@destraht I think one of us should start a homesteading tribe.

Anyway, WRT your mention of rain's effects on your house in an even less relevant tribe than this:

Traditional adobe houses were built with the walls capped with fired clay tile, to protect them from rain. The exposed surfaces were treated with a surface clay layer that was sacrificial and replaced after the wet season.

You might consider something similar, but using tiles with a vitrified nonporous surface as a cap.

As for the walls, you mentioned polystyrene insulation. Thing about that is, it breaks down with sun exposure, and most formulations will outgas hydrocarbons or CFCs if they still use those there for expansion, for quite some time even after initial setup.

You might consider a thick layer of plaster infused with pumice granules for insulation, taking care not to saturate the natural air spaces with the binding agent. Then a well reinforced outer cement based stucco or plaster layer for waterproofing. If at all possible, the outermost layer's reinforcement should be furred to the main structure as the pumice or PS insulation layer won't make a reliable bond, nor should it. Ideally, a reflective wrap over the insulation then slight air gap beneath the outermost stucco layer would perform best.

Mylar coated bubble insulation, especially double bubble layer, has excellent R-value. Like PS, any impermeable wrap will cause moisture retention and condensation within the walls especially if cooking area is within and not extremely well ventilated. Superinsulated structures benefit from a high volume air exchange setup with overbuilt heat exchanger system so you swap air but not temperature. This keeps interior moisture under control. Consider an active supplemental heat exchanger component using solar powered Peltier junctions.

@MentORPHEUS Ah, so that is why we are kindred spirits. We were both drugged with amphetamines when we were tiny children.

People are waiting for "tanks in the street" to as an indicator that America is in deep shit. Back many years ago when I was still speaking to Americans in real life I had some of them tell me "but it's not so bad. It's not like there are tanks in the street".

I've already lived the prequel to the Brave New World novel. I'm hardly alone. Then people wonder why I'm paranoid. Let's see; 1) I'm born and then whisked away to have my dick cut up on an operating table. 2) For a few years starting at six years old they put me on amphetamines during the school weekdays. 3) Years later as a teenager my father gave me my own phone line, partially so that he could wire tap it to keep tabs on us.

Apparently though it pays off, because I was the first in perhaps the entire manosphere to be aware that Covid "Wuhan Flu" 19 was coming and that it would change everything. Perhaps my dystopian experiences combined with my high intelligence gave me level of perception that others many others cannot even perceive.

Countless times after I've perceived something that is seemingly unknowable then people have post-fact told me that it's impossible. If I'm allowing myself to indulge in baseless pleasures then I find this to be highly flattering. However, it says more about the person saying it than it does me. One's opinion about the knowability of something is encoded with enormous information of their world view and brain potential.

Of course that comes with having taken many knocks. Once I learned to follow my inner voice then I became quite a bit more powerful. It's very easy to ignore that inner voice while thinking about it as an overlaid snippet from the dialog of a TV show, instead of the active and present thing that it is.

This inner voice is not computationally reproducible. It comes out of portions of your brain that are subconscious and unconscious. The brain does not have the ability to rollback a billion computations to provide the development of the idea (which is really a feeling). This is how gay skeptics and gay rationalists always get hung up. They want real-time reproducible inputs to prove that something is so. It simply doesn't work like that. They're asking for something that time and capabilities do not allow. So then they sit smugly at having defeated another errant foe.

Taste is the most important quality. You have to have good taste. You have to know where to point your intention. There is nothing else that matters. That is why all matrix normies fail to ever grasp the latest most important facet of something. They simply just see the useless boring parts, tune out, and then invalidate anyone who can perceive more than that.

Meanwhile, the pills.

How about people get off of the pills long enough to hear their inner voice again that tells then to RUN. Get away from this insane system. Oh, but then they're living under the bridge with all of the people who really, really listen to their inner voice. They even take it a step further by mumbling to their own inner voice as it mumbles back.

