Is it too good to be true? Say I have 50k saved up, could I buy some vacant land and throw an RV on it? Obviously need to contend with power hookups/septic tank installation, insulation/heating in the winter.
Is it a pipe dream?
anyone have experiences buying land and trying to camp long term?
working towards that, but life keeps kicking me in the nuts. got the RV so far.
you'll get there! That'd be cool if there were RV/manufactured parks that have multiple acres between them. Still get the benefits/hook ups, but you're not in an actual trailer park.
$27k for 15 acres.
$2k for septic.
$7k for well.
$750 for electric service pole- first 300 feet was free. After that it's $4 a foot overhead, $7 a foot underground.
A friend works at the health department ad about once a month there's somebody who bought a piece of land in a flood plane or some shit and they et denied a septic permit. They have to hire a soil engineer and then probably truck in a dozen dumptrucks worth of dirt. So either study septic requirements so you know what to look for or straight up pay the for a permit inspection on the actual land you want to buy BEFORE you buy it
I see, and good to know. Definitely seems like it's worth having a surveyor out. I'm sure it's worth the up front cost, to avoid such a costly surprise.
Why can't they just use a composting toilet?
A septic system is meant to hold solid waste and distribute grey water across a wide area so that it doesn't flood your property with sewage or infiltrate into the groundwater.
A composting toilet could flood and and depending on your soil/geology, could contaminate your groundwater.
If you're buying land for the land itself, it's good to be up to snuff on geology and geography. Wetlands, karst and steep slopes are all things you should walk away from if you have any plans on developing it.
>A composting toilet could flood and and depending on your soil/geology, could contaminate your groundwater.
They are self contained, you add coco coir, sawdust, or other carbon containing matter, aerobic bacteria break down the waste, and you just remove the compost when it's done composting.
Yeah bio toilet they are called here, lot if roadside rest stops have them now
Can't shower with a composting toilet.
Still illegal to dump grey water.
Septic is the only requirement in my county. They don't give a shit if you have heat or electricity or running water- but if you don't have a proper septic system they'll evict you from your own property.
just shit and piss in the woods like a normal fricking person jfc it's not that hard
ok hobo
detect no lies in this post.
land is so much cheaper wherever you guys are, jfc.
for us it was 7 acres => 119k
if you can swing it, go with below ground electricity, you don't want to get this prime spot out in the country and have the aesthetics ruined by power lines everywhere.
also read up on your county regs regarding camping out on land, here in oregon they are very, very strict on that (camping outside walmart? yeah have fun)
as far as water, be as certain as you can regarding water quality, it really sucks to put in a well and have the water such shit that you can't use it. i'd still suggest getting a septic tank even if you think a composting toilet will save money.. like where does your kitchen/household water go when you need to dump it down a drain? washing machine? you do plan on doing laundry at some point right?
I don't know what podunk state or county you're in, but for septic systems to work well and for a long time you really aren't supposed to truck in fill dirt for them. You should only be using well drained, deep, native soil. I say native undisturbed soil because that is dirt that's had the time to develop many cracks and capillaries in the soil structure from things like worms, roots, burrowing animals, and freeze/thaw. These many cracks and pores allow water to pass through and absorb into the soil, which is what your septic system is meant to take advantage of. When you disturb soil (unless it's sand), you are wiping out all of these tiny pores and capillaries and turning it into dense powdery/sloppy junk, which will hold water and not let it through. It takes literally thousands of years to take shitty undeveloped soils and turn them back into good "undisturbed" developed soil. You can't make it much better by cultivating it with implements, because the magic is in all the bugs and plants and weather taking their time to turn the soil matrix into a giant hyperlinked maze of tiny tunnels and cracks.
Thus the "soil engineer" part. It's never ideal but sometimes it's the only alternative.
Friend bought a plot of land about an hour outside of Las Vegas.
Well company said "we can drill to 2,500 feet and MIGHT hit water".
That's $50k for a dry hole.
I bought my property 6 years ago.
Land prices have gone up but the other prices are still relatively the same (price of pvc pipe has gone up).
Septic can vary greatly- my system was easy and the legal minimum for my cabin. There are different types of products to use for the drain field. Some are plastic chambers that interlock, mine is basically pvc pipe with holes that's surrounded by packing peanuts. If you wanted a drain field you could drive over it would need to be backfilled with gravel- you could easily spend $5k just on rock.
My well is only 300 feet. We have an excellent water table here and you can drill a well basically anywhere and hit water before 200. In a region with a lower water table of course it will be more expensive.
Frick off, we're full.
We dug our wells at distances of 1600-1900ft between 5 wells.
That's insane.
How much do those pumps go for?
they were something like 12k each (ballpark)
this with water too. Cant always drill a well anywhere.
A shit load of people still buy bottled water, fill up at campgrounds if you can not get caught by the rangers, or if your lucky some rural towns like mine still have public wells but those are getting shut down fairly frequently now.
These are some nice prices from 2002 but I'm not looking at an archive so I'm curious why it's being posted.
