Leads on unrestricted land in East Tennessee?

My wife and I are looking to self build our first home in the Sequatchie Valley area and hoping someone on here might be able to help us zero in on a good space.

We would like to build a natural structure consisting of a round timber frame and a mix of strawbale & cob. Would be built using passive solar principles, and looking to be 100% off grid.

We would also like to have enough land to produce food not only for ourselves but the community. Preferably 5+ acres with 2.5 acres being the absolute minimum. I would like to keep the spending under 10k, but I also understand that this greatly limits my options.

The reason for this being that just over a year ago we quit our desk jobs to explore the United States/Canada, minimize our expenses and reduce our debt. As a result we would like to continue this trend and avoid any debts as much as we can.

We have a Motorhome to stay in during the build, so it would be nice to have some sort of road onto the property, but is not absolutely necessary.

TIA for any help, it’s greatly appreciated.

you will need to check with each county and see if they have building/zoning codes, things are changing we just this month fought off county commissioners from creating zoning/code enforcement dept. I'm about a half dozen counties ne of where your interested in.
here we have regulation about putting in septic system if your building new residence and if you want power connected the electric coop has to inspect wiring before they will make connection. that's all. I like it like it is here but you never know if someone might buy a big chunk of land nearby and start a rock quarry and set off dynamite all the time of decide to have a hazardous waste disposal site or maybe a nuclear bomb factory. might want to check on water quality in the valley there's a large paper mill east of there that disposes of all kinds of nasty waste in the river and it stinks all the time.

bruce Fine wrote:you will need to check with each county and see if they have building/zoning codes, things are changing we just this month fought off county commissioners from creating zoning/code enforcement dept. I'm about a half dozen counties ne of where your interested in.
here we have regulation about putting in septic system if your building new residence and if you want power connected the electric coop has to inspect wiring before they will make connection. that's all. I like it like it is here but you never know if someone might buy a big chunk of land nearby and start a rock quarry and set off dynamite all the time of decide to have a hazardous waste disposal site or maybe a nuclear bomb factory. might want to check on water quality in the valley there's a large paper mill east of there that disposes of all kinds of nasty waste in the river and it stinks all the time.

Thank ya much for the info and thoughtful response. From my research Sequatchie county does not have any real building codes/permits outside of the Dunlap city limits. So we were hoping to settle in that area or a county with similar coding.

Definitely worth looking into water quality. I was unaware of the paper mill, so thanks for putting that out there as well.

Being our first space we are wanting to go 100% off grid, so hoping to avoid septic systems and electric coops, but obviously those things are a necessary evil in some circumstances.

Either way, thanks again for all of the great info, really appreciate it.

Kenny, welcome to the Permies Forum. It's a great place for quality answers. I hope you'll keep us updated on your search.

Leigh Tate wrote:Kenny, welcome to the Permies Forum. It's a great place for quality answers. I hope you'll keep us updated on your search.

Thank ya much Leigh. Will definitely keep the thread updated as things come up.