Waterworks

I already do and it's far from the freedom and peace and quiet you would imagine it to be.

I have many years experience in living off grid in different kinds of dwellings , I really enjoy extreme simple life and remote rural places, what i'd like to do is build an iron age roundhouse in a wood and try out living there full time . As far as I can see there is no way to do this legally, which I find strange as I my aim is to be totally off-grid with no effect on anyone else, I can only see that it would be a benefit to any council planner, not a problem. In any case, I feel it's a daft situation that I will have to do this illegally when I'm a responsible law-abiding person that just wants to enjoy a harmless alternative lifestyle.

Would one solution to the lack of affordable housing for first time buyers in the UK be the tiny housing idea ? I've never seen any in the UK except some shipping container apartment blocks used as housing for refugees ( who complained it wasn't good enough ) but I think many people would be interested in these as a first step on the housing ladder if they were sited in a nice environment with gardens and open space and not crammed in together on an estate.

Its far from freedom to do what you want, you have to justify your existence and comply with multiple income, environmental and other issues.

Lets imagine someone wanted to build and live totally off grid a whacky lifestyle in an Iron age thatched hut with ownership of a few acres of land for self sufficiency , this would be one dwelling and not a community , where would they start with getting this project fully above board and legal as regards planning permission, building regulations ect ect, or is it some thing that is so outside the regulations that no council would ever agree to it ? I've looked into contacting local council planning departments for informal advice but not got anywhere, they seem to be uncontactable unless you hire them as consultants ? ( I'm aware of the Welsh experiment with a community of this kind but as far as I know its not going well and is not the answer )

That can't happen on any canal that is still in use.

If they have no vehicle to transport the chemical toilet to the disposal point yes, unless they have accessed a sewer . Or you can set up a composting system. When I travelled the canals on my boat I had man hole keys and a standpipe kit, I rarely used them though as there are taps and sewage points all over the canal system. Dumping sewage into the canal which rarely has any flow it would just stay all around your boat and build up, you'd end up living in a sewer.

You can own the land next to the canal but your boat is moored on the water which you don't own , so its always up to the water owner whether you can moor there or not, you have no right to moor next to land you own, most likely the canal and river trust or environment agency, and both of those entail rent payments, licences, insurance, safety inspections and complying with multiple regulations.

They can and do have chemical toilets that can be emptied at any canal side sanitation station.

Do council planning departments patrol their area looking for huts in the woods , caravans on farms and other low key dwellings or do they rely on complaints before they take any interest ?

You might think I'm nuts but I want to live on my own in a " hut "in the woods, all I want is a water source, some solar pv, a compost toilet system, an outdoor shower and a wood burning stove, I want total peace and quiet with no neighbours. I already live on a boat but I'm dealing with multiple restrictions , licences, permits, noise and PITA neighbours , so I'm ready to take the step to real isolation. However I can't find any legal way to do it, even if I buy woodland I can't live there and even wrecked abandoned houses in far rural locations are way above my budget. It looks like its not possible for me to legally live like this in the UK, which seems daft to me because I certainly wouldn't be bothering anyone else and in fact using less rescouces than most. My best plan so far is to buy some isolated woodland and live in a shepherds hut and see what happens. Living in fear of being found out isn't ideal.

Were planning on building a small cabin in some woods we own for leisure use, maybe 4 x 4 m , timber frame and timber clad, all materiels will have to be moved by hand to the final site from the end of the track. Its not expected to last forever. Question is what options are there for the base, set a timber base frame on blocks ? timber frame sat on gravel ? Concreted in posts ? Any ideas ?

I would suggest that excess heat can always be vented away but not visa versa, maybe the wood burning stove in the winter would only need to be tiny, but that's not a problem I can see as it frees up time spent processing fuel.

Despite the drawbacks it would be a very quick and cheap ersatz building materiel I think.

I don't burn contaminated, treated or painted pallet wood,

What do you think of this idea for a cheap housing building materiel , you take standard sized euro pallets ( i heat my home on them for free and companies are begging me to take them away ) and put them in a mould, fill them with spray foam to their full thickness ( 144 mm ) and create waterproof wall, floor and roof building blocks that can be screwed together through the corner blocks. Naturally every join would be spray foamed to seal it. This is meant as a low cost alternative materiel for cabins, sheds or huts not to replace anything else currently being used in house building.

I thinking about building a small cabin in some remote woodland I will own, my thinking is that insulation is relatively cheap and at the planning stage is easy to factor in as much as you want, i could then cut the wood fuel use for heating down to a level that just an area of coppice ( x acres ) on site will support indefinitely. Were not going to live there but were going to stay there way longer than is legal, unless we get found out. I've read tales of passive houses that require no heating at all most of the UK year.

I'm in the early stages of planning an off grid small one room open plan cabin style house in the UK , not really subject to any extremes of weather, i want to base it on a passive house style of insulation where the absolute minimum of fuel is needed to heat it, I'd like to find what thickness of PU foam board is the practical maximum , I'm aware that the thicker you go there are diminishing returns, as far as I know now this is in the region of 300 mm ?

I would think part of the problem is that the council can't rate a Yurt or mud hut for council tax and so don't want to even think about allowing it.

Thanks for your replies so far. My future plan ( 10 years time possibly ) is to buy the wood land then put something like a Shepherds hut there and see what happens, I have no info on how councils monitor the land use so I would just have to give it a go, do they get informed of every sale ? do they tour the area looking for illegal buildings ? Seeing as my wish is to have solitude and not draw attention to myself who knows I might get away with it for a while ? Unless anyone has any other ideas of how to live off grid in a remote place without buying a house ? As you all know any kind of property is an insane price. £235,000 !

My dream is to buy some woodland and build a simple off grid dwelling there, a log cabin, Yurt, straw bale or the like, I really enjoy solitude, peace and quiet and the simple life . I am retired early due to health problems and won't be running a business on site, I'm not allowed any stress. However as you may know this is practically illegal due to their being no way to get planning permission to change the use if the land, I am a responsible person and not a hippie or traveller and would look after the land and not cause any problems to anybody , my lifestyle would be environmentally friendly, sustainable and every other buzzword the government claim to want. Do you agree that there should be a new planning category that allows this within some basic rules to stop abuse of the land and causing shanty towns and camps to spring up ?