The determination of an accurate local geoid around the volcanoes Merapi and Merbabu in Java, Indonesia requires the existence of a unified height reference system. For that purpose we have established five GPS-stations near sea tide gauge stations in Java and determined their orthometric heights by levelling as well as by the computation of global geoidal and ellipsoidal heighis. The obtained orthometric heights differ significantly from each other. The analysis of sea tidal records cannot explain the differences. Also sea surface topography around Java is not responsible for the differences. Likely reasons are large changes of the local geoid or different datum of the height system. Therefor we have fitted a reference plane to the data which is minimising the height differences and allows to compute the orthometric heights of local reference stations better than +/-1m.