posted 2 hours ago
It's come up in a few other threads now, so I'll just lay out here what is my plan for buying land and building a house on it.
Phase I: Land
1. Shop for land, buy land. (We live in Ohio now, but are targeting northern New Mexico. I have discussed my reasons for that elsewhere on this forum.)
2. Visit and camp out on the land at different times of year. Start thinking about where to put a house.
2a. Grade a driveway and campsite, if needed. (Hopefully something I could do with a small excavator rented for a day or two.)
3. Get a camper/caravan/RV which we will use for travel and stay in it when we visit our land.
4. Dig a well if there is both no municipal water and no rain catchment available.
Phase II: Barn
5. Grade house site; dig swales, French drains as needed; etc. (stuff I can do with a small excavator rented for a week). Retain excavated soil for cob/adobe later.
6. Build a garage/shop/barn around the camper/caravan/RV., with room to store extra materials to build a house. This could be a kit build. It could also be a chance to experiment or try out different methods/materials.
7. Start gathering materials for the house.
Phase III: House
8. Build house. This will be done system by system (foundation, framing, cladding, etc.) and I won't list them all here. It will probably be a mix of "natural" and "conventional" methods/materials tailored to the site, my situation, my abilities, what I've got good access to, etc. Possibly there'll be gaps of time between building this or that system while I save money and acquire more materials (I expect at least some material will be salvage).
Phase IV:
9. Get rid of camper/caravan/RV?
10. Finish out part of garage/shop/barn as an ADU, where visitors can stay or which we can rent out.
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