Solo girl terraforms lava field with off-grid oasis & rugged tiny home 🏝️

Oh there's some lava houses. These are lava houses guys. This is lava. The houses just sit on top. Hi Jade. It's great out here. So I'm staying here. This is the lava temple and you guys are in the phoenix house. So much wind. Does it feel like we're out at sea? Oh yeah. It feels like we're on a boat. Do you understand this landscape? It's just lava. Just lava? This island is just lava. So here this cutting board. So we are on the biggest island Hawaii. As you can see there are several volcanoes. Two biggest ones. Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea. This part down south there is another volcano that actually went off two or three decades ago. Do you think you landed in another planet? It does feel like another planet. Big island planet. Hi Jade. It's amazing out here. It feels like another planet. Yeah I love it. So when people arrive here I'm always like you made it. You're on Mars. They're like whoa. This is the all of this is Kilauea. So it's really not what we think of as a volcano. No it's a shield volcano. So yeah it's very wide and actually one of the most active in the world. Where did it erupt in the 90s? It flowed down from there and came this way. Okay so did the lava just get stopped at the ocean? Because you can see the ocean right there. The lava usually creates the new land. So after the 2018 eruption the map changed. The lava river that came through at 50 miles per hour and went into the ocean it added more land to the island of Hawaii. This is the Phoenix house. It's off the ground. Is there a reason for that? Did it have to Yes the reason why is so that if volcano if the lava comes down we can take a tractor trailer and slip it under and take the whole house away. So you can see underneath how you can just take a trailer bed and just take it and pick it up and go. Yeah welcome to the Phoenix house. So everything is made in a very kind of utilitarian kind of way. So there's like a little dining area. There's hooks. There's you know places to put everything. You have a full kitchen. This is like recycled goods and like this is our drinking water. We have a little can stove under here. So even being off-grid you have a refrigerator. Yeah we have a great refrigerator. It's pretty spacious. We have solar panels on the roof and then the catchment tank is over there. I believe it's 5,000 gallons. The bathroom it's pretty spacious for like such a small home. And the floor goes right. You can see down right. The water just filters. It's like a rain shower. So it just filters. It just comes straight down and into the lava. And you see it under the house. I saw it in the other pod this morning. My daughter was showering. Yeah yeah. We were going to create like a little hydroponic system down there but we just ended up not. It works fine. Let it go. Let it flow. The exterior of the place is all like recycled wood with and it was like burned in a certain way. It's like a Japanese style. It's a suki van. Yeah. You know we could actually go through this map you have here. This is a little map of the Hawaiian island. So we're on the big island and we're like right here. And this is the youngest island. Like Kauai is the oldest and it goes down in sequence. Oh so it makes sense that it's still going. It's still going. It's still building. It's still forming. Yes. All right. Do you feel like this is a bit like it's like you feel like you're perched on top of. Perched on top of new land. Yeah. This is like brand new land. I mean this is some of the newest land on earth. So and it's funny because we don't think of land as something that's impermanent. Right. Like that's why you think of it as very fixed. Right. You know when the eruption came I really got to terms with the impermanence of everything. I remember I would be driving down the highway and there were cracks in the highway with steam seeping out of them like lava might erupt at any time and I was coming here to help secure the place. You know I'm wearing a gas mask and stuff and there's like lava gems flying into the sky and I was just like absorbing the lessons of impermanence you know. You know what it's like life has always been uncertain and so then it's like okay well how are you how are we going to deal with that and how are we going to live our lives in the face of that impermanence you know. You know we can't control other people and we can't control events. We can only control how we respond to them and what we're going to create in the face of it and so these are all big lessons that we learn when we're living out here and stuff like that. I love how functional the windows are with just wood dowels. Yeah they designed every part of this so none of this was prefabricated before so they worked to like carve every little piece of window frame and every little dowel. So here you're really getting a sense of being on top of it all. Yeah so you're sleeping on top of a lava field and you can see the volcano and sometimes you can see it smoking but not right now. It does feel like the wild west the old west where it's just you know a house and nothing else a couple houses and you don't see much. Yeah and just having the like just the freedom of like there's such a different feel when I sleep here of like just being off the grid just like there's not a lot of wi-fi signals there's not a lot of crazy interference so I think it helps one get away from it all and just be with yourself and the elements. Every house needs to have a little power shed. Okay yeah that's our water pressure tank those are our water filters that's the hot water heater and then our solar system is right there. So if it's rainy for a couple days and there's not enough power coming into the solar system we will run a generator and then we can power anything. You have two generators? Yeah this one is like a backup backup yeah you gotta have backup backups when you live out here you never know like I have backups of everything I have backups of water pumps because say the water pump breaks at 10 o'clock at night we have to drive all the way to Hilo to get one and then bring it back and then install it if I have it here already then we can just install it you know so and you'll see that there's um there's small gutter lines like gutter lines that bring the dropped water into our catchment tank. And then it comes down here? Yeah and it comes down and it wraps around the shed and then it goes here into the catchment tank and then I'm just going to