Buying your own boondocking land

[InterBlog]

OK, a bit more detail on waste management.

I noted in a post above that we are looking at about 3 weeks per year camping on our land right now, not being retired people with the freedom to do longer stretches. By my interpretation, this is not “residing” in any legal sense. We are barely there at all at this point.

In this type of extremely limited context, human waste management protocols haven’t even been developed. All of the different off-grid toileting methods assume either long-term occupation, or a constant stream of system users (such as in a national park). Any scenario that is less than that doesn’t make it onto the radar. Therefore, I’ve had to develop my own approach of “micro-toileting”.

Someone reading this post is going to start clapping and cheering at their computer when I say this next part:

After this trip, I have new respect for people who have chosen to use composting toilets in their rigs, instead of black water systems. I am still an “all the nopes in nopeland” person within the context of our rig itself because we live in the Deep South, on the Gulf Coast where extreme high temperatures and near-100% humidity preclude any such approach - an in-rig composting toilet just would not work for us. But one thing is undeniably true - the more you can segregate urine and feces, the easier your life will be. It is infinitely easier to manage both off-grid if they are kept separate to the extent achievable.

For a first world country, Australia has an interesting relationship with toilets, because some of its urban areas did not receive sewage service until the late 1960s or 1970s!! Not surprisingly given its late development in this regard, their commercial market is interesting when it comes to off-grid options. The bush toilet I show in the screenshot below is an Australian model re-plated for the American consumer market. This is the model I acquired this year. It folds flat for easy transport in our van and its construction is sturdy. Importantly, it has a tightly-closing lid, to keep out flies and other small critters.

Below that bush toilet, I constructed a “micro-cell” for composting solid waste that was segregated from urine to the extent achievable. But sooner or later, someone on this thread is going to say, “Wait - you said you used cal hydro, and that kills bacteria, but bacteria are necessary for composting, so how does that work?”

Excellent question. Calcium hydroxide has strong antimicrobial properties. For tiny quantities of human feces placed in micro-composting cells, my sense is that it’s initially more important to kill off that initial surge of E. coli associated with fresh deposition than it is to promote immediate composting break-down. So, layer in feces, cal hydro, and organic matter / soil. Short term (days), the cal hydro reacts and kills the bad stuff. Longer term (weeks to months), the cal hydro chemical activity wanes, and natural soil bacteria then proceed to propagate through the cell and process the material into compost, breaking it down.

That’s the best I’ve been able to deduce in this unexplored micro-context. I am open to other suggestions and references. The Australian bush toilet comes with a selection of waste bags, when purchased. It could also be used to collect feces if someone was more comfortable either burning, or drying, or simply packing out this kind of waste. If you have the space available (such as with a TV, perhaps the bed of a truck), you may simply decide to pack your stuff out of your camp site instead of composting it. Living in a van, we simply do not have that option.

The pandemic wreaked all kinds of havoc on supply chains. For the life of me, I could not find calcium hydroxide (true lime) for sale except in relatively pure form (it is used in tortilla making - corn masa - and also for other food-grade processes such as mushroom farming). I had to pay a ridiculously high per-pound price for a product that was far too fancy for deposition in a composting cell, but that’s just the reality of life in 2020.

EDIT: Be careful purchasing “lime”. Almost all products on the American market that are described as “lime” on their labels are actually just crushed limestone, which is not calcium hydroxide.

[stevejones]

Following. Great thread.

[Hittenstiehl]

IB

Thank you for the continued updates. For people whose minds do not work like yours it's really good detail that you provide. I have to read it about three times to process correctly but It eventually sinks in. As we all meander about in our conveyances and the longer we want to stay "out" redource management is certainly one of the biggest reasons to have to go back to civilization.

[stevejones]

Originally Posted by uncle_bob

In some places, you *may* actually be better off buying a place with a tiny cottage on it ( and all the support ) rather than raw land. Do your research !!! Often the best deal in this case is a place with major issues ( = the cottage needs to be torn down).

