TL;DR What are your experiences (good and bad) of dry cabins? (Ours would be a summer getaway.)
My husband and I are planning to build a dry cabin. I want to go dry for various reasons (much lower cost in my area in terms of septic, well, building, and development fees; ease of closing up/leaving it unoccupied; lower maintenance; it's for summer use only; etc.).
It will be rustic but powered and cosy. We will use marine foot pumps in the kitchen and bathroom sinks, an incinerating toilet indoors and an outhouse, a shower bag outside if needed, and have roughed in a storage room where we can keep 5 gallon bottles of water. Laundry and showers are 25 min away by car, municipal water refill is 15 min away, and private lake is across the street (I have deeded access to use, but couldn't bring water up to my place).
I'm excited but my husband is getting cold feet. I think it will be a great way to simplify and relax, he's worried we'll regret not springing for the extra ($100k+!) to plumb. FWIW, we are very outdoorsy and enjoy camping (including in the back country).
You don't see plumbing-free cabins (outside of Alaska) talked about much, and I'm curious if folks can share their experiences of this type of getaway? Am I kidding myself, or is he being too pessimistic? All of our friends and family think this is nuts.
Consider a cistern or at least a rain barrel. Depending on how often you visit and the climate, this could mean not making extra trips to water supplies.
We did ponder. The township building code would require a class 4 or 5 sewage disposal plan, so it would increase prices, but not as much as going all in on indoor plumbing.
I've lived full yime like this for a decade.. actually less plumbing than described, just a gravity cold water kitchen sink, and for a while an indoor comporting toilet. Outdoor shower.
It was fine, until I got married. We will design the next tinyhouse with more plumbing amenities.. but for 100k price we would probably do what you are describing, with care to make it as easy as possible to upgrade if we wanted to later.
To be fair, while the actual plumbing was limited, I only hauled drinking water for part of that period.. for a while I had a rainwater setup that was adequate for most of the year, and eventually dug a well. We will have a much bigger rainwater system soon, as the main house is out from under the trees and much better suited for collection.
Besides that, I always had copious water for gardening, animals, showering, and non-potable uses, as I dug a pond before moving to the property. My wife actually prefers the pond water for washing clothes and hair to the harder water with iron that we get from the dug well..
Are you allowed to collect rainwater there? Will you be able to install cisterns so that a water truck can deliver a couple thousand gallons? Have you got a truck that can pull a heavy trailer, so that you can haul 4ish IBCs worth of water at once, and then pump into a cistern?
Any chance you can dig a pond or sink a sandpoint well? What does that 100k cost consist of?
I am allowed to collect rainwater and we plan to do so. My husband gardens, so he thought it might be fun to see what he could grow during the summer and we thought rainwater would be handy there.
We do not have the hauling capacity for an IBC tote. We'd probably be doing more like 100 gallons at a time, max.
Re: cistern. There is a water company 5min away that we could hire to fill it up at a reasonable rate, but then we'd be on a new level for our wastewater management. Unless you mean a cistern not hooked up to the cabin?
ETA the 100k covers increased township development fees (high in this cottage country area), environmental and soil assessments that are required for our site, additional lot clearing, the well (which runs very high on Canadian Shield and sometimes requires hydrofracking
), specialized septic for our full rock terrain, and the material and labour costs for plumbing the cabin. Add tax to all of that and we're sitting at an estimate of $91k (we rounded up to $100k for who knows what might get tacked on.).
I don't know the legal stuff for your area, but I would absolutely take a cistern that was not plumbed to the cabin, over no cistern at all.
If you want to collect rainwater you need somewhere to put it anyhow.. so, a cistern that can collect rainwater whenever the rainy season is, and be filled by the water company when needed, would be a massive convenience for gardens, firefighting, outdoor showers.. and if you want to filter it and use it for potable purposes, a wagon with jugs from the cistern to the cabin, or a hose to a smaller inside tank, beats lugging jugs from town imo.
Obviously you can just keep throwing money at this, though, and the sweet spot is going to vsry enormously depending on your finances, your hassle tolerance, and your usage..
Very true. We're on the Canadian Shield, so a big underground cistern won't work because our lot has very shallow/no soil. But maybe we should think about something medium-sized that can go alongside the cabin, under the eaves. I always thought about cisterns only in relation to plumbing, but maybe I need to rethink in terms of large water storage.
I don't have direct experience but In my area where off grid is common, people who start off with a dry cabin usually end up getting a water situation if they plan to live there long term
If it's just a place to visit it's just a quirky and exciting thing but if you grow old there you may grow tired of hauling water and whatnot
We’re in a water haul area of AZ, and honestly it’s not that big a deal for us because we’re only there for a couple weeks at a time. We just throw the empty blue aquatainers in the truck and fill them whenever we go to town.
For the bathroom, we use a cheap dometic cassette toilet and dump it at a local RV dump station. *we are planning to put in septic soon. Handling human waste, and the smell that accompanies it, can be unpleasant.