check and see how it's about 80 percent full. Well there was a time when this this pipe broke off from the wind and I didn't know about it and so I didn't know there was no water coming in here and so it was going down down down down down I was like why are we running out of water and so then we had to fix that and then get a water delivery here so there's things you have to like you can't just relax thinking everything's going to be taken care of and especially out here where the elements are so intense like so you have to always like check and maintain the systems so we also built this little caretaker pod right next to it I call it a lava escape pod so yeah so this is a little lava pod all right you see right through the yeah you can see right through but there's enough privacy it's fine yeah yeah everything is pretty simple close to the earth this nature there is a shower that works here and then it goes right out underneath goes right out underneath and the water yeah the water just filters down into the lava rock into the lava rock so that goes right out you don't need to worry about catching the shower water yeah no it's fine yeah it's a sweet little place it's kind of like a little Hong Kong apartment it's so tiny but functional because you even have a sink I mean you have yeah I mean at one point my son and I actually lived here for a week and we had like a little two burner stove here and a water kettle and at one point I actually rented out the Phoenix house for a whole month to a writer who was came here to write her book she just wanted to get away from everything and have no distraction and write her book yeah because working from here is just well distraction isn't just a lot of nature yeah and you just end up like just contemplating and sitting with yourself just spend time with nature and I remember when this tree was just like a little baby like that one and you know so there is like life out here that this this nice tree over here was used to be just a tiny tiny little sprout before funny so you're seeing this like really rebirth everywhere yeah there's rebirth everywhere there's a lot of life on the lava and when I first moved here my partner at the time he was like Jade why do you want to live here he's like it's like a charnel ground why do you want to live here there's no life and I'm like I love it it's wonderful it's magical it's great and so I loved having a view and a vista and like my mind could just be clear you know so it is kind of like the wild west out here where like if you buy on lava zone one you have to be prepared for it to it to be taken this used to be a residential neighborhood it had a community center and a beach and everything and then the lava came in 1990 and wiped it all out so everyone still had the same lots and stuff like so is it tricky to sort of locate your lot once yeah so you hire a surveyor and they come in with their equipment and stuff like that this is my magical lava temple is this your house yeah and how long have you been living here so originally I'm from New York City but I've been here for about 15 years I came here and I saw this place was for sale and I immediately bought it so you built this house yeah I built this one it was originally my gonna be my yoga studio it's just open right everything here is off grid and yeah I just wanted it open I love the breeze I love living in harmony with the elements so and we we never lock our doors here because we don't have doors there's phone things here too yeah we're so used to not having power on but you know lots of lights on and stuff like that we actually have plenty of solar power during the day and then at night we run on batteries just a little fridge it's not plug is it plugged in it is plugged in yeah but sometimes we have propane fridges but they eat a lot of propane so it's if we can have power I have enough power that it can run it it's fine so with your solar it's fine you can solar solar systems are so expensive I've spent about thirty thousand dollars on my solar system so off-grid living it's not more affordable but it's one of the ways that you can live out in beautiful places that otherwise I mean there's no power grid to attach to here anything like that yeah what what about the land was the solar more expensive than the land it was about the same so it's about 30,000 for the land and you got one plot one it's one sixth of an acre it's 7,500 square feet it includes I built another cabin behind this one and then there's a house that was a shell and then I enclosed it added water solar and then I built this one as my yoga studio and then it just evolved into more this is like my little bathroom and there's like these stones are from Waipio Valley actually this is lava yeah this is a lava rock sour we had a composting toilet for many years and I used to have guests here and then empty their compost like now we have a flush toilet that was a luxury so your water heater is quite compact we have two propane tanks that are sitting outside that fuel it and then our stove is also on propane so this is a little camp stove and then you just get a propane tank that's a cute stove though because it has an oven with it you're yeah there's a cute little oven and then our water is through water catchment we have two big water catchment tanks we hold about 4,000 gallons how do you make sure your water you can drink your water we have a berkey filter so this is pretty good and then we also have a uv filter so we do double and then we also put it through a bit of filter so we we do it like three times it's like triple purified you'll need to come upstairs if you like so this was when I first designed it I was like okay I wanted to kind of be open and then I just need it to be like the space of two carports so that's how I decided the space of it so the downstairs used to be two carports and then I put carpets and added day beds and added more and so yeah this eventually just became kind of like a half living space half half temple space where I do sound healing and stuff like that I'm just welcoming you here to this space you sleep is this a bedroom yeah like this is our normal home oh we love it yeah and sometimes it shakes the house this is actually a a pretty calm day and sometimes we have earthquakes and stuff like that so we're living with elemental harmony so I'm kind of here by the grace of Pele who is Pele? Pele is the hawaiian goddess of volcanoes she's also the goddess of transformation this is my kumu my hula kumu this is when the lava was flowing