We bought a shipping container for a workshop!

Day 1: What a day! It started at 02:25am to catch a flight to Hilo at 05:00am. As soon as we touched down, our first stop was at Home Depot to purchase supplies for the next stage of our land development.
We needed four 16inch foundation blocks for the four corners of the shipping container to rest on, as well as a level and string to ensure level placement. In addition I bought organic soil and more non-GMO Papaya seedlings.

Early morning Home Depot date

After a quick breakfast, we made our way to Big Island Containers to pick out a used 40ft shipping container. The big red container we bought was a retired old dame who had spent her last years shipping products from South Korea. We found an old shipping invoice still inside the container which was interesting to read... mostly dried food products and household goods. The exterior was a little dinged up but the interior was clean, sound and dry. We'll name her "Connie" and paint her green.

"Connie"

After arranging Connie's delivery, the next stop on our shopping expedition was at Plant It Hawaii, a wholesale nursery which opens it's doors to the public twice a year and fortunately we happened to arrive on one of those days! It was immense fun and very educational roaming around the nursery and learning about the different varieties of  all the trees they had available. Finally we settled on selecting a Malama Avocado and a Lychee tree

We have an Avocado and Lychee tree selected

After a successful and exhausting day working on our land until the sun went down, we camped in our Ohia forest with thunder and lightening in the distance and the chorus of coqui frogs singing us to sleep with their mating calls.

Ohia trees against late afternoon sky

Our camp

Day 2: The day left us with a sense of accomplishment as we feel like we're making progress and getting things done! Dreadknot did an epic job of  measuring and leveling the foundation blocks for Connie. I was his "right hand woman" and heaved rocks, pulled strings and looked at level bubbles. We spray painted the layout and plan onto the house pad to get a feel of how everything would fit together. The plans are currently at the permitting office and include the first round house or "rondawel" dwelling, septic tank and water catchment tank. It was fun to be able to get a visual of the layout from a high point and from our drone footage.
We dreamed it and now we're seeing it!

Heaving rocks

Precision foundation leveling

I'm standing in the center of the roundhouse, septic tank to the left and water catchment tank in foreground.

Day 3: Today was all about the shipping container delivery. We started with an early morning 5.5 mile run and then made a mad dash to Home Depot to replace a sledgehammer which broke after one day of pounding  into lava rock. Shortly after we arrived back, "Connie" was delivered, which has changed the game considerably as we now have safe, secure dry lock-up storage!

Watch our YouTube video here!

Welcome to "Connie"

The rest of the day was spent installing secure locks and landscaping until the sun went down!

Driveway leading to house pad

Day 4: We started the day off with a 7 mile run in the boonies, followed by dry-stack rock wall building and planting our papaya and banana trees in an area were calling "Papaya Plantation". The layout of the plantation just happened organically (no pun intended) as we built a terraced garden on the bend leading to the container. We had fashioned a water catchment system off our camp area tarp roof and could make lovely little beds for each sapling by pounding holes through the lava rock with an O'o bar, filling them with rich organic soil and watering the trees with buckets of water. We're delighted with the new fledgling garden!

"Papaya Plantation" with dry stack rock wall

Papaya seedling

Dwarf Apple Banana tree

Until next time, a hui ho and mahalo for joining us on our sustainable living dream journey.

Aerial shot of house pad and container

The driveway

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!

Driveway and house pad layout

Standing on the spot where our house will be built

Mission accomplished for this weekend. We have successfully mapped the layout of our 300ft (91.5m) long driveway and 80ft X 80ft (24m X 24m) house pad. 

Clearing the area for our house pad

We rented a brush cutter, cleared the underbrush along the driveway and marked it by tying red marker tape onto the bushes lining it. This involved intensive labor on the part of Dreadknot who handled the brush cutter while I swept up the foliage behind him, clearing the debris and tying the tags. 

Gathering the cuttings

....and tossing them to the side of the clearing

Along the way we also marked all the well-established trees we want to save with green tape.

Marking the mature trees we want to protect

In addition we cleared a path along one of the boundary lines to enable us to establish how far from the boundary our driveway and house pad would be set. There are legal requirements as to the set backs from the borders you can develop.

Cutting and marking the driveway

It took a full morning just to mark halfway on one side of the property border which we also did with red tags. When we had the land surveyed and staked, we opted for 6 stakes, ( 4 Corners and 2 midpoints). In retrospect I would have gone for 8 or 10 stakes, it would have made establishing our boundary line much easier.

King of our jungle

Once we had cleared and marked off exactly how we would like the layout to be, it was time to get quotes from a  couple of excavation companies to bulldoze and excavate the hard volcanic rock which lies beneath a thin layer of topsoil. 

Beautiful ohia lehua blossom

We feel that we have chosen a very professional company who will do the job right. Everything is set in place for dozing and grading and soon we'll actually be able to drive onto our land which is so exciting! 

Standing in the middle of the house pad area

Green taping the trees we want to keep

The plan is taking shape and things are moving forward one step at a time. We are believing in ourselves, going for our dream and doing whatever it takes.

Dream it. See it. Be it.

Cutting in the first trail

Hard at work blazing a trail onto our property

What an exciting weekend! We had our 3 acres of land staked and this has been our first opportunity to actually access the land by cutting a trail through the dense underbrush with a machete, a shovel and a pair of loppers. The vegetation is thick and lush but fortunately is accessible with a bit of hard work. Dreadknot went ahead with the machete to cut a trail and I followed on behind with the loppers, trimming back branches that stuck out into the trail.

Enjoy our drone video of our land in the raw, only a trail is visible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC9Eef4H0aU&t=1s

We are thrilled with the piece of land we bought and plan to keep the majority of the beautiful indigenous trees intact. The ohia lehua trees are gorgeous and well established along with a few other species we have yet to learn about.

Beautiful ferns abound as well as the invasive mountain strawberry guava which are delicious but pose an ecological threat to indigenous forests as it crowds out the other plant species. So we'll have to work hard on curbing the spread of this plant, originally brought to Hawaii from Brazil.

This weekend we succeeded in establishing a trail so that we can access the 4 corners of the property and we made a clearing that we can camp on whilst working. A true feeling of satisfaction has engulfed us and we are motivated!

Next step is grading the driveway and house pad. Tune in again to see our progress.

 Dream it. See it. Be it.