Bob

Seems like a good approach, especially if you can put a pad next to the cottage with hookups and there is enough land the cottage is on for you to boondock on when you want to.

Steve

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by uncle_bob

Hi

The "gray water drain field" is highly dependent on local regs. When you go to put one in, they have along list of questions about just what will / might / could head into the field. Last time I did it, food waste ( = washing dishes ) seemed to be the sticking point. Soap and water ( = washing cloths ), that's fine. Bacon grease for some reason got them tied in a knot. I still do not understand why ....

Bob

In the context I am describing here, there is no drain field per se, and no need to put one in. A tub of dishwashing water (a few quarts) with soap wets maybe 2 or 3 square feet of soil as it sinks into the first few inches of the ground. I have 217,800 square feet of private land to choose from as I apply it. The grey water quantity is so minuscule relative to the size of the available area that there is no environmental impact, as long as I disperse it widely.

People get into trouble with grey water where they attempt to apply too much of it in too small an area. For instance in a non-hookup campground, if a bunch of successive site renters (or free boondockers) dump their grey water at the base of the same tree behind the site's picnic table, that is going to cause problems. The water will percolate into the soil leaving the residue near the surface to rot, cause odors, attract flies and animals, etc. I have heard of that kind of thing happening and it gives grey water management a bad name.

It sounds like your regulation guy was in the groove of a septic mindset. Septic tanks are designed to accomplish 3 things: they settle the solids, they float the scum (oils and greases), and they discharge the water that gets sandwiched in between those two layers. Solids and scum break down naturally in the tank via ambient bacteria, and the amounts of both that are transported out into the drain field via the segregated water are similarly broken down naturally (in lowered concentrations, so that the process works by the time the drain field is traversed).

I don't allow materials such as bacon grease into my grey water. Our land is traversed by coyotes and other animals. (In fact, the coyotes in that area, which are extremely large and genetically wolf hybrids, deposit greater quantities of urine and feces on my land than I do). I almost always have a nice campfire going (unless weather prevents it), and I toss edible stuff like bacon grease into the fire so that it won't attract animals.

[uncle_bob]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

In the context I am describing here, there is no drain field per se, and no need to put one in. A tub of dishwashing water (a few quarts) with soap wets maybe 2 or 3 square feet of soil as it sinks into the first few inches of the ground. I have 217,800 square feet of private land to choose from as I apply it. The grey water quantity is so minuscule relative to the size of the available area that there is no environmental impact, as long as I disperse it widely.

People get into trouble with grey water where they attempt to apply too much of it in too small an area. For instance in a non-hookup campground, if a bunch of successive site renters (or free boondockers) dump their grey water at the base of the same tree behind the site's picnic table, that is going to cause problems. The water will percolate into the soil leaving the residue near the surface to rot, cause odors, attract flies and animals, etc. I have heard of that kind of thing happening and it gives grey water management a bad name.

It sounds like your regulation guy was in the groove of a septic mindset. Septic tanks are designed to accomplish 3 things: they settle the solids, they float the scum (oils and greases), and they discharge the water that gets sandwiched in between those two layers. Solids and scum break down naturally in the tank via ambient bacteria, and the amounts of both that are transported out into the drain field via the segregated water are similarly broken down naturally (in lowered concentrations, so that the process works by the time the drain field is traversed).

I don't allow materials such as bacon grease into my grey water. Our land is traversed by coyotes and other animals. (In fact, the coyotes in that area, which are extremely large and genetically wolf hybrids, deposit greater quantities of urine and feces on my land than I do). I almost always have a nice campfire going (unless weather prevents it), and I toss edible stuff like bacon grease into the fire so that it won't attract animals.

Hi

There are a *lot* of different types of soil and sorts of drainage. There are also a wide variety of "targets" land drains into. There is no way to judge from afar just what you will or will not be able to do (legally) on this or that sized piece of land.

We could argue over this or that regulation making sense. That's true of a *lot* of regulations. The gotcha is that the law is what it is. Violate it and get caught ... you have a problem.

