The Lava Tube Hale #3

” I bought us a good, heavy duty extension cord. If someone steals it, I want them to at least be able to trade it for a good batch of crack.”

Dear Verna,

Sunday was family day!

Kyle and Mia came down on Sunday with Dana (Mia’s Mom who rents Grama’s old apartment at the farm) to check out the property. Mama has already seen it once when she was helping me deliver one of our many trips of books to the storage shed. So now brother got to see it. He brought some fish he caught and we made a little salad for lunch. He, like everyone, just says, ‘Whoa. This is a lot of work.’ Haha!!! And we know! We totally know. But we’ve got it nice and cozy for the moment before any major construction begins. I have all these options going through my head that we could build a tiny home or a small kit home and live in there while we put a new roof on the library, do the deck and bedroom and kitchen…. I’m starting to really like that idea. Especially since we want a couple ‘ohanas on the property anyhow! They’ll be small enough square footage that they won’t need permits, and when we have art dinners there, we have space for some of the guests to stay over. The other option is we stay in the library (which is where we’re sleeping now) while we work on the deck and kitchen, and once the deck is waterproof, we start work on the master bedroom that will be beneath the deck. Once that is pau, then we can move into the bedroom and begin work on the library which needs a new roof and will also be raised to ground level while still abutting the edge of the kipuka.

Kyle and Mia were adventurous enough to go into the lava tube, down that original rickety ladder we’re still using. Gotta grab the better one we have at the farm. Every time Lover goes down there I imagine that aluminum thing just bending and breaking and he’s stuck in there for a day or two. The other ladder is much more substantial and thank goodness too- I had to use it to get the chandeliers down out of the barn. Those crazy high ceilings!! But Hamilton wants the chandeliers to light up the lava tube eventually so they had to come with us. I can’t wait to see that.

Now Bro is a pretty big smoker, so of course anytime anyone hears we bought a lava tube, their minds go immediately towards, ‘are you gonna grow!?’ Just as his did. No, no we aren’t. And it’s funny enough that our minds never even went there!! When we thought ‘lava tube’, our minds went to Chanterelle mushrooms and goat cheese. True homesteaders at heart. ;D

BUT maybe not quite homesteaders in reality yet. I’m in a mid-way point of partially reliant on the grid and partially off the grid, and not by choice but necessity! The amount of cords and chargers that come out of my purse when I’m in town and see an electrical outlet is rather impressive and usually gets a few remarks. I’m also constantly transporting gas cans around. This will hopefully go down to a nice fat ZERO cans of transport when we get our solar up and running and the car is the only thing charging off the HELCO pole. Right now I actually need one of those African safari Land Rover gas can mounts for the side of the car. For the side of my electric car! Oh my what an oxymoron.

I got a reply back from the county that our electrical permit needs to be done not by an electrical contractor, but an electrical engineer because the existing permit listed with the county has the word ‘shed’ (which cannot be edited) and so that added one more person to our team! The original team was you guys and us doing the designs, then we added the designer who works for the architect that stamped our papers for some cash, then the electrician who could add some outlets to our plans and get us an electrical permit # in order that the county electrical inspector, Tommy, to come out and inspect our existing ‘temporary permanent’ pole and sign off for HELCO to come hook us up!

The electrical inspector for the county called me the other day just to see how things are going. So thoughtful 😀 I told him that he may get a call from our electrical engineer because he didn’t believe me all the hoops we are having to jump through to re-hook up a HELCO pole that is already in existence!!!! Anyhow. That’s where we are on the electrical hookup. 😀 The wonderful thing is that with this team we’ve amassed for this process, we are SET for when we do all the legit things to permit the existing house. 😀  I could consult for the county building department after this.

Okay I’m off. Gotta research how to get bees to move of their own accord. We had some big winds the other night. We were laying in bed and listening to leaves falling along the roof in a directional pattern and the sound of the wind going along the edge of the kipuka like it was running laps on a track. I’m sure that kind of wind has some special Hawaiian name. Anyhow, the next morning we found that the wind had upset a whole hive, which found our lava tube wall to be a perfect new home. Geesh.

Aloha NUI NUI NUI

KK