The Trouble With Building On Rural Land (And How To Solve It)

There’s a lot to love about living in rural land when you have the opportunity. This is especially true if you’re trying to live a homesteading life, of course. The privacy, access to nature, and the feeling of being out, staking your own claim on the land can be truly wonderful. But if that land hasn’t been tamed before, you’d better believe that it can take some extra work to tame it. Here are some of the common complaints you’ll hear about building in rural areas, and what you can do to mitigate some of them.

Limited Site Access

If you want to make building your own home a little easier, then you need to make sure that your vehicles, equipment, and materials are able to reach the construction site easily enough. Narrow lanes, unpaved roads, steep tracks, or seasonal flooding can all make access difficult, complicating your ability to get construction vehicles and delivery trucks on site. As such, you might need time to clear driveways, install culverts, and create temporary construction access before you even begin working on the site itself.

Land Clearing And Site Prep

Rural land typically has a lot of stuff in the way of your project that all needs to be removed before your work can begin. Dealing with trees, brush, stumps, and uneven ground can take a lot of work, so it’s often recommended that you enlist some lot clearing services that can help you transition to a work-ready site much sooner. However, you need to do your research on the site first to make sure that there are no protected trees, wetlands, or wildlife habitats that you might not be able to build over.

Bad Soil Conditions

When you’re building on more developed land, typically, it’s a lot readier to build on; you just might have to demolish and remove what’s already there. However, even after clearing the land, the soil itself might not be in great condition. It could be too soft, rocky, unstable, or poorly drained to support a building without extra work. A soil survey, drainage assessment, and topographic review can reveal these issues before design work goes too far, showing you what’s necessary to help you ensure a steady foundation for your home.

Expensive Utility Connections

If you’re looking to implement all of the utilities that allow for easy modern living, like electricity, water, gas, sewer systems, or high-speed internet, then you might have to take on more of the burden than the average new build home would. If the land is far from existing infrastructure, then installing utilities can be very expensive indeed. You might even need to consider alternative access, such as septic systems, propane tanks, solar power, or satellite internet connections, to get your home hooked up.

Building rural properties isn’t easy, and it’s rarely cheap, but it can be truly worth it. Just make sure that you know precisely what you’re getting into before you start throwing money and time at a project you might not be able to complete/.