerator
just kind of open it up you got a little shelf of snow my first stainless steel welding is my sink
very proud of that it's not easy doing stainless steel shape inspired by the Pentagon of the cabin
and moves into soapstone soapstone counters some fun welding projects you know on downtime figure
out what we need to survive up here fire heat dry very important I kept things pretty simple
where I built everything I needed in the wall just to give the floor space a little bit of a
bigger of a feeling fireplace is mostly the biggest focus of the daily chores you know
your hot water cooking everything's based around here I got a little oven you can do some baking
fun little junkyard fireplace door I got and this is actually
um soapstone huge fan of soapstone you can cut it with a skill saw you can hand sand it the oven's
built out of that you just make a little box and then I got my hot water here coils for heating and
a little 12 volt pump this whole place is 12 volt I got two batteries very basic it's about a 500
setup as far as the panels and the batteries go I do have a generator now for my well which is a
three-year-old project so that has really changed how this place moves having water come out of a
pipe I did mix all the cement from Creek Water here and that is a wild experience water seven
eight pounds a gallon you need at least a gallon a half per cement bag 33 pallets of cement it works
out to be a lot of weight and working with it not freezing up here in the winter big process very
proud and also when I have water I have this huge experience of appreciation that's why my actually
did all this was to have an appreciation for the simple things that we need to live
this is my shower kind of has a natural feeling when you go bathe in the creek you realize why
don't I have this inside my house so this is my version of a creek bed shower drains outside got
my hot water sometimes I'll have a pump with a shower head so my glass work here was one of my
longest projects it took me about two years to just get the glass in place my road to get this
type of glass up here was too bumpy I have about eight windows and I think four of them broke in
the process of getting them up here these windows are amazing for many reasons they heat the place
you can fall asleep with the Stars on a storm you get to watch the clouds come in this way and it
just dumps 50 feet of snow on a good winter I'm three miles from a plowed Road when the snow is
super deep you're down to snowshoes because nothing else can actually work I would spin
anywhere from six hours hiking up here sounds like a lot of work but again this is kind of why I'm
here and it keeps me in shape keeps me healthy this big window opens up so the deck became an
outside experience of flat ground and has become part of the house as well when I started building
this house I had a big camp out and I had 20 30 people come up we made a huge pile of rocks and
I thought I'll probably be about half half of what I need to build a house it got me about this high
you know this wall is probably 13 feet tall so imagine it's three feet thick at the bottom it's
a lot of rocks the rock actually on the inside is separated from the outer Rock so there's in
the middle there's a bubble wrap that separates that barrier so the coal doesn't come in and the
hot doesn't go out people started sending me rocks and different things to add to the cabin which was
beautiful to hear everyone's inspiration to help after everything kind of got in place I sanded
this down quite a bit which is the the couch black walnut took me about three tries so I got
where I wanted it to be the tables the special tree that I got off the friend's property this
part was actually two trees it uh grew together and then grew back apart and right here it was
kind of rotted out quite a bit so I put in a hot plate and then I got inspired by different
rocks that people gave me one's a petrified wood is a mammoth bone petrified mammoth bone
did some shapes and mountains with my window framing all this stuff is welded in place
so this is my sleeping quarters up here
I've lost I have two boys now my lady and two young boys we do sleep up here my youngest is
one and a half so we haven't stayed up here a lot because there's no net but my inspiration
is to make things a little more comfortable for family style this is very a bachelor planned out
and my window I have a little window over here to regulate the temperature which is
really helpful you kind of Arms Reach when you're in bed so you can cool the place off
the Fire gets too hot at night this is actually what I built very first once I had enough wall
space to put this Beam on there's huge i-beams that shape the curve of the roof I was lucky
enough my cousin bet me these he had a big machine enough to curve the i-beams okay
so this is the outside of the cabin as you can see this is quite a bit of a rock wall this is
my biggest wall I've Had Each Rock's actually dry stacked which is a process I learned in Mexico
I've just used to stack your rocks dry I mean no concrete and then you backfill it and you get a
little bit of more of a natural look that way this is my deck worked on some steps so having
a surface like this outside makes the house twice as big which is nice this is a big addition to the