I have had land where the gray water (if it met certain specs) could go into a properly done field ( not a septic). It could *not* be randomly dumped here or there. The cost of setting up the required drainage setup was trivial, but you still needed to do it. The regulations were quite clear on this, it was not simply an inspector run amok ( though I've seen that as well ....)

Bob

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by OTRA15

Thanks again for a very helpful thread, with great details, and links to additional threads. Curious to know how you left things.



It would be interesting to know if you left these items on site, and your security/protective measures to deal with weather, theft and so forth. Does your driveway have a locked chain across the entry? Or maybe you have a nearby caretaker?

Thanks again for the great info. BTW years ago we adopted your method for making custom-sized solid blocks of ice using inexpensive aluminum baking dishes [like you can get in the supermarket for Thanksgiving turkeys etc..] We size them to fill the bottom of each cooler, and the melt-off becomes very cold cooling water for cans, bottles, and so forth. Brilliant!

Happy trails,

I Foodsaver custom-sized molds for my ice blocks, but the idea of using aluminum bakeware is awesome! I will remember that for the shorter-term trips we take, where maybe we don't need to construct an entire 30-lb block or two.

Security:

**YES**, theft is an issue. There is no such thing as paradise. There have been severe economic challenges in our area, and a lot of corresponding drug use (e.g., see here). Drug addicts routinely travel to the remotest areas because they know that they can break into seasonal cottages without encountering resistance from owners, because they are not there except for a few weeks in the summer. That means that properties like ours do get scoped for theft potential.

DH and I have tossed about various ideas for creating a secure storage area so that we don't have to carry quite as much stuff in (and on) our van every year. A small intermodal container would be very effective, but they are hard to come by and expensive in that area, which is not served by rail, nor is it served by container ships at this point. There are not a lot of them floating around available to buy.

This year we had loosely planned to construct a log shed moreso for protection of what we do leave on site than for security. But we arrived to find an enormous Hurricane Dorian mess, so that plan got put on hold.

I do leave Homer buckets of camping gear on the site, but that stuff has no monetary or fencing value (old cookware and the like).

The main item of value we are leaving at present is our new picnic table. It's not expensive (less than $200) but in virgin condition, it might be attractive to a thief. So we did a number of things to make theft less likely:

(1) We engraved the top and benches with marks of ownership. Several years ago, I had commissioned a steel sign for our site, which was CNC'd. We took that down from the tree and used it as a stencil on the table top. Having abundant time available during quarantine, we carved out the letters (so it cannot simply be painted over as a disguise), filled them with Sherwin Williams grey oil-based enamel (which I had brought from Houston in a Foodsaver'd pouch), and then seal coated the entire table with spar varnish.

(2) We filled a Home Depot bucket with concrete, inserted an industrial-sized eye bolt around which the concrete solidified, and then chained the table to it. A thief would either have to cut the chain or un-bolt and dismantle much of the table to get it off. Both would be a lot of work - no easy score here.

(3) We have two layers of locked gates - one at the entrance to our property, and then one out by the main road that discourages access to the larger tract of land that is collectively owned by four people.

(4) The four of us who own land in that general area are "known" socially as people who want to be left alone, and who don't appreciate trespassers on our lands. We have connections in the local community, as widely dispersed as it is, and people keep an eye out for each other generally, so this helps.

We are hoping that those measures make it too much work for someone to consider removal of our the table to be a compelling prospect. And then if they do remove it, it's near impossible to conceal the true ownership due to the engravings. There are no guarantees against theft, but this is the approach we have taken.

(5) EDIT: At least 3 out of the 4 of us leave stealth cams hidden in multiple locations on our properties. With countless thousands of trees, it would be basically impossible for a trespasser to identify and disable them. If someone accesses our land, we will have evidence of that.

