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More land does not necessarily create more privacy unless you're getting up into the forty acre parcels or so. A lot of the several acre lots in Puna are really long and skinny. Something like 150' wide by over 1,000 feet long, I think. Then add in that to get power without adding really expensive power poles, you have to be within 150' feet or so, that pretty much puts all the houses in a line at the front of their lot and they're all about 150' apart. Not exactly rural and sound travels. Since folks are 'rural' and have 'acres' they aren't always the quietest bunch. When you live in town, you know you have neighbors so you're quiet and respectful of that fact.
There is a LOT less crime between Hilo and Waimea and it gets less and less the closer you get to Waimea. Petty theft is huge in Puna. So there's that to take into consideration as well.
Check the traffic patterns, you probably want to avoid the one road between Keaau and Pahoa if you can manage it. Although now there's starting to be traffic heading up towards Volcano now, too.
A house in Hilo or on the outskirts of Hilo may produce a much nicer lifestyle for you than one further out. Also it may be beneficial to rent for awhile first since it's almost impossible to find the perfect spot without being here for awhile.
If you have any plans for gardening, check to see if your chosen location actually has any soil. What with the amount of rain we get, plants will grow in leaf litter on top of lava rock.
Also choose a place with access to tradewinds for cooling the house. A view is good too, generally if you have a view you get tradewinds.
I see what you are saying about the land how the lots are narrow. As nice as it would be nice to have privacy from distance, we can settle with privacy from some vegitation. Up toward Waimea does seem to be more desirable where you are not too far from anything including the beaches. I just don't like the price tags on the houses up toward that area. I do see some reasonably priced homes in Discovery Harbour and some nice properties up toward Captain Cook. It will all really depend on where my wife gets a teaching position. I would imagine she would most likely end up in Keaau, Pahoa, or Kau. From the HDOE, website, those are areas of need for teachers on the Big Island. The website also states that the two smaller island are also in need for teachers as well.
Wherever we move and the soil is not conducive for gardening, we can put in raised beds. That should work?
As I understand it, for jobs in the school system you can pick your island only. They will decide what school you will be offered. Once you get your foot in the door I believe you can pick your location (subject to availability) after the first year.
A week and a half is enough time on the island to decide what district you want to live in, then on a subsequent trip you can start narrowing that district down to various neighborhoods. Like most people who had done that, we decided after moving here that we were actually a better fit for a different neighborhood, so don't shop for property until you've been here for a few months.
"Check the traffic patterns, you probably want to avoid the one road between Keaau and Pahoa if you can manage it."
I recommend checking it when school is in session during rush hour. If you drive it now you won't see any problems. It is exponentially better now than it was before they extended the double lanes down to HPP. In fact, I'm not sure there is really much more than a few minutes of bottlenecking even during the school year, but it is the road leading to the fastest growing part of the state where there are over 50,000 undeveloped lots.
But to be clear, there are three other roads. One is closed because it's for emergencies only. It connects lower puna to Volcano through Volcano national park. They bulldozed the lava that had covered the road from an earlier eruption when they thought that 130 was going to be cutoff by lava in 2014. The other roads are always open, one connects highway 11 to 130 through Hawaiian Acres and Ainaloa. The other connects through Orchidland in Kurtistown via 40th ave and then down Pohaku. None of these are highways or "commuter roads" but they are good alternate routes when 130 gets closed due to a bad accident etc. The only real solution to the road issue is a second major thoroughfare, likely along the old rail route from HPP to Hilo, but that would require eminent domain and bureaucracy that will take far longer than the road building.
The issue of acreage is property-specific. Our first 3-acre parcel was completely square and it was a corner lot. Both of the neighbor lots were vacant. It had a lot of privacy and was relatively quiet. Our second 3-acre lot was a spaghetti lot, long and narrow. We solved the privacy problem by eventually buying the vacant lots on either side of us. So we have a 3 bedroom 3 bath house on 9 acres and paid less total than what you would pay for a 2 bed 1 bath house practically touching another one in Hilo.
That's not too bad then, I like the idea that we can pick the island. Great advise and interesting info on the roads and their routes.
