As you may know, this time of the year I am about to pause my construction project of my "citadel" and present you my latest updates of it.
I post it here first, on SN, before anywhere else, because I like SN for its long post format and also for the audience.
2025 - The 5th year of construction, the year when the 1st house is taking shape
In the previous parts of the story (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) I’ve explained the motive of doing this construction and what is this “citadel”. If you read this for the first time, I suggest to start with the previous parts.
Some readers of this journey sent me a lot of messages asking more details and/or trying to give me their advice or observations. Now I would like to add something more.
Considerations
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This post is not about me bragging! Is more like a walk-through guide for those that want to start a project like that. I just share my experience and Proof of Work with others that are interested in building their own place. You MUST be warned: a project like this is not easy as it looks! Do not think that is like in those engagement videos on Youtube showing you how to build a cabin in the Indonesian jungle or Alaskan forest. This post is about showing real hard work and be aware of it.
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This project would not be possible if before starting it I didn’t stack sats hard and prepare my social and economical status. First of all I had to liberate myself from ANY fiat debt. You cannot accumulate sats properly if you are still in debt. And once you start living on Bitcoin Standard (earn and spend in sats) you must have a rule of “spend less than you earn” in order to be able to stay out of debt. Debt = fiat mindset, slavery, somebody else is making the rules for you Credit = bitcoin mindset, sovereignty, you are making your own rules
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This is an ONGOING project, is not finished yet and will not be finished more few years. This little house is just the 1st one from others that will be built on the premise, is part of a bigger homestead project. I had to build this house first, in order to have a proper comfortable place to stay, for me and other friends (if they come to help) instead of sleeping in a hammock or tent outside. Also this 1st house is like a “testing ground”, learning and testing how to use local materials and procedures. I had ZERO knowledge about constructions and building a house. But I learned a lot from these 5 years (mostly summers).
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This place is far isolated from any road and villages, deep inside a mountains valley. The access to it is only by a narrow trail through a dense forest, alongside a river. So all materials, food and drinks are carried by myself, in a backpack, every week. There’s no way to bring machinery, heavy tools and materials, so I have to use mostly what I have on site: wood, rocks, dirt… and my hands. Alone. Due to its location, I cannot work the whole year. Mostly between May and November. Being located into a high mountain valley, the rains and wind are quite heavy so I have to avoid them.
What I’ve done in the year of 2025
This year was very productive! And I could start early in May, with good weather all along and no other accidents happen.
As of today, my birthday 13 Oct, the house is not yet 100% finished but I could say it is 95% finished. I will still go few more weeks up until end of November, just to finish little things and carry some other materials and furniture. I just wanted to post this part 4 and also include a TLDR video time-lapse of the whole construction journey until now. So if you do not have the patience to read all the story, you can just watch the video below.
The video is quite long 16min but contain more pictures and it start from the beginning until today. Sorry for the low resolution, but on SN I could not upload files bigger than 50MB to be embedded. Maybe later when I will post it on my substack, will insert a better resolution video,.
Yes, it was really hard to reach this point, after 5 years ! And this year I could say that I’ve done the hardest work, not just of its increased effort but also because of complexity. Until now was just digging and putting earthbags as walls. But now was the time for the structure, the roof with its heavy beams, the resistance points, the heavy rocks wall. Each step was well calculated, not just for not making structure mistakes, but most importantly to not have any fatal accident. Remember I was working alone in a remote place, except few days when a friend helped me to carry and put in place the heavy logs for the beams.
You cannot imagine the effort I put this year !
Step 1: May - July 2025
So last year, described in Part 3 of this “Citadel” journey, I paused the work in October, with only few testing beams on top of the dormitory (the 1st half of the house), so this year in May I started with bringing proper beams and fix them in place.
Sometimes I had to use ingenious ways to carry them:
I wanted to use mostly fallen trees because they were dry and stronger than if I would cut myself a younger one. A green wood is not so good for construction, especially for beams. It will bend easily under pressure. Also I do not like to cut green trees. Protecting the environment is part of living in nature, because without it, you are kind of fucked. So I was in continuous looking for dead fallen trees around the area; this happen quite often due to heavy winds and storms, high pines could fall and after few months are dried and easier to carry. A green log is much heavier than a dried log.
Ok, so at the mid of June I had already all the beams in place:
Do not think that is easy to carry such beams, like 400-600m through a dense forest or a big boulders path. Sometimes took me one entire day to move these heavy logs and put them up in their place.
Each log is like 4m long and with a 18-25cm diameter. I had to put strong beams because on top of them will come the “green roof” (1 level of gravel, 2 levels of dirt and on top flowers).
Between carrying the logs, in the evenings, I was also busy with covering the earthbag walls with a level of “beer-cans wall” and preparing the base for the 2 beds:
The beer cans are a perfect isolation for the bags. The bags must be protected from sun light in order to resist more than 50 years. Also the cans wall is like a nice leveling having a straight line of the wall. Later will come with a thin level of plaster and paint.
On top of the beams were coming the wooden pallet boards as resisting base for the roof. yes, I used recycled pallets because of their treated wood boards and because were free.
I placed each beam at 40-50cm so I could place a 120cm standard board between 3 beams. This way I do not have to cut the boards, just screw them fast.