Local power company hasn't run power lines for free since 1997. Current rate is $14 a foot, overhead. $22 underground. Septic is about $6000, well is $12k-$18k. And the land number is just ridiculous not even in nothing nowhere WV is land that cheap
>$27k for 15 acres.
where the frick is this?
where in the fricking world can you buy 15 acres for 27k?
All across the U.S.
Landwatch.com
Landsofamerica.com
80% is high mountain desert scrub brush but if you look around you can find land with forest, streams, lake fronts...
I built a cabin. Its very rural. Nearest town is 247 people.
could you discuss the construction and costs?
My cabin was from Derksen (pic is my model).
Ya people talk shit about these but they're built with real 2x4's, hurricane hangers etc. If anybody wants to talk shit then I expect a timestamp pic from their $1,800 a month studio apartment.
These are not like a mobile home that needs special wall sockets because the walls are only 1x1's. They're actually built like a house.
It was a raw interior so I had to do all the electrical, plumbing and drywall myself but it let me build how I wanted off the open floorplan.
The cost was way to much considering what I could have built from scratch for the same price but I bought it on Monday and it was dropped on my property on thursday. I actually hadn't planned on buying property and I just kind of wound up here so I needed something fast.
Building itself was about $5k- it was slightly used.
Shit like electrical wire I bought off amazon- $50 for 200 feet of 12/2 that cost $120 at lowes.
Large items like bathroom sinks or kitchen counter tops I shopped around for. I was a little particular on the counter tops so spent a little extra.
One thing that was nice is I stuck outlets where ever the frick I wanted. There's 2 behind my couch. There's 3 in the bathroom. There's 4 behind my TV. Hell, there's 3 in my closet because frick it, it's right next to the 36 breaker panel.
Plumbing was easy buy electrical kind of got out of hand because I didn't want to just daisy chain sockets all over (code is 8) so I used a lot of wire to isolate sections.
I have a friend that's a manager at Home Depot and he hates throwing away open returns (they do this everyday) so my flooring is kind or random tile. Same with my faucets but they're actually the style I would have bought anyways.
Kitchen cabinets are from a local "overstock" type place. I stopped by there every weekend for about 5 months before they had something I liked.
Overall it's about $15k and a lot of work.
$15k is probably less than the structure would be brand new. We’ve looked into a TuffShed and acreage as a weekend getaway, but prices just weren’t were we wanted them. They used to make two story buildings, with legitimate stair cases. I think most of the models now are sheds and barns. It’s not a new concept; Sears started selling house kits in 1916 (and “catalog homes” in 1908).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears_Modern_Homes
I used to see the buildings on Craigslist in my area all the time for about 1/4 of what they go for new.- I think with covid and the economy taking a shit that construction has slowed down drastically.
Mine actually looked like it was used as a woodshop. Maybe as a hobby or maybe someone used it to store and cut lumber out of the weather as they built a house.
anyone here that has looked into something similar for EU? my understanding is that building regulations are much tougher than in US so it would be basically impossible to do what you did here. I'm in spain in particular
I'm in the U.S. for the record.
My only permit was for septic.
If I wanted to rent my cabin I would need a "certificate of occupation"- basically an inspection to verify everything was upto code. But for private use I'm clear.
I'm somewhere around $50k at the end of the day.
If I would have had the money I would have bought more land.
You can always go back and add an extension to the house or just tear it down and start over- but you can't always buy the neighboring plot.
thanks for sharing. so your budget was well under 100k? what would you have done with two or three times as much? more land? bigger cabin?
did you build a house?
I want it so bad bros you have no idea.
>Mississippi
dropped.
next you'll say "I was only pretending to be a moron."
maybe anon just doesn't like painful humidity, mosquitoes, and violent POC's just a short drive away.
The joke was that its michigan and hes a moron for not reading it.
ahh, i'm sure though my response would also apply for large swaths of southern MI 🙂
Just pay a little more and go to Arkansas
On the grid ain't worth it. Far too expensive. I'd go cabin with solar.
Depending on where you are it might not be that easy if you want to keep it legal. MOST places in the US zone you out of doing what you are trying to do. In reality as long as no one sees you then you are likely fine but the gov doesn;t want people doing what you are attempting to do so they zone the land in such a way to prevent it....legally speaking.
funny how far we’ve fallen from the PLSS and Jeffersonian yeoman farmer ideal
well since i posted it, my brother bought land and offered to let me live on it and I just happened to get a job in the area so that i can save up to buy the adjacent lot
Take the western states pill anon and move to the middle of nowhere for real.
>Buy land
>It just gets consoooomed by suburban sprawl 10 years later
I just want to believe this won't happen if I buy land.
my entire county has only 3k people, I live 13 miles from the nearest town, and 6 miles from my nearest neighbor. I'd like to think I'm alright.
live long enough and become the reviled californian (that's exactly how they bankroll their infestation of the front range, and other low pop states)
Urbanization has become more concentrated in the last decade or so. The suburbs haven't expanded much.
>The suburbs haven't expanded much.
How many times have you been hit in the head?
If this happens your land value will skyrocket and you can sell it then buy more/better land somewhere else.
