Pole Houses

[Lokahi]

Can anyone enlighten me about pole houses? Pros and cons please. Wondering if such a building is a possibility in Puna area, more specifically on a Hawaiian Shores lot. Any local contractors building them?



Edited by - lokahi on 10/26/2006 15:39:31

[jdirgo]

Do you mean post and pier construction? If so, there are tons of threads on here about that. Remember, if you are in Hawaiian Shores Recreation States, you are limited to a 24-foot height restriction.

John Dirgo, RA, ABR, e-PRO
Island Trust Properties, LLC
808-987-9243 cell
http://www.hawaiirealproperty.com

[Carey]

Lohaki, when we were thinking about building we looked into the Pole Houses at http://www.polehouses.com/, they are still a new style of construction. Though there seems to have been some built in Hawaii County, it also seems that each construction is unique in permitting.
We bought a prebuilt, so didn't follow through any further.
Based on what termites did to the very limited wood in the house we bought (and what I have seen in the Ohia posts throughout the UH-Hilo campus), I would be very informed on the termit control methods that are used on the poles, prior to going this way. (OK termites have completely amazed me with the damage they can do to wood, and so I am a little overcautious when it comes to wood here.)
Aloha, Carey

[JerryCarr]

The Bear and I once stayed in a pole house for a week in Cornwall, England. The thing seemed bizarre at first, but we soon realized it was a marvel of construction and efficiency. It was built on a small, irregularly shaped lot that was a great crag of rock on one side and a swamp on the other. This created no problem because the thing was suspended by cables from huge poles driven into the ground and only touched the surface on the rocky side. It was also oriented for passive solar heating, but being England that had to be supplemented, and this being Hawaii, you wouldn't care anyway. They also can design them for built-in solar electric systems and to take advantage of prevailing winds.

Cheers,
Jerry

[Rob Tucker]

Around here the creosote soaked telephone poles are wrapped in stainless steel mesh below grade to about 3 feet above grade. There is a nicely finished pole house in HPP which didn't do that (far as I can see). I do wonder how you might replace a primary pole if the need arose. The structure is very interrelated. They are very interesting in their engineering. The HPP home has a rather stately presence. It kind of reminds me of an offshore oil rig. I suspect the termites do appreciate having their favorite food delivered to their door underground.

[Hotzcatz]

Aloha Lokahi,

Pole houses have been around a long time, although they haven't been a common construction method. Probably because moving around big heavy (and expensive) poles takes big equipment or lots of determination with plenty of friends. I'm not sure what the cost differences are, either, but most of the lumber would probably have to be brought in. Most of the lumber - at least for the frame of the house is in the "timber" category as apposed to being "lumber". The douglas fir poles are 12" diameter or bigger, the floor beams generally run 4" x 12" or bigger. The bolts to attach them together are around 1" diameter by almost two feet long and you will have to get a whole lot of metal plates fabricated. You will probably know at least one welder by name by the time your project is finished or this would be a good opportunity to take up welding and metal fabrication as a hobby.

The last set of pole house plans I did was for some folks who shipped in the poles and beams from the mainland. They are still building and they don't have a contractor, so it is going rather slowly for them. Just moving one pole around is quite the project but they seem happy with the whole thing.

Here's a website with some pole house designs and pictures: http://www.haikuhouses.com/gallery.htm

Many times folks choose a pole house construction method for when the lot topography is sloped and they don't want to level the lot to build. I have a client coming in sometime next week who will probably be building either a pole house or some sort of modified pole house design since they have a very sloped lot.

What sort of building are you building? There are a variety of other construction methods which may attain your desired finished construction depending on what you want to accomplish. Other than pole houses, there is "post and beam" and "timber framing" which might also be something you'd be interested in. They have a lot of the same sort of feel that pole houses have.

Is your lot level or does it slope or go over broken ground that you don't want to flatten? Is flooding a possiblity? Pole houses can be fairly high off the ground.