One of the things I did in quarantine was to expand my iPad Pro skills. I bought the thing nearly a year ago, and then used it to perform maybe 3 routine functions. It has the capacity to do a lot more, if only I can find the time to explore it and learn new things. I made some progress during our 14 days in quarantine, as this image below suggests. Given that we did not have time to build a log shed to shield the picnic table from the elements, we instead made a tarp tent out of small logs. I did not want to simply throw a tarp over it, because it would trap moisture next to it. So we made this shield instead, which will shed rain and snow while still allowing air to circulate:

[InterBlog]

Missed the edit window on the post above.

The hidden stealth / wildlife cams are always an entertaining part of this land ownership process. This past year, a tree containing a stealth cam remained up during Hurricane Dorian, but every tree got smashed in front of it. Therefore, rather than looking out across the parking pad as intended, that particular cam had a view of the up-ended stump directly in front of it.

OMG, rabbits!! It was rabbit Armageddon. NO WONDER there are so many coywolves out there - it's a bunny-rich smorgasbord for them. Big ones, small ones, day rabbits, night rabbits, white coated during the winter, changing to brown as the seasons progressed... I had close to 700 cam shots that were triggered LOL - some squirrels, but mostly rabbits. Here's a collage of just a few of them.

[GetawA-S]

Thanks for posting all this information. A “cabin in the woods “ is not as simple as it was fifty years ago, and for a lot of us it’s sufficient to experience it vicariously. I hope you and your neighbors enjoy many happy stays there.

[InterBlog]

For anyone considering this option, here are a couple of my early pics for perspective.

Unless you have a boatload of cash to throw at a boondocking site, it's a slow development process. When we first started staying on this property, all we could do was drive in the old logging road that serves as the private access for the joint area owners, and park on that road.

The road was effectively only about 10 feet wide, so with a 50-foot turning radius, we could not turn around. When it came time to leave, we *backed out* a half a kilometer!



Not only was that extremely difficult, the dense un-cleared forest hosted a shocking concentration of mosquitoes. There was no breeze off the lake to keep them at bay. We would sleep in our van on the road with the screens up, and the noise of their collective whining woke me up several times. Thousands upon thousands of mosquitoes.

In April 2017, I hired a survey team to re-cut our survey lines, so that I could discern where I was, and so that I could have two lake-facing sight lines for reference, as narrow as they were. The 3 non-water property lines total to 1,540 feet, which is 0.3 mile. It cost me over a thousand bucks to get a crew of dudes with chain saws out to deal with that much linear clearing.

In May 2017, I flew up to the property from Houston to meet with a contractor in order to lay out the road and the pad that would allow us to park and also turn around so that we could drive back out again, instead of backing out.

I spent a solid day traversing the site on foot again and again, trying to figure out what road and pad orientation I wanted. The spruce forest was so dense I could barely see my hand in front of my face. But by using GPS and by listening very carefully for the sound of the waves on the lake that was totally obscured by the trees, I determined a lay-out, as unconventional as it was (because of the way the land is sloped, I ended up cutting diagonally across the property, rather than having my private road be parallel to the survey lines, as a conventional lay-out would be).

This image below is what I call humble beginnings. This is part of the survey tape I strung up around the pad location to inform the contractor where I wanted the cuts to be made. Contrast this with the images presented in post #1 of this thread.

Moral of this story: This is a big process. But we are in a pandemic - what are you going to do with your time? You sure as heck won't be attending concerts and sporting events and the like, in the usual manner.

[OTRA15]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

I Foodsaver custom-sized molds for my ice blocks, but the idea of using aluminum bakeware is awesome! I will remember that for the shorter-term trips we take, where maybe we don't need to construct an entire 30-lb block or two.
. . .

Hmmm . . . I had thought the aluminum pans were your idea! But it turns out that the idea belongs to Piggy Bank, as repeated in your Ideas etc. thread:

[click on orange arrow to go to Post #45 et seq. in that thread]

Originally Posted by OTRA15

Great solution! One trick I learned when we made some similar custom blocks of ice using cheap aluminum baking pans . . .

Once you have a block of ice ready to go into the cooler, if it is a little too large, just warm up a cast iron fry pan, and use this to melt the too-large surface of the ice. Obviously, your added food inside the block might negate the utility of this technique, but one can really make a plain block of ice fit great inside even a tapered cooler.