I think teachers get paid more on the smaller islands since it's considered a 'hardship' to teach there. If you want rural and remote, maybe teaching on Molokai would fit the bill. If she can get a teaching job on Lanai, that might be interesting since now that island has been bought by one of those internet fellows and is supposed to be progressive and renovated these days. Not that I've been there to look, though. Was it Larry Ellison who bought most of the island? Well, Google could tell you.
Since she's so close to finding employment which could be anywhere, if it were me, I'd wait until she gets her location and then rent in that area while looking around for a house. Teachers are well respected in the islands and it's a great way to integrate into the community.
As for raised bed gardening - it's my preferred method for keeping all the nutrients and water all in one spot. Not to mention making it easier to pick the lettuce. I also use mine to terrace a hillside.
For us, it's easy to dig into the hillside, there's no lava. To start, we dug down level with the basic yard level and then added weed mat and screened the soil as it was being put back into the garden. There was a handy wire cage available to use as a screen other wise a wood frame and some chicken wire would have worked. We generally just build with what we have laying about.
Old bits of rebar and old pipes were put in the blocks to hold them in place. Sometimes I'll put square blocks along the top edge to trim it nice, this garden is a salad garden, though, so small plants will be grown in the concrete block holes. Marigold is good there since it keeps the bugs out of the garden.
This raised bed was finished in late April of this year, the 22nd if I remember correctly. I generally have a tendency to overplant so things grow too close together but with enough water and fertilizer, they grow pretty well anyway. We only have bunny manure as fertilizer but it seems to be working and we have a lot of bunny manure. The white wire fence is to keep the chickens out. They like to get into gardens and scratch seeds around when they're newly planted.
The concrete blocks were $10 at a yard sale, the weed mat $3 at a different yard sale. The seeds are all heirloom and open pollinated so we can save seeds for the next crop. I think there's about $30 in seeds since there's about ten new varieties of plants now. So it will be awhile before this garden saves money but what with the price of vegetables, it won't take long. We've been eating beet greens, lettuce and beans from the garden so far. At least nine big salads or side dishes so far, figure $2 per salad/side if one was to buy them from a store and that's saved $18 so far out of the roughly $45 cost. So, about half paid for already.
Not that money really matters all that much when gardening, IMHO, getting veggies where you know how they're grown is more important. But, for moving to Hawaii, generally money does matter so any way you can trim expenses is a good thing.
Although the traffic between Pahoa/Keaau and Hilo can back up quite a bit during rush hour, compared to Oahu and many mainland locations, it is not too bad. It is nothing compared to NYC. Not sure where in VA your wife is but, if she is near DC and her commute involves the DC area, Pahoa/Keaau is better. Also, most teachers I know are going in earlier than rush hour so I would check out school schedules and when your wife would actually be driving the routes and check it out at those times too.
That being said, there are so many wonderful neighborhoods on the BI and every part of the island is beautiful it its own unique way, you really can't go wrong wherever you end up IMO.
We are about 70 miles east of DC; there is really no traffic for her to contend with. I go back and forth to NYC, but being I do midnights, I'm fortunate enough to not have to deal with the traffic, but I do know NYC traffic.
That's good news. We really can't determine where on the island we will be until she knows where she will teach. I'm just hoping she will at least get one offer and we can move there. I also hope she will fit in there with her teaching style. She is a little concerned with that too. In regards to our personalities, I'm much more social than she is where she can at times be more reserved with new people. She isn't socially awkward or anything and will participate and crack jokes, but it is harder for her to get close to someone. She likes her privacy and likes to stay in her own lane minding her own business. She doesn't like the whole keeping up with the Jone's nonsense and niether do I. I told her you won't know how you fit in until you move there and that really shouldn't be something you should be concerned with.
I think teachers get paid more on the smaller islands since it's considered a 'hardship' to teach there. If you want rural and remote, maybe teaching on Molokai would fit the bill. If she can get a teaching job on Lanai, that might be interesting since now that island has been bought by one of those internet fellows and is supposed to be progressive and renovated these days. Not that I've been there to look, though. Was it Larry Ellison who bought most of the island? Well, Google could tell you.
Since she's so close to finding employment which could be anywhere, if it were me, I'd wait until she gets her location and then rent in that area while looking around for a house. Teachers are well respected in the islands and it's a great way to integrate into the community.