A hui hou,
Cathy

[Lucy]

Lokahi,
Here is some information that I think you will find helpful provided by Harry Pritikin. His own personal expierence with it and he lives in a pole house in the Kona district. I have been remiss about posting this, sorry. I told Harry that I would. I asked his permission to post a day after the earthquake and he gave me permission a few days back.
The pole information is toward the end of his letter.
So here it goes, Harry's letter about his expierence.
Harry wrote:
I'm traveling on the mainland, stuck in L.A. after my flight got canceled, but am writing you when hopefully this will get thorugh.

Post anything that you like. Credit would be nice! Give them my website, www.konarealestateagent.com and tell them thats where the form is to join the UPdates.

Harry M. Pritikin (RA) Big Island Specialist
Big Island Real Estate UPdates
( www.konarealestateagent.com )
Agent at Koa Realty, 75-5737 Kuakini Hwy.
Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, 96740
24 hr CELL: 808-989-3491 FAX 808-334-1567




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Jim & Lucy
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 10:55 AM
To: trust@bigisle.net
Subject: Re: AFTERSHOCK FROM HARRY M. PRITIKIN (RS) OF KOA REALTY ON THE BIG ISLAND OF HAWAII


Harry,

Real glad to know that you are fine and it is back to normal there for you now. WOW, Sorry that you had the big whopper though.
Whew, you can breathe a sigh of relief!

This information that you have written is valuable to lots of people in planning their lives and building their houses on the islands. It really should go into the media!

Just some thoughts and offering of a few suggestions here. Would you want to post it or want it posted to share the value of it with others? I was thinking it would be great over on www.Punaweb.org where we are discussing this too. Or would you mind if I posted it and your message as you would like it to read? Giving the credit to you and stating it is posted with your permission........edited to not bore all the natives...
Aloha,
Lucy
________________
"Harry M. Pritikin" <trust@bigisle.net> wrote:
Aloha All UPdate members,

First let me say that I appreciate the emails I have been receiving expressing concern and hopes for my families well-being. I will try and respond personally to each over time, but there were so many, and probably many with the same concerns who haven't written, that I thought I would send out this message along with the regular UPdate.

