Own a beautiful rammed earth vacation property in Hana, Hawaii. /March 25, 2015 by Damian De Les Dernier

One of Rammed Earth Works' jewel properties, the vacation home in Hana, Hawaii, is currently for sale.

Hawaii Vacation Home

For the Hana project, we returned to our original forming system - one set of plywood and wooden walers, held together with pipe clamps. We mixed on the ground with the tractor bucket and shoveled into the forms. It’s been a long time since we groun

The key to comfort in the tropics is ventilation - lots of it. We used supporting earth walls as sparingly as possible. Big panels of sliding glass open to mimic the original concept of a Hawaiian hale. Open gable ends and cupolas keep the air flowi

Hawaiian earth, eroding as it has from geologically young igneous rock, lacks the weathered clays that usually bind rammed earth together. Basaltic grains are porous and thirsty, making it difficult to control optimum moisture and tricky to build wi

The coarse walls that result from the high percentage of basalt gravel in the mix, and leave a preponderance of small voids in the surface. In concrete, this would be called “honeycomb”. We fill the voids with a slurry of tile grout to give the fini

View through the sliding dining room wall glass panels into the breezeway. Tradewinds pick up speed as the funnel through the breezeway, pulling heat from the living spaces. Image © Art Gray

Hawaii Vacation Home

For the Hana project, we returned to our original forming system - one set of plywood and wooden walers, held together with pipe clamps. We mixed on the ground with the tractor bucket and shoveled into the forms. It’s been a long time since we groun

The key to comfort in the tropics is ventilation - lots of it. We used supporting earth walls as sparingly as possible. Big panels of sliding glass open to mimic the original concept of a Hawaiian hale. Open gable ends and cupolas keep the air flowi

Hawaiian earth, eroding as it has from geologically young igneous rock, lacks the weathered clays that usually bind rammed earth together. Basaltic grains are porous and thirsty, making it difficult to control optimum moisture and tricky to build wi

Interestingly, on the other side of the island, another rammed earth property is for sale - the $20 million "surf hut" owned by the world's most financially successful photographer - Peter Lik - and designed by Tom Kundig.