Your Land Got Land!!!

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This too shall pass.
I just bought my land! :spns: It's small, only 1.63 acres, and it's all sagebrush, but it's paid for and it's mine! (And I'm giving thanks to the Lord for that!) We won't be able to move to it for a while yet because of Oregon's rules and regulations -- we have to get in the well and septic system and get a building permit before I can move the travel trailer over there. Also will have to put in the driveway before we can do any of that work, as the well-drilling rig would sink in the mire! The price was excellent -- we got it for $2,100!! It has a view, which I don't really care much about; it's on a paved (and plowed in the winter) road; there's electricity right there (I plan to go to solar power when I can afford it, but it will be nice to have a power hook-up while I'm building); the soil looks like it's pretty decent for gardens and trees; wells in the area aren't very deep (100' more or less); and the property slopes to the southeast so we'll have good morning sun. So I'm doing a happy dance and praising the Lord!

Kathleen
 
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Yes, lots of hard work! Thankfully we have some very good friends in that area, and one of them has heavy equipment! Also, I just found out the other day that when one of the couples in the church there built their little house a few years ago, they got the materials together and then about twenty guys showed up and they had a house raising -- got it closed in in two days! The ladies fixed meals for the guys. So we'll probably do that for our place, too, but it will likely be next year before we are to that point.

I do like the view -- was back out there this morning on my way in to town, to show it to my aunt who is visiting, and I think I'll be able to see the river from my kitchen window!

Kathleen
 
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I've got the driveway permit -- have to get a friend out there to look at things and give me an estimate on how much it's going to cost to put the driveway in (it will take quite a bit of rock, I think, before we can actually make a driveway, as the land drops away from the road -- good south-eastern exposure, but a bit of a steep drop for a driveway!). That's step one.

Kathleen
 
changed

changed

Preferred pronouns: dude/bro
Dang, I've never heard of a driveway permit. I hope you don't have any other problems with code enforcement. Congratulations and good luck on the new homestead. Feel free to post pics when you get a chance.
 
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Beth

Inactive
May God bless you in your new home, Kathleen. It's nice to travel but it's lovely to have a home if you have the health and strength to run it. May you have both for as long as you need 'em!

Love,

Beth.
 
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Thought I'd give you all a progress report while I'm sitting at my mother's computer waiting on laundry!

My mother and step-father bought the lot next to mine, so we'll fence both together (about 3 1/4 acres total). We've got the driveway in, as of last Friday (yes, we had to have a permit, but at least it didn't cost anything). And discovered that the mysterious weather-beaten plywood box at the bottom of my lot was actually covering a well!! It isn't an extremely convenient location, as we'll have to dig about 400'-450' of trench to run the pipe up to the house site. But it's got water to ABOVE the surface of the ground inside the pipe! Now I have to make a decision, whether to dig the trench and run the pipe, but put a solar well pump on the well (I want to be completely solar eventually, anyway -- and as I read the threads in the BS, the sooner, the better), or (considering the cost of wire down to the well) just have a new well drilled up next to the house site. Am thinking we may go with the solar pump on the existing well, if the trenching won't cost more than I can afford, as we'd want a solar pump eventually even if we drilled a new well. But I am SO praising the Lord that we have water on the place already!

Next will be the perc tests and then the septic system. Maybe, Lord willing, we'll be able to move the travel trailer over there before this winter!

The soil looks like a sandy loam, which will be better for gardening than the heavy clay we had in our last place. Needs a lot of organic material added to it, but I've got lots of goat and poultry manure, and should be able to find someone to get horse manure from without driving too far. There are rocks, mostly hiding under the surface. I have to pull off of the new driveway in order to turn around (will decide later where to put a parking/turn-around area), and have been having to put my truck in four-wheel-drive! The ground isn't mushy, it's powdery-dry, but littered with rocks just the right size to act as wheel chocks!! In a couple of days, when I have time, I'm going to take my garden cart over there and see if I can clear some of them out.

Kathleen
 
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Another progress report. I've got the preliminary site plan approved and the permit to get the perc tests done (spent about seven hundred dollars just on permit fees -- NOT building permit -- Oregon is a bad place to build anything). Will get the trench to the well dug this next week, and the perc test holes, and have to get the well registered as that had never been done. I decided not to spend the extra money on the solar pump just now, because one of my granddaughters is probably coming to live with me and I need to get this building project going as quickly as possible (the travel trailer is small for two people, will be a lot tighter for three!). Power company will be out to the land this week also to tell me what it will cost for a construction drop, and I'll probably get that done soon. Had to put easements on both lots because of the driveway being on my mother and step-father's lot to access mine (steep drop from the road onto my lot, it was easier to go from theirs).