I've known quite a few eccentric people that have done similar things. The more hidden and organized you keep things the easier it would be. Once you get a bus, then you need storage so you get another shitty truck body or shipping container. Then you start collecting broken used mowers. Finally the weeds start growing and the cats are everywhere then the town / county gets involved. Build a pole barn and park the RV in it until you get your shit together. Could convert pole barn into house later. Looked at a pole barn in NH with 100 acres 10 years ago with a apartment in the pole barn. It was 200K or so. Probably should have bought it.
I paid $13k/ac, but it already had power/water/septic on site. Someone wanted to live here and quit right before building a home. I'm about 10mi to closest small town and about 80 to the closest city.
Keep the dream anon, it's a joy and worth the cost. You can do it.
One thing that sucks a bit is due to geographic features only roads to civilization are 70+mph highways. I wish I could ride bicycles more to get to places.
>power hookups
Solar is all you need for most home appliances, sans washer/dryer and oven.
>septic tank installation
One of the most moronic features of modern land ownership. Build a rudimentary outhouse with a bucket, some wood shavings, and a recycled toilet seat.
>insulation/heating in the winter
Build a permanent residence, then we'll talk, but if you're really considering roughing it, at least to start, you could try purchasing some hot water bottles, filling them withing boiling water before bed, and leaving them under the covers.
What you need is water. Retain rainfall in barrels, and drive a well into the ground, with a hand pump fixed on top. Use a bag shower outdoors to clean yourself, and collect water from the well to use for indoor applications. All greywater, so long as you're not using harsh cleaning chemicals, can be disposed of with a very simple drainage pipe attached to your sink, leading to the ground outside.
- here's a video on how to recycle greywater.
>sans washer/dryer
Modern washing machines literally use less electricity than an two incandescent lightbulbs for a full wash cycle bro.
You have no way of backing this up.
I know nothing will convince an internet homosexual he's wrong but yes, you are. New style washers use less than 100 watt hours for a cycle compared to Pre-2010 units using over 600 watt hours.
OK, but that's a washer... a dryer will use ten times as much, so your refutation is moot. Nobody is buying/using only a washer - you'd need both for the winter.
My man, in Europe basically nobody is using dryers.
Maybe some weird consoomer boomers but that's it.
Never had one in my life and I don't know anybody who had one either.
Good for you, but in North America, hanging your clothes out to dry in the winter will not dry them, but freeze them: not really a good solution, then, to only have a means of making your clothes wet, but not a means to dry them.
Im from the USA, just moved into a old farmhouse and I dont have alot of room for a washer and a dryer. I installed a hanging clothes dryer from the EU and its sweet af. Probably wont ever get a dryer. Also have some antique wall mount dryer near the fireplace which works well too.
that looks pretty but awfully complicated, i just have a couple threads which i tie across one of my rooms when i want to dry things. obviously not a sewing thread, it's half cm diameter or something
True true, but couldn't you just hang them up to dry inside your shack ?
That's basically the European way.
ngl, it kinda sucks but it even worked when I was living with just a shitty small stove for heating.
>Changes the subject
You're such a fricking Black person. Get a gas dryer with a propane conversion tip. A tank of propane lasts months and months if you're only using it for the dryer.
Buying land in any place I actually want to buy land in seems to getting further and further away
For those anons out in the boonies, what do you do about high speed internet?
starlink.
runner up cellular hotspot (should get a repeater for htis, as well as voice)
avoid at all costs: viasat/legacy sat providers. due the geo synchronous orbit, they have as a *BEST CASE* ~600ms latency. They are also way more expensive, viasat was $170 for 100GB of monthly bandwidth.
i've had starlink for since last november and it's been pretty damn good, 20-30ms latency, 20MB+ throughput. occasionally it drops for 30s or so, but it hasn't affected my VPN access for work. the hotspot option is okay as a fallback, but typically the cost/GB of monthly bandwidth is pretty expensive (100GB/$70ish) -- whereas starlink has no caps or throttling)
>occasionally [Starlink] drops for 30s or so
How often does that happen? Like once an hour or more frequently?
once or twice a day? i honestly rarely notice it unless it persists long enough for my VPN to shit itself (monthly? it's rare)
we're in the same boat regarding cellular service; if it weren't for the horrifically low data caps we might have kept ours. we picked up a roof mounted repeater that connects to an antenna via coax; it works fantastically if you're in the same room. but going from the office where it's installed, to say the living room; dead zone.
We've got neighbors that are down hill from us about 200'; zero cell service at all. if you're shopping for property keep that in mind regarding LOS to towers.
My property is one of the high spots in the area and I get 4g LTE reception to a cell tower down by the highway due to line-of-sight.
Which is funny because in town there's only 1x service if you're outside and indoors there's typically no reception.
a person that streams on twitch under ejipt bought land in maine i think and lives in a bus off grid. honestly it looks like hell to me with all the bugs and shit. if you don't mind that and smelling bad i don't see why not. i think he said for the whole setup it was like $8k maybe. he uses solar and shits in a hole