So people say, Nah man, under the bridge life isn't for me, I'm going to take the pills and work towards being a slave with a thirty year mortgage.

What if I told you though that you could build a house out of the dirt that is under your feat and that it's better than what others can provide? Oh though, but you don't own any land. Ok though, take a look around. Look at population density maps of America. Compare that to other places on the planet. Then go for a drive. Anywhere. Go drive for 15 hours and look around. That is all of the King's land that you're not allowed to have or to use for yourself. Go drive through vast West Coast federal lands. That land is not for you.

People are living in an early Aeon Flux and Judge Dredd universe already. It's condensed into control grids. It's even worse than that though. America has not only sprawled its military out across the globe like any old boring-ass late-stage empire, but they've also sprawled their control grid out too far as well. The entire American experiment suburbia is sprawled out so far that it cannot be maintained without soul crushing taxes. All of those sewer systems to low density housing cost far too much for "middle class". Those giant four SUV lane suburban streets just for a house of 2-4 people costs too damn much. It's sucking the life and soul out of people.

Americans rarely start on a solid foundation. Something modest that can be built on from there.

Imagine if at 17 years old that you could build your own mud hut that the chick that you liked would be just thrilled to roll around humping in. "Wanna come hang out in my 60 square foot mud hut on Friday?", and of course she says "Oh, that sounds good". Then the adrenaline rush, the flushing cheeks. Someone's getting laid on Friday.

Then you realize, you know what, I'd like another foot taller ceiling and another few rooms to spread out in. So then you go about building that house from the soil that is under your feet. It's just time and food. You just need to turn time and food into a house.

Ahh, but building codes, and the rare tiger salamander habitat, and the soil impaction study, and the building inspectors, and the property taxes, and the cesspool system inspector. Those mother fuckers will sit around looking at satellite overlays of the land to make sure that nobody is doing anything. They want their cut. That cut requires grinding soulless drudgery. That soulless drudgery will sap any inspiration that you had to divert it into flamboyant or sad lonely perverse pass times. At that point you don't even know why you're really working anymore.

Americans are never on a stable platform. They're riding a bicycle, forever. Keep peddling hard and you will stay upright, but stop peddling and you'll fall off. So what about sleep? How can someone sleep while riding a bicycle. No problem, just evolve to be like a bird that can sleep with half of its brain. Keep peddling. More pills.

This biggest conspiracy in America is the suppression of the fact of just how many young men and women would be happy as could be living in their very own 60 square foot clay house so that they can have sex without parents. Oh though, but that would produce babies. We can't have that now. We need to import the developing world because babies are bad. Carbon and all of that.

@destraht

I swear that not one other child asked relevant questions at all (in terms of what an adult or even teenager would find pertinent).

So what do you do to a child with infinite energy, and way more brains than other kids? Easy. You just give him Ritalin. My mom says that my grades improved and my teacher enjoyed me more. Then however I started skipping out on my pills like Junior in the old folks home on the Sopranos and skipping out on class.

Same with the ritalin. While helping my parents move out of the family home when they retired in my 20s, I came across typed/wet process photocopied pages indicating I had been placed in the original clinical trials for Ritalin treatment of hyperactivity. My Mom once told me that after taking one, instead of buzzing around the backyard with boundless spastic energy, I would actually stop and look at individual things like a dandelion blooming in the lawn. However, I slowly at a young age realized I didn't feel like ME on the stuff.

Also had the experience of grade school teachers not knowing what to do with me. After great K and 1st grade teachers, we moved and my second grade experience with all new peers was with a first year lush of a teacher who was not brought back for a second year. My third grade teacher was old and nearing retirement, and developed this annoying droning, "MenTEE, QUIT it." pattern when I couldn't sit still in her boring ass classroom. After this I pretty much checked out of school. They put me into an "Academically talented" program and half a dozen of us would after lunch walk to a nearby elementary campus for small special classes that needed 2 1000+ student bodies to fill. However I didn't fit in well socially even with these students.