I don't want to put the pump on my well just yet -- need to wait until late summer and see how much the water level drops in the well.

Been working on house plans, and after trying many different configurations, have decided on one -- basically a one-room with a loft and a bathroom, 576 square feet (not counting the loft, which doesn't have much headroom). 16' X 36' footprint, plus a big porch/woodshed on the north side. I know it would be a bit less expensive to build something more square, but need the length for passive solar, and for a better interior arrangement. I would have liked to build using Mike Oehler's $50 and Up Underground House method, but the guy at the building department told me I'd have to have an engineer stamp the plans, and I don't know how to find someone who would work on something so 'alternative', or how much it would cost. Any engineers here who could advise me on finding someone, and possible cost?!? I do know a couple of civil engineers, including a brother-in-law, but don't think either of them would look at what I want to do -- they'd just laugh (scornfully, sigh).

Kathleen
 
RememberGoliad

RememberGoliad

Veteran Member
Possible, maybe, to do something a little more "mainstream" to cover the visible stuff, and then expand into the dirt hillside after everything is signed off and the 'suspectors' are happy?
 
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RememberGoliad said:
Possible, maybe, to do something a little more "mainstream" to cover the visible stuff, and then expand into the dirt hillside after everything is signed off and the 'suspectors' are happy?
Click to expand...

I have thought about doing just that, LOL! And may! Got to get something better than an old travel trailer built to live in, first, though, no matter how small.

The trench from the well is dug, and so are the perc test holes (and I learned that at least here, they no longer fill the test holes with water, they just inspect the soil types in the 5' deep holes -- seems sensible, but doggone, those are two expensive holes!!!!). I ordered the pipe to go in the trench, have to pick that up this afternoon, along with a couple of frost-proof hydrants. I'm excited about those -- will be so thankful to have water AT the animal pens, and in the area where I plan to plant fruit trees!

Kathleen
 
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Grammytomany

Inactive
Congratulations. What a happy thread. I enjoyed seeing all of your progress and must say, you are doing it all quite fast. The WATER, Wow. Fantastic to find and you didn't even know the well was there. GOD does provide miracles all the time.
 
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This too shall pass.
I was poking around and found this old thread -- thought I'd update it a bit. We haven't moved onto the land (yet). I did some figuring, and it would have been about three years before we could have moved into the house. (I had been planning to move the travel trailer over there as soon as we had water, septic, and electricity in, but someone was reporting anyone living 'illegally' on their property, and that would have been illegal, even though we would have been building a house. Oregon has it's good points, but in that area it stinks.) We were living in a 26' fifth-wheel parked at my mother and step-father's place, and SF and I don't always get along that well (sometimes he's fine, sometimes he's awfully grumpy -- his doctor thinks he's bi-polar, and he has PTSD from 'Nam).

So, I looked at an older double-wide on an acre and a half that a friend had for sale, near my land (only about half a mile away), and we bought that and are living in it. There are pro's and con's -- gorgeous view, and I like the layout of the house -- and I love that the property taxes for house and land are under $200/year!! The double-wide is not very big (800 s.f. plus a 10' X 15' addition that serves as an entry and utility room), but it's had a lot of work done on it, and is well insulated with good-quality windows, and an attractive wood floor made of 2 X 12's (hard to clean, though, as the boards shrunk and left cracks between them). We heat with a wood stove, and have lots of natural light; there's a large deck on the south side, but it isn't often usable -- either too much wind or too many bugs any time it's warm enough to be out there. I put in a small patio on the other side of the house, where the front door is -- it's in the corner sheltered by the addition, so is protected from the wind.

Cons -- there isn't much mass in the house to hold heat; with good insulation and windows, it doesn't lose heat as rapidly as it could, but in cold weather I do have to keep the fire going all the time. I'd really like to be able to use a masonry stove or a rocket mass heater, but doubt that the floors would support anything that heavy and I'm not sure about cutting holes in the floor of an old mobile home.

Also, we are sitting on the side of a hill (thus, the great view over the valley), up on blocks rather than on a solid foundation. This isn't much of an issue unless we have a bad earthquake, which could happen in this area!

We have good water from the well, but the well is pretty deep for a hand pump (nearly three hundred feet deep). So that's another issue.

So, at the present time, I'm trying to decide whether to proceed with building on the other land -- which is paid for (I bought the second lot from my step-father, so I've got over twice as much land over there as I have here, and there's likely to be adjacent lots available sooner or later), or stay here. Or sell both of them and move up onto the Tableland, which seems to have a growing season up to a month longer, even though it's higher! The soil isn't great up there, but it's easier to improve soil than to make the growing season longer (without building a greenhouse). Wells are not much deeper up there than what I have here at the house.