I think you can still buy 50 pound blocks of ice, and using an ice pick and the hot fry pan, you can also make quick custom blocks. Putting the frozen food inside the block of ice is simply genius!


. . .

And thanks for all the details on your security etc. measures. A good approach to see what happens . . .

[Lily&Me]

Personally, I would probably...and have, actually...back in a road like that so that I could drive straight out in event of an emergency.

Maggie

[marysomeday]

Originally Posted by uncle_bob

Hi

This is very much a "do your homework" sort of thing. There are is a *lot* of variation about what you can or can't do. If you are shopping for a property, ask questions and double check the answers. Make *sure* you know what all the implications are.

In general it will cost you money to:

1) Buy the property and do the title stuff / pay taxes.

2) Put in some sort of road / drive that will work in the seasons you plan to use the property. ( = dirt may not be "good enough" ).

3) Put in some sort of parking for the trailer(s), TV(s), and other vehicles.

4) Clear enough of what's there to have a reasonable amount of space to live in. This likely is an "often repeated" process. Either gear or a contractor will be needed ....

5) Permits and (possibly) inspections for the work above.

Don't *assume* everything past 1 above will be easy / cheap. Unless you have heavy equipment, don't assume you can do it all yourself. Get estimates !! As you "improve" the property, taxes likely will go up ....

Next you have "nice to have" stuff:

1) Sewage disposal (tank or field or some combo )

2) Well or rain catch system.

3) Stationary power ( = generator / solar / .... ).

4) Storage for all sorts of "stuff" so you don't have to haul it all in and out

5) Again, permits / inspections for some / all of this.

As you get into category 2, there may well be restrictions on what you can or can't have on this or that property. Trailers or storage containers as a permanent fixture may (or may not ) be allowed. There are a *lot* of weird regulations out there ....

If this will all be done DIY, how much time do you have available? I have multiple friends who have quite literally spent decades trying to get their "summer setup" into functional shape. They *do* know a lot about setting up tents on the property .... ( ... and permits ... and .. and ... and ...).

No, I'm not in any way suggesting this is going to cost a fortune. I'm also not in any way suggesting that I know if this or that is legal here or there. ALL I'm saying is that you want to dig into this as part of buying the property. Look at the whole cost, not just the price of the raw land.

In some places, you *may* actually be better off buying a place with a tiny cottage on it ( and all the support ) rather than raw land. Do your research !!! Often the best deal in this case is a place with major issues ( = the cottage needs to be torn down).

Bob

I hadn't thought of that! I love this thread, thank you so much I'm following avidly.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by uncle_bob

.....
I have had land where the gray water (if it met certain specs) could go into a properly done field ( not a septic). It could *not* be randomly dumped here or there. The cost of setting up the required drainage setup was trivial, but you still needed to do it. The regulations were quite clear on this, it was not simply an inspector run amok ( though I've seen that as well ....)

Bob

Yes, but if I understand correctly, those kinds of provisions apply to a "residing" scenario. They are not written to apply to temporary non-residential camping on private vacant land.

If anyone can cite actual contextual regulations to the contrary, please post a link. (Nobody has yet.)

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by Lily&Me

Personally, I would probably...and have, actually...back in a road like that so that I could drive straight out in event of an emergency.

Maggie

That is an option if the geography permits it. I have one hill that begins to approach the Interstate's capacity as a non-4-wheel-drive vehicle (logging roads are not built to very good specifications). I have to make a run at that hill nose-first. Even though the Interstate is rear-wheel drive, the front end is the business end from a steering perspective.

[OTRA15]

Originally Posted by Lily&Me

Personally, I would probably...and have, actually...back in a road like that so that I could drive straight out in event of an emergency.
. . .

Please notify friends and family of your intentions and location before you attempt this . . .

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by GetawA-S

....
How do you deal with wildlife, from black flies to black bears? .....

I'm combing the thread for those questions that haven't otherwise been answered yet.

(1) No black bears in our area... yet... although they are well-established within about 50 miles of there.