Incidentally one of my peers in that special class did go on to Med School. At our 5 year class reunion, he had a ring of girls following him around with pie-eyes because he was on track to become a Doctor. However, he looked at 22-23 like he'd aged to 45 from the rigors of that academic path.

I'm definitely planning some kind of thermal mass semi-subterranian dwelling if I stay here in the high desert. I'll need not only portland cement enrichment but lots of rebar as well to be earthquake safe, for I'm literally walking distance from the San Andreas fault. The wash-slope down from its uplift where I'm situated gives me a stunning 190 degree view of the Mojave desert.

@MentORPHEUS I'll add that when I make my big house expansion in a few years (not this little sunroom expansion now) then I'm going to make it with rammed Earth on the outward side. I'll use several percent higher concrete mix than is necessary to ensure that we don't fuck up. Rammed Earth when done correctly (as in you didn't completely fail) is basically like having a granite fucking castle. Big ass thick fucking walls with outrageous thermal mass and then modern polystyrene insulation outside, and drying the house out from the inside.

That way with the thermal mass you never have the wild temperature fluctuations. When a heat wave or hard freeze comes through then you won't even feel it for a few days - assuming that you don't react to it at all. What I already do in the Winter is that when the temperature is going below -10C then I turn up the heat for 6-12 hours in parts of the house that don't need it. Then it could be freezing ass cold for many days and my house is buffered against it. My house basically becomes a big calculus equation.

In the Summer at its peak I put a fan on one window suckin inwards, and then I use my stove fan to blow out. That pulls a huge amount of air through my house in exactly the correct direction. After days of just running the fans then my walls are nice and cool, and the baking heat outside can't penetrate. It works.

However, just to make it easier, or in case that I forget about the fans then I'll put a tiny AC unit that is only powerful enough to cool the kitchen and a little more. I'll be able to run it during the day for a few hours to handle any unusually unplanned for peaks. However, just a few hours, and not a large one. Then back to the fans at night.

That is very efficient compared to what most people are doing. Then on top of that we have $0.04kW/h energy here. So that is how I'm paying almost nothing for energy.

Add in to the equation that I'm a programmer with remote salary and you can see how that is working out very well. It's very easy for me to build wealth here, even while I'm just in "starting the business" mode.

So, if you can do that, and if you're not going to have children young, then why not just bounce around being a playboy? Why the corpo commute grind? It makes very little sense to me.

Then when my software takes off I'll be able to setup another base anywhere from Africa, Middle East, Europe to Russia. Or I could just setup another base back in my woman's home Colombia.

I'm not saying that this is the best way to be wealthy, but really what is the point of "Wealth" if you're using it like a retard. "Wealthy" people are taking gay-ass 6-day $5k vacations. Or "Oooh my 6 day vacation was only $3k". That is a lot of goddamn fiat currency man. WTF.

Personally, I didn't even need money in my 30's because I was already banging hotties around the world, living cheap and gaining experience. More money for what? There was never really a good answer until I started feeling as though it would be nice to hang my hat somewhere stable. Otherwise, the road is king. Being a thirty year old guy sitting in one place like he was a fifty year old is gay as fuck and is just soul crushing. So someone thirty is going to live the tame boring life of a fifty year old, and then when he's fifty he acts like a seventy year old?

So back to a house made out of adobe walls. That matters. It means that costs are low, I don't have mortgages, and my utilities in the worst month of Winter is $30 for two locations. That frees up everything for building what is good for me, and if I hit a snag along the way then I won't really go backwards, I'll just stop moving forward. I won't fall off. That means that I don't have the kinds of pointless stress that other people have, and I don't need to create rationalizations around how those generational length sacrifices are meaning something.

My sacrifices are not buying a new computer to replace my three year old computer because I'd rather finish building my property in about two years. TWO YEARS. Not fucking thirty years. Not fucking fifteen years and then a refinance back out to twenty five years. That bullshit passes for normal and sane, and so that is why I #BiteTheFace. Rarrr.