house it's a big door I guess is about a thousand pounds with everything I welded it in place and
the hinge I actually built two acts like a kite so you can't let go until it's actually locked
three pillars here that these support the deck this one is my water pillar this one's my fire
pillar where actually the chimney of the fire for the hot tub is and then this is my cooking Tower
so my cooking Tower is my barbecue this is actually a propane Grill propane's underneath
the knobs are over here on the right got your hot plate serving plate building out a rock
being inspired by the Rocks these are California crystals I didn't find these myself but they light
up at night which is a really pretty Vibe for outdoor when you're in the hot tub so I have
two tubs this one is a stainless steel old dairy tank I got and made it into a soaking hot tub has
a fireplace pretty much just on the bottom of it got the cold plunge when there's snow here
it's an amazing experience so my water source I have two now this was the creek water which
water falls down into the cold plunge so you have pure Creek Water here and then I now have a well
so that's my backup option to fill it when the creek here does go dry for a couple months out
of the summer once it's in the cold plunge it goes down a little rock and goes into these flow forms
and it can go into the hot tub or go down to the trees maybe one day I'll have a garden here
so this is my little garage my little dungeon of my batteries water pump so this is the basement
this is the fireplace for um heating the hot tub basic fireplace I got off Craigslist and
right here I cut the top off to make it slide in there the flame literally just
hits the bottom of the tub so this is my tiny house I call it the Dream Chaser I chase a snow
with this for snowboarding this is another project that I put all my ideas together
foreign
this is a 2015 Fuso four-wheel drive diesel
my slide outs uh is the kitchen which is a funny thing to try to make slide out because you got
plumbing parts you got grains all that stuff moves as it goes out it's my own custom design
when I built the slide out I was halfway done and this part wasn't up yet and a certain time of the
day the sun was coming right down on the kitchen and I was like wow I got to figure out how to let
that sun in so the whole pexy Skylight part was an afterthought so that's all plastic and so what I
did with the curbside was I made a clam shell turns into a deck top part pops up as a roof
I got this set up right now I Airbnb it up here people are you know never get the
chance to stay in a tiny home it gives people a little taste to what this is like got a nice
view and then I got a bit of an outdoor kitchen here too if you want to cook more for parties
I got a couple goals zero solar panels that power everything this is probably 200 watt panels my
batteries are just two six volt batteries pretty small system I have propane for a furnace heater
for hot water on demand hot water I do have a wood fireplace as well so that is a good
equation you start to fire dry your stuff out and then the heater is on a thermostat so when
it drops a certain temp the propane heater kicks on so this is the inside of the tiny
house a lot of wood in this one I milled most of the beetle kill countertops still have I got is
just a camping stove and I made it on a separate propane tank so I could actually take this outside
and this is my cutout to the front
there's a bathtub
foreign right there shower head comes off the same
same water as the sink the shower turn off on them there really great setup pretty basic
so we're more down in the Little Valley of the property which gives us more terrain up top
we're standing under my chair lift which is an old chair lift from the 70s I got at a junkyard
and parts kind of pieced it together where I wanted this is one of the funner terrains
here it's not huge but there's no lift line there's no crowds it's an amazing place to
be on a Saturday especially on a holiday so of course my kids now are looping it and having fun
I definitely didn't do this one by myself this was a very cowboy style of tilting the towers
up with winches up in the trees I had a lot of rock climbing people come up and help it
took about eight months to do it so I started in the summer and I ended up weaving the cable
myself that was the hardest thing I learned so I weave 60 feet of metal cable to make a full loop
and this probably cost about 15 grand I actually Market this through my snowboarding but also in
Japan I have a clothing company I call this place area two for one after my clothing
what's next keep building I'm like I love it I think I'll do it till I die I want to
build something bigger for my family and so now I have these spots where I'm building a
septic system I'm getting ready to build my masterpiece you could say like this is what
I'm going to want to do this is probably what the last thing I will do you know in
a big way and I hope I'm proud of it but I want to really create a world here that feels safe
the value nature it's going to be a big project it probably might take five seven years as well
even though it's gonna be much bigger than this I think I'll be there for a long time
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foreign