into the ocean she's kumu ehulani stefani so yeah she has come and blessed this place as well and we try to live in harmony and in respect with the elemental forces that live here when I first moved here I got insurance on the place but it wasn't worth it I was like you know what if lava takes it she takes it Pele gives and she takes and I'm thankful and grateful for every day I get to live here when I moved here in 2009 there was like no other houses except Doug next door and so then people started building here because the land is cheap you know land is one of the most affordable places in all of Hawaii people can live pretty simply it is kind of like the wild west there's not a lot of rules and you got to make sure you get along with your neighbors you're on the lava right how are you set up you've water catchments and you have like two catches oh wow you have a great garden it's way more than I thought so are you putting soil on top of the lava we have bought and I get lots of mulch from the city so what I did was kind of dig down a little bit where I could and then just maybe like two or three feet of soil because you wouldn't be able to plant on right now just lava you can't do anything like you know a tail full of soil and put a coconut and it'll grow because it's so porous uh-huh yeah the garden is just impressive oh there's an outdoor shower oh that's fun is that a industrial I mean for something else and it's a bathtub now yeah yeah and is this affordable out here yeah yeah about seven to the lava yeah I think they say there's like about a one percent chance every year okay so within a hundred years you're pretty much gonna yeah well six years ago the float over there about six miles away do you enjoy this this sort of scape I don't know what you call it uh do you it's a special it's a almost we were saying almost other planet feel and at one point the lava was going like in 2018 it was doing like 50 miles per hour a huge river of lava 50 miles that's like highway speed and it was it was why it looks like like a river a river of lava just came through so this one is called the ohana house and this one was because so I had this wonderful family they stayed at my lava temple for a weekend they're like how do we keep a part of this with us and I was like well there's two lots for sale right behind me and they said call your broker the same day they bought these two lots and then they they looked at the phoenix house they were like we want the same person who built that to build this one and they had the ohana house built for families so it's like a tiny home for families what does ohana mean family oh okay yeah yeah so you see this is split yes so there's two pods and the roof is just a plexiglass yeah there's an actual roof on both pods too so again it's designed in a way that if the lava came they could pick up this pod and then you can pick up that pod and rescue them to go somewhere else if the lava came we live on an active volcano so you have to be prepared yeah also like the way the plexiglass is installed it allows for the wind to sort of right and also is done in such a way that rain water doesn't really come in here but the sunshine and the breeze do so so what the elements you want you allow them in yeah it's sweet here's the master bedroom just yeah everything's built in yes everything is custom made and this is the dining dining table this is the dining table yeah yeah we've had really great dinner parties out here the kitchen is really sweet get a nice little breeze over here yeah the seat here is different this is just a utility sink but it fits so there's a mix of unexpected materials but being made nicely and everything here is custom made as well so we also have a little camp stove with propane you can move this out onto the lanai so you can even just bring this out and cook outside and i i like this as an office too i'll just bring my laptop out here and sit with the view of the volcano and the nice breeze and then here's the bathroom so yeah everything is very simple and and again yeah the shower just goes right down into the and then this is the second bedroom which is great for kids with the bunk beds and stuff it looks you know pretty safe and sturdy it's not going anywhere it's pretty sturdy the little ladder is right built into the wall oh so you're using the the beams as part of the ladder yeah that's quite small i like this outdoor area and it the breeze here is beautiful yeah the breeze is great and then the lights at night is really cool too like when you see all the lights at night this becomes part of the house yeah this is like the dining dining area so and then you have a view of the volcano okay so this is where the power shed is so we only run on two batteries these two batteries power everything so what are we hearing so that's just the solar system singing if like there's not enough sunshine then we would bring this generator out onto the porch we would run the generator to kind of charge up the batteries these two propane tanks run the hot water this is a water pressure tank and we keep everything stocked well so that say the road gets cut off by lava which is it's happened before where we thought that like the lava might cross the road and then there's no way to get out of lower puna you need to have emergency supplies for everything i also noticed that they were doing roads this morning yeah so my neighborhood friends they were adding more gravel filling in the potholes and stuff like that who does the roads is it so there's no actual neighborhood whatever it's just some nice nice people that care about our community they all pull together some funds and we just get a truckload of cinder 400 500 bucks and then they volunteer their time to like fill in the potholes and stuff so there's no government road building electric water nothing no services no mail no mail yeah nothing so you have addresses not really really i have a gps link where i send people and so it'll keep changing the lava itself changes this doesn't seem that permanent it seems crumbly yeah and then eventually in a few decades it will become soil will it really yeah it can yeah and do you think you'll be here like will you stay for a couple days i don't know if anything major happens the nearest hospital is in hilo which is an hour away so it's again temporary like everything your time here i've done something for you it's been it's been wonderful i mean my son grew up here like who else can say they grew up on a lava field that's another day out on the lava