Planning and Design of our home

We've reached the very inspiring stage in our sustainable living dream project of designing our home.

This is the initial dwelling we are constructing to be able to live on our property. Dreadknot has designed the entire house with my input on aesthetics and personal desires for certain features like  double front doors and a grand wide staircase leading up to them. 

We then hired an architect JKK Designs here in Hawaii to draw up the official plans to be able to have them approved and stamped by an Structural Engineer and present them to the permitting office for an "Owner-Builder Permit". Yes, I will be helping with the hauling, digging, hammering and nailing.

The principle of the house design is based upon our original dream of living in a round house or as they call it in South Africa, a "rondawel". The structure is not especially big but has high walls and an extra high ceiling with the inclusion of a fairly wide cupola on top of the roof for lighting and ventilation, keeping the house cool without the need of artificial air conditioning. Roundness allows the free flow of energy and has a very calming effect on anyone entering the structure. Rounded structures also survive hurricanes and severe storms much better than squared or rectangular houses which act as obstacles to high winds instead of allowing the wind to simply flow around them and move on. The aesthetic quality of a round, high pitched ceiling is also very pleasing to both of us and the general layout of the home is an open plan living area and kitchen, one bedroom and bathroom and a large lanai or deck outside so that we can enjoy the outdoors as much as possible in the midst of our own personal Ohia forest.

So now we have the blue prints and hopefully we'll be able to get started soon! The first task will not be very glamorous as we will have to have the septic tank installed. The property is rural and as part of being self sufficient, we have to manage our own waste.

I recently inspected the additional grading and grubbing and was very happy about the increased area for our house pad.

We also checked up on our fruit trees and added a few more to the collection. So far we have coconut palms, figs, apple bananas, papayas, lemons and tangerines....all in their infancy and not producing yet. Thank you Sian and Kanaloa for helping with the fruit trees!

A huge "Mahalo" to Jerin Kelly for helping us with our plans. We will never be able to complain of boredom again in our lives!

Bulldozing a driveway & house pad

Lava rock & coconut palms

Dreadknot and I are feeling very elated that we can now access our property with a vehicle! The Ohia forest on our land was in full bloom when we arrived, welcoming us with spectacular fire red Lehua blossoms as we drove onto our black, red and green landscape in the life sustaining drizzle.

Mahalo Hursley Alani

Hursley Alani from Alani Bulldozing LLC did a magnificent job of cutting in and leveling our driveway and a space to start building our home aka a house pad.

The area of Hawaii that we have bought our land on is solid black lava rock with a thin layer of topsoil. In addition the terrain is pretty uneven with a rolling topography, so it was not an easy job trying to tame it by any means. The good aspect of excavating a driveway into this rock is that once the rock is crushed and dozed it is almost like having an asphalt driveway and we could drive onto it immediately. However, we have opted to add a layer of gravel on top to fill in the gaps and smooth it all out even more.

18 tons of gravel

The house pad

Gravel laid onto driveway

Smoothing out the gravel

The same day we called we had our first dump truck deliver 18 tons of gravel which covered our long driveway very nicely with an initial layer. It was incredible to watch how the bed of the truck was tipped to release small amounts of gravel as the driver slowly drove the length of the driveway. I must add that it was a little nerve wracking too as Dreadknot was walking behind, guiding the driver as he released the gravel... I was concerned that something might go wrong and that Dreadknot could be buried by 18 tons of small rocks and stones.

It rained almost solidly for the entire three days we were there and despite the torrential downpours with thunder and lightning, no muddy puddles developed and our car could easily navigate the terrain. Sleeping outdoors in a tent in the midst of a heavy storm with sheet lightning being displayed every so often accompanied by loud cracks of thunder is quite an exhilarating experience! At first I mistook the lightening for flashlights in the middle of the night which was a much scarier prospect than that of Mother Nature. 

First camp on our property

Shelter from the rain

Camping on our property while we worked on it was also exciting as this would be the first time that we were sleeping on our land and fortunately we had good rain gear in the form of tarps( used over and under the tent), umbrellas and rain suits and great camping equipment.

Once we measured the housepad with a 100ft tape measure we realized that we had measured short the first time as we had to go over and around foliage, mounds and trees. The pad was actually 60 ft by 90 ft instead of 80 ft by 80 ft... but even that initial size we had wanted would not be big enough for our plans. We had Kimo from a container company come and inspect the area to see if it was appropriate for a 40 ft shipping container and realized then that the width of the clearing would not work for this plan. Next we got Hursley to come back and we are hiring him again to widen the pad. This was a little disappointing as it costs an additional fee to have the large bulldozer delivered each time.... but there was nothing we could do, the space just wasn’t wide enough.

Two Feathers at work with the rake

Another one of our plans is to plant fruit trees every time we go to work on our property. Hursley very kindly gave us five coconut palms which we have planted in an area we are calling “ Coconut Grove”. We also bought a small fig tree sapling and lemon tree sapling which we transplanted into bigger pots and planted the seeds of a delicious papaya and avocado we ate and we’re going to see what happens with those!

Dreadknot planting the coconut palms

Two Feathers in the "Coconut Grove"

It’s now two weeks later and the bulldozer is back on the property making it bigger! 

The D9 Bulldozer moving rock

We have secured a heavy duty chain with a lock across the driveway to prevent vehicular trespassing and hope to get a gate up soon. Next step is going to be purchasing and delivery of a shipping container that we can use as a secure lock up garage and storage shed....

Stay tuned for the next installment of this amazing adventure!