On top of the boards, I put 3 levels of plastic isolation:
- one with used plastic sheet to protect from screws and possible needles from the wood the middle isolation plastic.
- a middle plastic sheet, the hardest one, used for waterpools. I order it online at a specific size.
- on top of this, to protect the middle one from rocks, with a remaining tarp used previously as sun protection.
And at mid July I also had already covered the roof with dirt and well protected:
Carrying all those rocks and dirt with a 40L bucket (like 20-30kg), over 60 times, that is like almost 2 tons of material. I used the dirt and the small rocks dug out from the hill. That was a lot of work and effort.
Step 2: August - September 2025
Now with a proper roof in place (only on the 1st half of the house - the dormitory) I can start working on the 2nd half of the house: the “living room”.
I started to dig the remained south wall, where some big rocks had to be taken out and build and additional pylon for the beams. This wall wasn’t built entirely with earthbags because it will contain also 2 big windows, looking towards South and having a lot of sunlight all day. Also will have a nice sofa (build from earthbags) and could sit and look outside the windows.
On the outside, the earthbags wall was covered with a small rocks wall to protect them from sunlight.
At the end of August the South wall was finished, right in time as planned. So in September I dedicate my time on the North wall, the wall already started with the chimney but will not be built with earthbags and instead with big rocks. The vicinity of the fire and the chimney will not be proper for plastic earthbags and also will give a nice look around the fireplace.
First I had to clean up the last corner and make space for a big boulder that I kept it nearby for long time. That boulder I wanted to use it as strong and stable resistance for the last pylon. But was damn hard to move it in its place. Took me an entire day to move it only 20 cm and place it exactly where I wanted.
So I start also putting 2 columns of earthbags as base for the beams. The rocks wall wasn’t finished yet, so the beams will be sustained by these strong earthbags pylons. Each column of earthbags have plunged in the middle an iron bar to keep them fixed and not falling down. In fact all the earthbags walls contain these iron bars, forcing the bags to stay put and not moving at all.
At this moment I had to wait for a friend to come to help me. I was not able to do it myself with the next beams on top. So after a lot of effort in bringing more 6 heavy beams from a larger distance, finally we were able to have the main beam on top of those 2 bags pylons:
The roof covering process went next days on the same way as previous one: wooden pallets boards, 3 levels of plastic isolation, 3 levels of gravel and dirt.
This how I carried the boards on my backpack, 8km, 15 pieces at a time, in total were like 70 pieces, many trips.
After I cover it with rocks and dirt the roof from inside looks like this:
And from outside like this:
Step 3: October - November 2025
This month remains to finish the chimney wall and the entrance wall. Now that the roof is ready and strong for the both parts of the house, is a quite a nice place to sleep, eat and spend some time. But I have to hurry to start building the entrance wall and be prepared for the winter. Here the winter can come really fast after October, with heavy rains and winds and even sometimes snow.
Main tasks:
- finishing the chimney
- finishing the exterior level of “soft wall” with rocks
- adding the interior level of the rocks wall
- starting the entrance wall with the big boulders
Chimney was done in just 1 day, where I inserted a metal tube in the middle and cover it with rocks:
The chimney wall also started but I had to pause it a bit and start the entrance wall:
Not sure if is visible in this image, but there are 2 levels of rocks walls, one exterior and another one interior, like 2 levels of isolation with ballast in between.
The exterior wall was really heavy! The big boulders I had to move them bit by bit, by hand, with a iron rod and putting small rocks and wood underneath to lift them up and pile them together.
But slowly I was able to use all the big boulders saved from the beginning of digging, in front of the house and in the end forming a nice and strong wall:
At mid of October I was able to add also the frames for the entrance door and window and also adding another small sofa made with 8 earthbags, next to the entrance window. It is nice to have a comfortable place to sit and look out through the windows.
I hope that in November will be able to work a bit more to finish the entrance wall and the chimney wall. With that I could finish the year with the whole house structure ready. Only remains for the next spring-summer the finishing interior.
To recap, what remains to finish:
- entrance wall (part of the top, with small rocks)
- chimney wall, half of it is done
- bringing the door and the windows and install them
- finishing all the earthbags walls with beer cans and cover them with plaster
- installing some shelves on the back wall
- filling all the remaining holes (between the roof and the walls) with polyester foam
- building the rocks stove with a cast iron plate on top
- lay stone tiles on the floor and leveling the floor nicely.
Aaaand that’s it for the first house. I think next summer will be 100% finished. It doesn’t look right now as a real house, I know is quite ugly, but keep in mind that still remains a lot to finish.
Anyways, I am happy that this year was quite productive and I advanced a lot with the construction. Previous years I had 2 accidents and couldn’t work too much and also was bad weather. These 5 years were getting me quite tired and I am not so young anymore. Working alone on this project is damn hard. Let’s keep in mind that I started from a simple hill digging it…
Next “seasons” will be:
- installing a hydro-electric generator in the river and have 1000W with 220V, 24/7.
- bringing current water and filter it
- preparing a new vegetables garden
- installing a hot water boiler
- installing a bitcoin miner to heat the house during cold winters. Also that means I would have to install an internet connection.
- building a pool and a sauna
- building a proper bathroom with shower and WC
- start building a bigger house next years
Thank you for your attention to this matter.