Planning an ecokit home in Hawaii

Ecokit is going to Hawaii! Our young American branch is doing an amazing job spreading the idea of sustainable modern homes around the USA. Our project in Hawaii is gearing up a notch, with the concept design stage just about to be finalized. And while it might sound like a piece of heaven, home construction on this island is a challenge on multiple frontiers. We had to toughen up the whole system as there are multiple elements against us: earthquakes, hurricanes, rainy seasons, volcanos and hungry termites.

While the Hawaiian climate is very pleasant, the weather patterns are less so. Our structural engineers had to deal with extreme winds, earthquakes and other caprices of mother nature. But we have strengthened our construction system to withstand all those and created a real beast amongst construction systems. Resilience is our middle name!

Hawaii is a real tropical paradise with everything that goes with it. When it rains, it rains like crazy. The average yearly rainfall on this island can be anywhere between 1,500 to 10,000 mm! In comparison, Australia’s rainfall is between 300 – 450 mm. We are proud of our ability to come up with smart designs, so we designed everything to handle a great deal of falling water. Also, we made sure that the whole concept needs as little maintenance as possible while reusing and recycling as much water as possible. Easy-peasy.

This ecokit home will stand not far away from the local active volcano. It’s not rare that the mountain burst a huge cloud of ash into the air that slowly falls and pollutes the fresh air. For this reason, we opted for mechanical ventilation. The ventilation system uses replaceable filtres that remove ash and other tiny particles from the air. We have seen the benefit in Australia a few years ago during the horrific bushfires.

Hawaii is the land not only of The Rock, but it’s also home to a breed of super-invasive termites. Their appetite creates huge pressure on builders and it didn’t help that our clients love the look of wood!  We went the extra mile to make their dream come true. Construction timber will be properly treated, while advanced materials with timber appearance will allow us to get the wood to the exterior without attracting the hungry buggers.