The bigger local concern is coyotes, which are wolf-coyote hybrids, much larger and meaner than the petite southern critters that we call coyotes in Texas. Occasionally they do get aggressive, several years ago killing one hiker in a populated spot, and attacking another in a densely-populated camp ground. After those two incidents, the province began a culling process and there have been no additional attacks. However, we noticed this year that their singing has greatly increased. Their numbers rise and fall with natural cycles in the rabbit population, which appears to have exploded (see my previous post with wildlife cam pics).

Life in the wilderness requires vigilance. I had one face-to-face encounter with a coyote, but it chose to retreat. We are almost always carrying an axe, machete, chainsaw, or other tool that we could use in defense. Our 50-pound dog is petrified of coywolves - they will kill her if given a chance, and she knows it. When she starts cowering in fear inside the van, we know that she smells one nearby, and that we need to be on the lookout for it.

(2) Black flies and mosquitoes - here's where it really pays to be smart about how you pick and develop your land tract.

Back in 1993 when I was searching for a property, I knew that it had to be waterfront and not just south-facing - it also had to be south-sloping.

The orientation of the property achieves two things: its higher-elevation back side shields it from the harshest of the northern winds, which are absolutely brutal in that part of the world. And it captures and funnels the prevailing mostly-gentle summer southern winds, which traverse the long fetch across the lake before climbing the hill and streaming across our parking pad.

Those winds keep the flies to a minimum, which would otherwise be overwhelming if the property were not configured properly. In the month of August, we really only have a fly issue at dusk when they first come out. In the morning and throughout the day, we don't even need to put on repellent. The breeze takes care of them.

I knew how to make those land decisions because I was born and raised in that exact area - I literally grew up in those woods at a time when 95% of our recreational activity took place outdoors (no computers, no screens, no cable TV).

[Lily&Me]

Oh, stop.

I don’t go far down forest roads, as if anything happened to me I would want Lily to be found.

I do prefer to always be pointing “out”, and feel that’s the safest way to be in other than established campgrounds.


Maggie

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by Goin camping

.... We were talking last week about the possibility of getting camping leases in Texas. A twist on the hunting lease idea.

....

Absolutely. There are many people in Texas who do this kind of thing BECAUSE they have hunting leases, or because they have a friend who has a hunting lease, and they go there to boondock in privacy.

The other thing that is popular here is ATV leases. I don't understand the allure, frankly, and neither do many other people, who do not want ATVs around - they are absolutely forbidden in public areas for the nuisances that they create (in the opinion of many people). But there is a large die-hard hobby group that wants to ride their vehicles, and they often group together and lease property for that purpose. Personally I would never allow any land of mine to be torn up like that, but for people who have more land than income, it's an attractive option.

You can lease vacant land for whatever reason you want in Texas, is the point. All it takes is a willing lessor and a willing lessee.

[InterBlog]

Someone on this thread - at least I think it was this thread - asked what the structure was behind our van. With the large number of replies, I'm not going to go back fishing for that question.

It's a Clam Venture, which was enthusiastically recommended by several other Air Forums users on another thread. That thing is AWESOME - I wish I had known about it years ago. Given the quarantine restrictions, I decided to up our boondocking game by ordering the picnic table for the property. And then I felt I needed something to surround it, so that we could have some expansion space outside the van. So that is what I chose, based on other users' recommendations.

I will never forget my husband's reaction to it. I take care of about 90% of the research and logistics for any given trip because he works long hours at his job, and generally does not turn his attention to those things. So he didn't really know that we were carrying it until I asked him to get it down from the van roof and help me set it up. Right away, he said, "OMG, I *love* this!" It was a neat surprise for him.

This pic was taken while our temporary cellular mast was in place, before we moved it to the rear onto a spruce pole that was about 7 feet taller than the one shown (a process that took us several hours of labor). Next year we hope to have an improved system that includes a telescoping mast, one that I can manage to put up by myself, which is no small feat given the height that it must reach (minimum 25 feet for acceptable cellular reception).