Here's what happened. At 7AM I was barely awake lying in bed and everything just started shaking. There was no build up. It just hit. Also, I didn't hear any dogs howling like you usually do just seconds before an earthquake. So it surprised even the dogs. I clutched the mattress to keep from being thrown out of bed. My house is a pole house, and very solidly built, but the shaking was so violent. Not a rocking or a rolling where things sway up and back like in your usual earthquake. This was a shaking, like two big hands had the house and were shaking it so hard and very fast. There was loud rumbling the whole time. I didn't have time to think anything during, but afterwards I was amazed that the house could be shaken so violently and not come apart. My first thought was that there was going to be a tsunami. If the quake was in the ocean I expected a tsunami within minutes. I stood at my upstairs window watching. I heard later that people down on Alii Drive were doing the same thing. They realize it was useless to run and were just watching and waiting. I am at 1,100 feet elevation and I wondered if the wave could come up this high. When nothing happened I surmised that the quake had been on land. I turned on the upstairs TV. Nothing but football. My house is 100% solar so I didn't know the power was out in town. Also, I have the Dish Network, which is satellite, so I had TV (I heard later that the cable was out). But all the local stations were off the air. So I ran out to my car to listen to the radio and much to my frustration all the stations, AM and FM, were also off the air. This kind of scared me. I kept scrolling around looking for the civil defense station but there was none. This really frustrated me. Then, as I am standing out in my parking area, the first aftershock hit. I am told it was in the high 4's low 5's. My wife was in the house and she screamed. The solar stuff on the roof was clanging. I ran back into the house and turned on the downstairs TV and went to CNN, nothing. Then CNBC, nothing. Then Fox. Ah ha, the first inkling that the mainland has, and the first news that I have, on this earthquake and they say it was centered off Maui!! I thought, oh my god, if it was this strong over here Maui must be devastated. I switched back to CNBC and they said it was centered offshore of the Big Island. Now I'm getting frustrated. There is no local news, no radio or TV, and these idiots at CNN keep showing some girl on Waikiki Beach slathering herself with suntan lotion. So I started walking around surveying the damage. Everything on shelves was knocked off. I had a few of my bottles from my old bottle collection that fell on the tile kitchen floor and broke. There were a few ceramic nick knacks that had hit the tile and broke also. All the pictures on the walls were tilted in the same direction as if put that way on purpose; kind of artsy looking. Spots in my rock walls outside had collapsed. Over the next three hours I cleaned up inside the house while my wife fielded phone calls from all the friends and relatives calling us from the mainland. We have T-Mobile cells and they were working. The regular phones came up fairly quickly also. But the news is all about how the power is out on Oahu. They made it seem like that was caused by the earthquake, but they were having torrential rains and I think that's what did it. It was so frustrating because there was no news about the Big Island. When I drove to town around 4 the Safeway was open and it was as if nothing had happened. They must have had the shelves emptied by the quake but everything was picked up and cleaned up by the time I got there. But Wal-Mart was closed. I heard that their acoustic ceiling tiles had come down. Of course on Fox they said the "roof collapsed". What was amazing was how the roads were strewn with rocks. The county had been out and pushed them all off to the shoulders and coned some of the piles; but so many and so many places. We didn't really get any good news footage of the Big Island until Monday. There was good footage on the local news showing people cleaning up rocks mostly. Everybody was in good spirits, laughing and joking about what had happened. One guy who's rock wall collapsed completely into his driveway was bragging about how he had grabbed his plasma screen as it was falling off the wall and saved it. He didn't mention what his wife was doing at the time! Priorities:-) There was a rock church up in Hawi that had it's walls collapse. One house caught fire and basically was gutted because their propane line broke between the tank and the house. The Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, which is very close to the epicenter up in Puhakaloa, had some of the huge concrete balconies break off and fall to the ground. Also, lava rock facades on the three story concrete walls came down. My broker's house in Kona Paradise shifted about 6 inches on it's foundation. Most of you mainlanders aren't familiar with post and pier construction, but it's an easy repair job. His house will just be in a slightly different location now! My house is a pole house. It's held up by 9 huge ohia logs. The base of each log is bolted to 5/8" thick steel U frames that go up the log 12 inches. The base of the U frame goes into concrete footing 18 inches. Each footing is a 3'X3'X3 cube buried in the ground. Most mainlanders can't picture what the ground is like in Kona. We live on the slopes of a volcano. Unless you live on an extinct cinder cone, the "soil" is mostly rock and only a foot or so think. Under that is mostly rock. The deeper you go the more solid the rock becomes. There are several kinds of lava flows, AA is loose jagged pieces that move very slowly during an eruption. Pahoehoe is fast moving lava that dries hard and solid. Cinders are formed from lava shooting up to 1,500 feet into the air and the trapped gasses explode out creating cinders. Cinders occur as localized cones. Old cinder cones turn to deep soil on the surface. My house seems to be on an old pahoehoe flow with about a foot of crumbled rock mixed with dirt on the surface. So the footings of my house were poured into holes rammed out in the rock by a hoe ram. So basically, this house was going nowhere:-)

One of the things that because painfully obvious in the first few hours after the quake was that the mainland media was just looking for a story. You could actually tell the disappointment in their voices when callers would say it wasn't so bad. Plus, they didn't know the difference between Oahu and the Big Island. It brought home to me how little people on the mainland really know about Hawaii. That's why I am writing this. We don't have dirt like on the mainland. It makes the effect of an earthquake very different. You don't have liquefaction of land which causes most of the serious damage in California. The news media kept talking about the danger of mudslides. How can you have mudslides if you don't have mud!!?? They were milking this thing for all it was worth. Since the local stations came back on line I haven't watched any more mainland news so I don't know how badly of a distorted picture you are getting. But judging from the calls and emails from friends and family, it's pretty distorted.

