some homesteading/tiny living advice needed please.

Hi all, I am new here and have a few questions I hope that can be answered. Here's a quick rundown on our situation.
A couple of years ago 2 this year. My daughter and her husband talked me an mine into going in on a small 10 acre family farm. Problem, our name is not on property and we gave our place up to do this and they after a couple of harsh reality checks decided that farming, self sufficiency or anything else to do with homesteading is totally NOT for them and when she finishes school wants to move back to the city. Which means selling the farm. That leaves us in the cold and s.o.l. we were turning the pole barn into are new home until this came up, now work has come to screeching halt and we are trying to figure what to do.
We do know without any doubt that we do need a piece of land to call out home base. I have livestock and need a  garden amongst other things. It's just who we are.
The current situation though frankly is a mess. We have to move out of the house cohabitating is destroying our family. However putting money into something for someone else's gain and our extreme loss is stupid.
So I have pretty much convinced my husband that we need mobile housing that we can call home. We have decided on a bus which I think is awesome for various reasons.
At the current second we are going to just finish closing in the half of pole barn and put in outhouse and call it good.
Sorry I took so long...
My questions are this
How does one get around all the legalities of living in a bus? Up here it seems if you want to live in anything mobile you have to do it in a rv park.
We do plan on making it totally functional compost toliet, shower, kitchen all that.
We also are wondering about solar on the bus. We have been off grid before, but this is a bit different how does one keep panels from being wrecked while on the road?
The bus is to be used to travel to job sites, and anywhere else we need to go where we have to stay any length of time.
Also does anyone have any tips or advice for this situation?
If i have posted this in the wrong spot I'm sorry and feel free to relocate me.

here is a YouTube channel where a family is living in a bus for a year. I think they also have a lot of videos on how the bus was converted.

Overall the answers to your questions is "It depends" there are way too many factors to give any sort of real concreate answers.


For the solar panels - I would suggest making them removeable, so you can put them in the bus when traveling. I don't know how easy it would be to make the panels secure enough to handle 70+ mile per hour winds.

thank you I will check it out. I was wondering about the solar panels traveling on roof. seemed a bit sketchy to me.
I do understand about the variables, been looking into zoning ordinances. what a hassle.

Hum it seems like my link to youtube was removed lets try this again  [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOSGEokQQcdAVFuL_Aq8dlg[/youtube]

in any case you can just look up "Justin Rhodes"

That was really a neat video. looks like so much fun.

Hey there, sorry to hear of your situation. I have some less-than-selfless family members (putting things politely), and feel for what you're going through.

Be aware of cost. I did some thorough research when I was looking for low-cost living options. I found that a mobile tiny home was going to cost me around $150k+ (in Australia) if I was going to do it legally. Cheaper to buy a ready-made motor home. And like anything on wheels, it devalues with time. I'd rather build a simple house (simple = rectangle with plumbing clustered in one area of the house, for example) for the same amount of money and have to property value increase over time.

It could be different where you are, but for me the mobile home just didn't stack up.

As a side note, the Rhodes family did hint that their bus home cost far more than what they thought it would. But with tenants renting their house, a stable income coming through, and the generosity of their hosts, they're doing okay despite the initial blown-out outlay.

An option would be to see if any successful famers are looking for live-in farm hands. It's becoming more common for even small farms to have a farmer's cottage on the property.

Thank you very much for the advice. I just posted a new topic looking for some folks willing to help obtain some land. We have mostly crop farmers here, a few dairies. So that route isn't really viable up here.
I am exploring as many avenues of housing as I can at the moment, and it looks as though we'll  be taking whatever we can find in short order.
Isn't it great that people from all over the world are interested in this site, it's fabulous.
Happy Day and many blessings

I would put a little work and money into making a used tow behind trailer livable.
Live in it until your done building.
Park it inside a large green or hoop house,for more living space,a place to put a wood burner,and an additional layer of thermal/wind/water protection.

Is buying your relatives' land not an option?
It seems like a simplest solution possible.

Buying isn't an option, the situation has been resolved  for the moment. However we will still be working towards a mobile unit of some sort in order to have future security.
Thank all of you for your help and advice, it has been very helpful and a lot of food for thought.

I realize that this thread is already pretty old, but I'd suggest that you look at purchasing a used-motor home rather than spend all that time and money to build your own (basically) same thing with a bus.  Companies have spent decades and decades learning how to build a lightweight, mobile living space.  A school bus or any other such vehicle was created for an entirely different purpose: namely, the daily transportation of children safely from one place to another.  They can be converted into a home, buy why spend all that time and effort when you can pick up a used motor home for less money and drive it off the lot that day?

I posted on another thread that my parents sold their motorhome 2 years ago for $19,000.  It had over 100,000 miles on it, but it ran perfectly.  It had cherry cabinets, laminate flooring, Corrian countertops, beautiful drapes and finishes, a nice queen bed in the back bedroom, and a slide-out to make the space seem so much bigger.  The couple that bought it from them immediately took it camping down on the Oregon Coast.  They didn't have to spend another penny fixing it up.  

What is your time and energy worth?  I'd rather use that time to build an accompanying outdoor structure to expand your living space or space for your animals, tools and such.

Our first motorhome was a little C-Class unit that slept 6.  C-class are the ones with the little sleeper unit over the top of the cab of the "truck".  We bought it for $2500 and drove that poor thing up and down the coast for years.  My wife and I and our two kids had more fun with that little camper than we ever anticipated.  We drove it off-road to some inhospitable desert locations, took it up the sides of mountains, parked it on the Mexican beach . . .  Our investment was minimal, and upkeep wasn't bad.  After we'd beat it to death for 6 years, I turned around and sold it for $1500.  Can you even buy an old school bus for $2500?  That's before you put a cent into rehabbing it to livable condition.

I'm too old to be spending hundreds of hours building camper.  I get carpel tunnel syndrome from pulling electrical wires and grinding rust off old steel.  I'd rather spend a few bucks up front and get something that is immediately habitable.  I'd rather work a few extra shifts to earn some extra $$ than have to be out in a rusty school bus night after night trying to figure out how to hook up a composting toilet.

Anyhow, I"m sure that by now the crisis you were experiencing has been resolved.  Best of luck to you (if you are still monitoring this thread).