As for raised bed gardening - it's my preferred method for keeping all the nutrients and water all in one spot. Not to mention making it easier to pick the lettuce. I also use mine to terrace a hillside.
For us, it's easy to dig into the hillside, there's no lava. To start, we dug down level with the basic yard level and then added weed mat and screened the soil as it was being put back into the garden. There was a handy wire cage available to use as a screen other wise a wood frame and some chicken wire would have worked. We generally just build with what we have laying about.
Old bits of rebar and old pipes were put in the blocks to hold them in place. Sometimes I'll put square blocks along the top edge to trim it nice, this garden is a salad garden, though, so small plants will be grown in the concrete block holes. Marigold is good there since it keeps the bugs out of the garden.
This raised bed was finished in late April of this year, the 22nd if I remember correctly. I generally have a tendency to overplant so things grow too close together but with enough water and fertilizer, they grow pretty well anyway. We only have bunny manure as fertilizer but it seems to be working and we have a lot of bunny manure. The white wire fence is to keep the chickens out. They like to get into gardens and scratch seeds around when they're newly planted.
The concrete blocks were $10 at a yard sale, the weed mat $3 at a different yard sale. The seeds are all heirloom and open pollinated so we can save seeds for the next crop. I think there's about $30 in seeds since there's about ten new varieties of plants now. So it will be awhile before this garden saves money but what with the price of vegetables, it won't take long. We've been eating beet greens, lettuce and beans from the garden so far. At least nine big salads or side dishes so far, figure $2 per salad/side if one was to buy them from a store and that's saved $18 so far out of the roughly $45 cost. So, about half paid for already.
Not that money really matters all that much when gardening, IMHO, getting veggies where you know how they're grown is more important. But, for moving to Hawaii, generally money does matter so any way you can trim expenses is a good thing.
I have read a little about Molokai and it was said that the locals are not too open to newcomers who move there. Is that true in your opinion or from what you have heard? I also read that you can take a ferry to Maui from there.
Excellent job on the garden, will definitely take those pointers to cut expenses.
It's tough, because down here you can pretty much do whatever you want, which could be pretty awesome for a kid, or not. There's also not a lot of children here,. I agree with what you're saying in regards to Honokaa/Waimea being a better place to raise a kid and send them to school, Ka'u is the ultimate of rural. With that said, we -do- get the best weather/cost ratio of the big island, it's really hot and rainy on the east side, and really hot and the vog occurs in Kona. Ka'u doesn't get hot, or the intense rain, or the vog. Kohala/Waimea probably have as good if not better weather, but you pay for it, those places are not cheap by any stretch of imagination.
As to Discovery Harbor, hmm. We aren't next to anything it takes a five mile drive just to go to the PO box. There is South Point, which, to be completely fair, is actually a neat social gathering place where folks gather to fish and hang out. There's also Punalu'u bakery which is always good. We don't really have coqui frogs, there's a total of two down the block. I look for little fire ants but I can't find them, can't recall the last rat lung worm case here.
We don't have people revving their dirt bikes, or burning brush and smoking everyone out, or even driving by on a motorcycle. Theft is pretty much non-existent. It rains a hell of a lot more frequently here than California, but our roads here in DH are just fine. Now, I can say a lot about all the issues Puna has, but there are still a whole bunch of people who live there who love the area. I mean, if I were you, OP, (original poster) with your kind of money? I'd stay two weeks in each section of the island and go with the one that speaks to me the most.
Discovery Harbour does seem pretty appealing and that area is in need for teachers. It seems it has nice weather, not in lava zone 2, affordable, Internet, county water, not sure what other amenities they have, but it is a distance from Hilo and Kona. That will be something we would have to decide if she is offered a position in that area.
Does anyone here know when the best time for my wife to apply? Here on the mainland, you submit your application to a school district that you want to teach in around April. I have a feeling an application should be submitted sooner in Hawaii.
That must be hard on the residents there making Molokai very isolated. It seems many of the residents relied on that ferry.
Not really - passenger counts dropped dramatically with subsidized federal government airfares. It lost half of its ridership in a span of 6 months last year. Only 859 people took the ferry last July of which many would have been tourists.
One way airfare Molokai to Maui was less than taking the ferry (about $55 for air versus $60 for ferry)
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