Youtube channels dedicated to building a house off the grid - Most of the time, Youtube recommendations is cancerous autism, but it sometimes gets things right

[Deathclaw Tiddehs]

I can't remember when exactly, but this one video got recommended to me. It was an almost 3 hour long video showing someone chopping down trees, carefully measuring them, and using some undocumented math to build his dream house. There was no conversation recorded in the video. It was just a nice, quiet video, where the only sounds were nature and the tools being used to cut wood. I don't know why, but I watched the video all the way through. Even though I didn't get the satisfaction of seeing the house completed (turns out it is a multi-year project still in progress), it was the most zen and relaxing thing I've ever watched on Youtube. It was a wonderful break from all of the high octane memelording, angry politics, shitty gameplay, and pseudo-news channels that Youtube heavily promotes now. Honestly Youtube needs more peaceful content like this.

Any other Kiwis have a run-in with off-grid house building? Is it something you imagine yourself doing? Are there channels some of you favor and would like to talk about?

 

[Freya]

there's a fuckton of channels about this lmao

 

[Salubrious]

I'm pretty sure a lot of them are staged, but it's still cool to at least watch some of the process, even if it's unrealistic.

 

[Weed Eater]

Here ya go. I think you were referring to this video.

 

[Robotic Overlord]

You are not really "off the grid" if you still able to film and upload your shit in HD.

It's just idle entertainment like 99.9% on YT.

 

[Sunshine Annie]

Primitive Technology was the first I saw. Same as the one in OP, this guy works in silence and it's so peaceful to watch. He does everything with the materials out in environment he's building in, including making the tools. He explains what he's doing in the captions.

 

[Thomas Paine]

Red Poppy Ranch is a pretty popular one.

Also Kris Harbour is a fucking chad and builds cool shit

 

[Shrugcarpet]

Fun For Louis is currently living in a bus which is electric. He keeps buying vans or busses for road trips and then dumps them somewhere else a year later. Main Channel, channel with Raya

Before this current road trip he was living in LA with like 10 other people including his GF in a house full of vegans. He was stupid enough to film outside of his house and show a street sign couple of months back and I found his house on Google within minutes.

He also is friends with Dave Erasmus (also buddies with Alfie Deyes). He basically lives in the woods near Brighton (or did I don't really check in on him much). I just noticed he also bought a bus during lockdown.

 

[Solid Snek]

Primitive Technology was the first I saw. Same as the one in OP, this guy works in silence and it's so peaceful to watch. He does everything with the materials out in environment he's building in, including making the tools. He explains what he's doing in the captions.

Yeah, what OP's describing sounds like Primitive Tech

There's a whole lot of South Asian channels that do this too, but they've usually got clickbait titles and photoshopped thumbnails, which is a little annoying.

Spoiler

 

[Deathclaw Tiddehs]

Sorry for not replying sooner. I was describing this video:

Unfortunately, he uses less hand tools in season 3. I don't blame him for not wanting to sand the inside of his house by hand, but it was a bit odd because of the care he took to strip the bark off the logs by hand in season 1.

I'm pretty sure a lot of them are staged, but it's still cool to at least watch some of the process, even if it's unrealistic.

Personally, I think a little bit of staging isn't a bad thing. Some media is really good at hiding their staging to remove bad attempts or to make something look organic when it would take a lot more effort than the video implies. However, there is definitely poorly staged videos which makes the overall video look worse.

There's a whole lot of South Asian channels that do this too, but they've usually got clickbait titles and photoshopped thumbnails, which is a little annoying.

Spoiler

In general, there are a lot of South Asian channels doing this. One of the weird Youtube recommendations I had was this one person from some South Asian country that did nothing but build "fancy" dirt houses. I watched a couple of them out of boredom and they were generally all the same idea of being underground houses that would get flooded out at the first light rainfall. The video would start with him digging out a hole with sticks and using his hands to compress the dirt into stairs and walls. Then, he would use sticks and leaves to build a roof over the pit and cover the sticks with more compressed dirt. One video had a "pool" where he added more compressed dirt walls and filled it with a clay jar. I can't remember of it showed where he found the water, but either way. The pit totally made no sense and I imagine started falling apart minutes after filming.

Another South Asian channel that the recommendations fed to me was some "restoration channel" that made me cry inside from how botched the attempts were. I think this video got recommended because I watch Odd Tinkering. A couple more of these weird South Asian botch jobs got recommended, and I notice they all use similar icons and they all try to say a weapon is from some ancient culture when it was clearly iron junk that sat outside for too long.

One such example, in my opinion, best represents the problems I have with these channels:

 

[BluntyBitch]

necro-ing because I can't find a thread on Bushcraft YouTubers and didn't feel like starting a community watch thread.

So manlet Joe Robinette , whose Bushcraft I'm not particularly impressed with, appeared on Alone and did a shitty job starting a fire, pretty funny. He has apparently accused several other actual US veterans bushcrafters of stolen valor and I'm finding the cat fights in that community funny rn. if you search in YouTube "Joe Robinette stolen valor" there's several videos but this was the one I came yesterday, the Huntsman just annialates him in a video from last week.

(I hope that embed works)

Survivor Lily isn't that good either and every dude I know only watches her for her bikini swim shots and early morning sexy voice. But at least she stays in her lane.