This morning there were two after shocks. One at about 5:25 and the other around 7. Just small thumps but you could hear them. Just a little reminder. The main quake, btw, was very noisy. My neighbor was out hanging up clothes on her clothesline Sunday morning and she said she could see the ground undulating. I would have liked to have seen that. Oh well, maybe next time:-)

I realize now that there is no way I am going to be able to explain how different things are over here. You live on the mainland all your life, and you think every place else in the world is the same, because every state in this huge country is pretty much the same. But the Big Island is very different. That's why I love it so much. It's unique. We have 9 out of 11 of the worlds possible ecosystems all right here. On the Hamakua coast is deep red dirt and lots of rain. Over here in Kona it's dry and rocky. We live on the slopes of an 8,600' volcano. From the dry oceanfront where it only rains 10 inches per year in Kailua town, up to my house at 1,100' where it's green and lush with 40 to 50 inches ,on up the hill between 1,500 feet and 5,000 feet where there is lush ohia forests with big tree ferns everywhere, then up to the top of Mt. Hualalai where it starkly beautiful lava and brush interspersed with grassland. On the peaks of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, both almost 14,000', there is snow every winter. You just have to come here to experience it. After about a year you will become familiar with how it is and then you will be the ones watching mainland TV and marveling at how little people actually know about Hawaii.

Harry Pritikin
Koa Realty
trust@bigisle.net
phone 808-989-3491


Aloha All,
I apologize to those for whom this email holds no interest.

TOOT MY OWN HORN DEPT.: As many on my update mailing list know I now have 3 UPdates starting with the Kona update ten years ago and adding the Hilo and Kau about two years ago. Recently a person questioned how I could cover the entire island.
My answer, I have been on the Big Island since December 21, 1978. My first home was in Hawaiian Acres in Kurtistown. Next I lived in Pahoa, Waa Waa, Hawaiian Beaches, Nanawale and Kapoho Vacation Land in the Puna district. I also lived part time for about 5 years on a 20 acre farm on the Red Road near South Point in Kau while alternately living on a Bishop Estate leasehold farm in Caption Cook. I have showed property extensively on the Hamakua Coast and Hawi areas as well as had listings and sold property in Hilo, Kehena Beach on the Red Road near Kalapana, Hawaiian Beaches, etc.. That's how I can do it:-)


Having another Great day in Paradise, Wherever that Maybe!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheLanai

[waynesb]

I inquired of polehouses.com for their package prices in August. Their very informative reply contained the following:

"Here's the latest pricing, and basic info, for all of our standard pole house plans and prepackaged pole house kits as seen on our website:

The Turtle Shell kit price is a total of $96,514 USD, including the 144 sf loft.
The Honu and Leatherback kit prices are a total of $153,550 USD each, including the 298 sf to 320 sf loft.
The Loggerhead kit price is a total of $159,400 USD, including the 450 sf loft.
The E'a (Hawksbill) kit price is a total of $185,950 USD, including the 489 sf loft

Our kit pricing is based on manufacturing in Portland Oregon."

Out of my target range, I'm afraid.
Wayne

[adias]

Here is another “Pole House” builder in Hawaii. http://randletropicalhomes.com/ On one hand pole houses seems an ideal construction technique for tropical areas and resistant to earth quakes and its proponents claim cost less to build. Yet this type of construction is the expectation rather than the norm???

An interesting thought; I guess in a way sky scrapers could be thought of as the modern day pole house. They have a steel load bearing frame with non load bearing walls.



Edited by - adias on 11/07/2006 22:36:25

[Lokahi]

Thank you one and all. Awesome information. A lot to consider. Once again you guys give reason for the desire to be a Punatic! Mahalo.