555 Kaukini Loop – Custom Home, Working Farm and Smart Home Technologies

My listing at 555 Kaukini Loop is an interesting mix of the old, combination of old and new, and the strictly new, in terms of technology. As you may know, this is the home of multiple Grammy Award-winning master slack key guitarist and farmer George Kahumoku Jr. and his lovely wife Nancy.

Old Technologies

Even though 555 Kaukini Loop is only 2.34 acres, Uncle George has been able to create a working farm that provides food to local restaurants, to the public via the Food Hub and to the Maui Food Bank. As part of the old, his farming practices are based on transitional Hawaiian farming methodologies. Including these three fertilizer producers.

Combination of Old and New Technology

Where Uncle George and Nancy are using a combination of old and new technologies, is their alarm system. I can tell you from first-hand experience, no one enters this property without Uncle George or Aunt Nancy being notified. Here is the old technology component:

These five characters are supplemented with some more modern components, cameras:

New Technology

Before focusing on areas utilizing strictly the new technology components, let’s take a step back and address some out-of-date information about this wonderful area and ensure we begin with accurate information.

The good news is there is now a reliable high-speed internet service in this area. A quick history on how we got to where we are at and to explain why some folks have old-of-date information. When The Cliffs and Maluhia Country Ranches were created, the high-speed internet solution was DSL. Cable TV service was never brought to this area. After a handful of years, Hawaiiantel no longer accepted new DSL customers as they were out of bandwidth. One of the residents created a solution that was called Cliff Net. It was a line-of-sight internet solution where a 12-inch dish was installed on the individual homes. Cliff Net delivered 20 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload speeds.

In the middle of 2022, Hawaiiantel installed Fiber Optic cables in this rural area of Maui. We now have a true reliable high-speed service in The Cliffs and Maluhia Country Ranches. Here are the results of a speed test that I ran on August 2, 2023 at 10:45 am from my desktop computer in my Maluhia Country Ranches home office.

For most of you living elsewhere, having this type of service is a given. Living in a rural area, getting this type of service has been a game changer. When the fiber optic cable was being installed, I thanked the crew for bringing us into the 21^st century. The efforts across the country to bring this type of service to more rural households will be extremely beneficial to those communities. Take it from someone that used a hot spot to connect to the internet for a number of years.

Now that we have a high-speed reliable internet service, smart technologies can be built on top of it in this super area.

555 Kaukini Loop has two smart home technologies. One expected and one might surprise you.

The more common solution that was implemented is there are smart thermostats in the house. The house has two air conditioning zones with separate thermostats. The owners do not use the Wi-Fi capabilities of the thermostats, but they have this capability.

The other smart home technology deals with one of Maui’s most precise resources, water, or wai in Hawaiian. Fresh water should never be wasted from both a resource perspective and a financial one as water leaks can result in very expensive water bills.

Uncle George and Aunt Nancy installed a Flume Smart Home Water Monitor. The Kahumoku Family Farm has an extensive irrigation system. Unfortunately, on occasion, someone would forget to shut-off the irrigation.

In the event that someone forgets to turn off the sprinklers or if there is a water leak, the Flume system will send out an alert.

There are multiple houses in our area that have water monitoring systems. Recently one of Uncle George’s neighbors was off island and the neighbor received an alert from his Flume system. The Flume system had discovered a leak. The neighbor called Uncle George to ask him to shut-off the water, saving both water and his neighbor quite a bit of money. This area also has the old technology of neighbor helping neighbor.

Future is Looking Bright

If the new owner of 555 Kaukini Loop would like to add additional smart home technologies, that would be possible. Maybe the five-dog alarm system will not be preferred approach for the new owner. There are many many options for the new owner.

Please reach out if you are interested in this custom home, with a working farm and some smart home technologies.