Tips for Buying Land, Utilities
By mati. Filed in Tips for Buying Land |Tags: Buying Land, Monolithic Dome, Tips for Buying Land
Utilities can easily become an unexpected expense when buying a land. The first thing you need to find out is whether any utilities are available near the lot. The phone company will usually give you a credit for bringing phone service to your land, but once the credit has been used up, they will charge you by the foot, which adds up very quickly!
If you find that bringing in phone service is going to cost a lot, you have two options – either get a cell phone for your phone service, and satelite for your internet, or rent a machine and dig the line yourself. Then all you have to pay for is the cable, which isn’t too bad.
If water is not available, you may have to drill a well. Contact a local well driller to find out what the going rate per foot is, and also ask how deep he thinks he may have to go. In addition to drilling the well itself, you also need to figure in at least $5.000 to have the pump and pump accessories hooked up, to make a pump house, and to bring the water to your house. All these expenses are easy to forget when the well driller gives you a price per foot.
If sewer is available, you need to make sure the lot isn’t lower than the road where the sewer pipes are buried. If it is, you might have to have your sewer pumped uphill, and a sewer pump system can easily add thousands of dollars to your bill. So unless the land is so gorgeous that you simply must have it, you might be better off looking for a different piece of land.
If sewer is not available, you’ll have to put in your own sewer system. Sewer systems need drainage, so look at your soil to get an idea of what kind of drainage you are dealing with. Clay is horrible, sand is better. If the drainage is terrible, the inspector might not approve a septic system at all, so you might want to make a call to the inspector, too, before you make your decisiong to buy. If the drainage is workable, you might have to bring in extra drain rock, which could also be expensive. If the drainage is good, your septic system might not end up costing you too much. Talk to a septic installer and he can give you an idea what numbers you can expect for the piece of land you are looking at.
Once you get all your numbers, add them up before you even buy the land. If no utilities are available, putting utilities in can easily cost you at least $30,000 in addition to the cost of the land. This is money going out before you even start your foundation! So get your calculator out and add it all up so you won’t get any upleasant surprises later!
Building a monolithic dome takes a lot of planning, calculation and budgeting. Once you get your numbers in order, and you are still good to go, it is time to plan out the layout of the dome on the land.
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