In part one of this series, we talked about starting out homesteading. We went over how much land you would need for what you wanted on your homestead. We also covered the pros and cons of raw land and finding land ready to start homesteading.
In part two we talked about making sure the land you wanted to buy would fit what you were wanting to do. Talking to planning and zoning in the county you were looking to purchase land in. About what you could do on the land if you could have the animals you wanted and talked about dealing with things like septic tanks and such.
If you missed those posts and what to read them. I will leave links below so you can go read them if you would like too.
Part One! https://steemit.com/life/@basicstoliving/you-want-to-homestead-part-one
Part Two! https://steemit.com/homesteading/@basicstoliving/you-want-to-homestead-part-two
In this part of the series, I will tell you how we planned to clear our land and planned for the electric lines and the telephone lines being put in. We do not have cable tv in our area the only option was satellite tv here.
We first walked the land to figure out the general location we wanted our houses and to see the trees we wanted to keep and what was actually on the land. We picked the time we wanted to do this, as we are in the south and there is a danger of running into rattlesnakes in our area, we did this in the winter time and still wore boots and certain clothes to help protect us from anything that could hurt us as we walked the property. In the winter time, snakes are not around as it is cold and they hibernate during that time of year, also a lot of the undergrowth was dead and it made it much easier for us to move through the land.
Sometimes you will find an opening in the land that might make a good place to build by just widing that opening up and using the natural opening in the land. Sometimes that may not be a good option and you have to open the land up more because what you are planning to build will be bigger than that opening is or the opening as we found out will be too close to the landline and is not what you will want. When you get someone to clear the land make sure you tell him you want him to root the land also if you are planning on building there, as the roots will grow starts of the trees he pushed down to start and come back. As you can see in this picture! We will have to work this area again to be able to build on it. That is an added expense and it makes it harder in the long run unless you are going to build right away and then you will still have some of it to deal with.
Now to electric service and to telephone lines. We got them in place early so we could get some small cabins built and a small office trailer moved in to remodel. We wanted to be able to live on the land as we did not want to rent a house to live in as we built what we wanted on the land. We are building debt free so paying rent and bills for the rental was not working too well as we tried that when we first got here. It was hard to have the money to put into the land and still pay someone else money for rent.
We cut a road down one side of the property for access all the way to the back of the land and around to the other side where we put the small trailer at. This is where all the electric service lines and the telephone lines are at as we know they are there and we can dig on the sites we plan to without taking the chance of cutting them. They are three feet deep as we were here and watched them go in and knew what, when and where for all of this. That is my suggestion to you is to watch so you will know where they are at.
All the lines we put in elsewhere on the property are marked so we know where everything is. We choose to pay the extra expense of having the electric underground on our property as we would have had to clear a 40 ft path for aerial lines to go in through the property. We wanted only a small driveway to be cut into the property where we would have privacy and not have everything seen from the road. If we put in aerial lines there would have been no charge to put power into our property but underground will be another added expense and we had to put up the H-frame (amount for the power box and the meter to be set up on) ourselves and pull a permit for that which was also an extra expense.
This Is A 400 Amp Service. We used 200 amp box for getting power to the backside of the property and the small house and other things. The other 200 amp service will be for the house we build in the clearing behind this frame. In the front we will have another 400 amp service for the houses up front and other things we need in the front of the property. We will have to get another transformer installed and have to build another H-frame there too. It is really helpful if you know how to do some of this yourself just keep in mine it will have to pass an electrical inspection.
On the plus side to all the added expenses in our area, the telephone company did not charge us to put in the phone lines we needed for phone and the internet. On a side note when looking at property check with the phone company in the area and check what type of internet you can get to the area you live in. Will it be DSL or will you be able to get cable? Most rural areas sometimes all you can get is satellite internet and satellite tv. The satellite internet is really restricted to the amount of bandwidth you can use. Where with DSL it is unlimited bandwidth. That is what we needed as we watch tv on Netflix and some other apps through the internet.
This post is getting long so I will stop there and will share more in a later post! Thanks for spending some of your time reading our blog and seeing how we are doing things here on our little homestead. Hope everyone has a great day/night, whatever it is in your neck of the woods.
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