03-16-2008, 07:21 AM
Think it through carefully. We own a 3-story house (the only one I have seen in HPP). Besides worrying about being the lightning rod for the whole of Puna :-) it really is on the impractical side - great when you are young and healthy but when life's challenges hit you, you will kick yourself. I had a new baby and a c-section and a flight of stairs between my bedroom and the kitchen. We were told that the lady who build our house originally sold it to us when she made friends with a gentleman who couldn't manage the stairs.
Sure, you can add an elevator but as John Rabi said, you will have trouble maintaining it. And the local electricity company is not the most reliable in the planet. What if the power is out for hours (common during major storms) and you have mobility problems? I also have to tell you that when Pele shakes us up, you really feel it on the top floor. The land parcels in Puna are large enough to make building up unnecessary.
There is one advantage to a tall house. You can expose more rooms to the tradewinds (if you have thought well about how to orient and lay out the house). As there are fewer rooms per floor and often only one east to west, it is easy to have opposing windows to carry through the breeze. It can be done with a ranch house too, but it needs a bit more thought. I can't emphasize how important good airflow is. Between my husband and myself we have lived in 6 houses in this area and I can tell you good airflow makes the difference between a pleasant home and a stuffy moldy oven.
The other thing about a tall house is that you will have a lot of rooms above ground level vegetation. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. In exchange for more rooms with a view, you lose privacy and also you might not like what you see.