Kathleen
 
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Publius

On TB every waking moment
Freeholder said:
I was poking around and found this old thread -- thought I'd update it a bit. We haven't moved onto the land (yet). I did some figuring, and it would have been about three years before we could have moved into the house. (I had been planning to move the travel trailer over there as soon as we had water, septic, and electricity in, but someone was reporting anyone living 'illegally' on their property, and that would have been illegal, even though we would have been building a house. Oregon has it's good points, but in that area it stinks.) We were living in a 26' fifth-wheel parked at my mother and step-father's place, and SF and I don't always get along that well (sometimes he's fine, sometimes he's awfully grumpy -- his doctor thinks he's bi-polar, and he has PTSD from 'Nam).

So, I looked at an older double-wide on an acre and a half that a friend had for sale, near my land (only about half a mile away), and we bought that and are living in it. There are pro's and con's -- gorgeous view, and I like the layout of the house -- and I love that the property taxes for house and land are under $200/year!! The double-wide is not very big (800 s.f. plus a 10' X 15' addition that serves as an entry and utility room), but it's had a lot of work done on it, and is well insulated with good-quality windows, and an attractive wood floor made of 2 X 12's (hard to clean, though, as the boards shrunk and left cracks between them). We heat with a wood stove, and have lots of natural light; there's a large deck on the south side, but it isn't often usable -- either too much wind or too many bugs any time it's warm enough to be out there. I put in a small patio on the other side of the house, where the front door is -- it's in the corner sheltered by the addition, so is protected from the wind.

Cons -- there isn't much mass in the house to hold heat; with good insulation and windows, it doesn't lose heat as rapidly as it could, but in cold weather I do have to keep the fire going all the time. I'd really like to be able to use a masonry stove or a rocket mass heater, but doubt that the floors would support anything that heavy and I'm not sure about cutting holes in the floor of an old mobile home.

Also, we are sitting on the side of a hill (thus, the great view over the valley), up on blocks rather than on a solid foundation. This isn't much of an issue unless we have a bad earthquake, which could happen in this area!

We have good water from the well, but the well is pretty deep for a hand pump (nearly three hundred feet deep). So that's another issue.

So, at the present time, I'm trying to decide whether to proceed with building on the other land -- which is paid for (I bought the second lot from my step-father, so I've got over twice as much land over there as I have here, and there's likely to be adjacent lots available sooner or later), or stay here. Or sell both of them and move up onto the Tableland, which seems to have a growing season up to a month longer, even though it's higher! The soil isn't great up there, but it's easier to improve soil than to make the growing season longer (without building a greenhouse). Wells are not much deeper up there than what I have here at the house.

Kathleen
Click to expand...



Secure the land with a land patent and that puts you on the land constitutionally and in no way can they tell you cannot live on the land in a tent or a shack made of shipping pallets covered with roll roofing.
 
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This too shall pass.
Publius said:
Secure the land with a land patent and that puts you on the land constitutionally and in no way can they tell you cannot live on the land in a tent or a shack made of shipping pallets covered with roll roofing.
Click to expand...

I've never heard of that being done in Oregon. I believe I have read about it in Nevada -- do you know where to look for more information?

Kathleen
 
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rugmaker said:
So Happy to hear things are going well for you Kathleen. Have you considered a Yurt?
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I have thought about yurts -- and tipis, and about every other possibility out there, LOL! Earthbags, cob, shipping containers, straw bale...earthbags are pretty high on the list right now, as the structure cost would be quite low. Much of the materials would come from the property, which I like. They are very stable in earthquakes (important here). Depending on what the bags are filled with, they can be relatively good insulation, but if I used dirt from my land, I think I'd need to plaster the outside with papercrete. There's an engineer in Klamath Falls who will approve plans for earthbag construction for a reasonable amount (relatively speaking). Filled with sand and gravel they provide quite a bit of protection from gunshots (could be important in the future), and they are pretty fire-resistant, which is also important here. I'm not totally thrilled about the dome/cone-shaped ones, but I've seen some attractive ones, and could get used to the look.

Right now I'm just brainstorming -- I've got permits on the property that will expire in three more years if I don't use them, so I need to figure something out before spring.

Kathleen
 
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frazbo

Veteran Member
Freeholder said:
We have good water from the well, but the well is pretty deep for a hand pump (nearly three hundred feet deep). So that's another issue.

Kathleen
Click to expand...

Just saw this about your well. Our well is 350 ft deep, our static water level is 225...we just put in a Simple Pump and it works just fine. Your static (standing) water level is what's important for figuring out if you can use a hand pump or not.

Just thought I'd throw my 2 cents in here on that subject...and best of luck, sounds like you found your little piece of heaven on earth.
 
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