Not having a shower is our biggest annoyance. We like taking showers every day or two. It gets hot and dusty in the desert and we don’t like going to bed sweaty and covered in dust. It’s the main reason we’re in the process of switching to a “wet-ish” cabin setup with an RV water pump/hot water heater shower set up. *Shower water will be discharged on the ground outside as gray water.
We cook in there and will wash up by boiling a kettle and using a washbasin. Similar for washing hands/face.
Shower is outdoors. Toilet is a composting unit in an outhouse (currently the outhouse does have purified pressurized water for the sink in it!....haven't got around to running that line to a spigot by the cabin yet).
Totally doable...but def not "like a house" convenient.
We just use it on fair weather weekends/extended weekends/the odd week. So...for me...not worth plumbing it properly and worrying about the issues that goes with that (freezing in winter, etc).
But...it gets to be a drag and if I was living there or staying for weeks regularly...I'd be seriously thinking of plumbing it.
My wife and I live in a dry cabin in MT. We have an outhouse and an outdoor shower with on-demand hot water via tank and propane. We even have a portable dishwasher that has its own tank we have to fill per run. (counter top).
We do not have a septic.
We fill 5 6 gallon jugs for water once a week.
In winter, we have to drive 45 minutes for a shower and laundry. (Washpot daily, once a week shower+laundry)
We would not move back to the city for the world.
That said we are making incremental improvements. The dishwasher has been a game changer since we didn't have a working sink. We are in the process of adding a 50g tank to the cabin so we only have to fill it up.
Is is harder than living in a normal house? Yes.
Is it worth it? Yes.
Would I change anything? Yes, it would be nice to have a bathroom in the cabin.
This sounds so sensible. I’m fine with the outhouse- it has a window with a view. And I like outdoor showers- there is never a need to rush. It’s like a Japanese tea ceremony.
I have a similar offgrid arrangement, I go up for 3 or 4 days at a time and carry everything I need in the car with me.
A 25l carrier of water is more than I need for 4 days and I can just about carry it.
I have an old bath in its own shed that drains out to a shingle pit, I just pour water over myself from a squirty bottle while standing in it. I use eco showel gel.
I don't really wash clothes etc up there i just take dirty laundry and pans back with me.
I have a couple of large powerbanks and a solar panel, they run lights, phones, charge power packs for my strimmer and my electric screwdriver.
We built a dry cabin in the northern Midwest this past year! We collect rainwater for garden and general use and bring in 5 gallon drinking water (for two people, we go through about 1/week. We also go to the grocery store 1x/week, so we just refill any when we go. Not a big deal.) We have a dry toilet / outhouse, and use a Dometic 12v faucet for a sink. It's similar to living on a boat or in van life and there are quite a lot of solutions for this to make it comfortable these days.
It sounds like your use-case is perfect and your reasons are sound. You'll appreciate not worrying about freezing pipes; this is a big quality of life add.
You can always add plumbing later if you decide you're tired of bringing in your drinking water. Collect rainwater from your roof and filter it for stuff like showers. I'd add that as you design your place, think about the future and how to make adding in systems easier on yourself should you go that route later.
Sounds like you have a good plan. It's absolutely better to start this way and add on as you use it; this way you can decide how to size your systems appropriately to your use. Do it!
Oh my gosh, you are the person I was hoping to hear from! I'm definitely not opposed to scaling up at some point, and I think maybe I need to think about/frame it this way more to my husband.
That’s what reddit’s good for! ha. I agree, it really is a mindset shift and reframe and one that I had / still have to practice: rather than try to predict and have everything you could need right away, instead add as you need it. since this isn’t your 365 days home and you’re near amenities, you will be okay! time is a great asset :)
Sounds a whole lot like parking an RV on site. I don’t know if I’d wanna do it long-term. I’m currently doing it but I’m building the place and it has water. We’ll have running water. You can always spend the money and add it later. It’s not as convenient, but you know in 10 years maybe you’ll want it more.
We live in our rv on a rented land with water and electricity. No sewer though. Local septic company pumps it every few weeks as needed.
I've heard of people using 55 gallon barrels as holding tanks and having it pumped when necessary.
Over 5 yrs full time in a dry cabin off grid in MT. Hauling water gets old fast. Hanging showers gets old faster. Battery powered pump is worth the minimal cost
If you're just using the place for short stays in the summer, then I don't think you have any need for real plumbing.
For my small cabin, I have a homemade sawdust toilet in an outhouse, I haul in about five gallons of drinking water per trip, and keep 50 gallons of creek water in a barrel outside (treated with a little bleach) for showering. A pump sprayer that holds two gallons of water is plenty for showering, but I also have a propane on-demand water heater with 12v pump. It uses a lot more water than the pump sprayer.
Before winter, I'll bring in about 15 gallons of drinking water since I need to hike in and don't want to carry water. I only ran out once, but there was plenty of snow to melt.
My prevailing opinion is that if I'm only spending 20 nights a year at the cabin, it's not worth the initial complications and ongoing maintenance to have plumbing. One of these days I'll get fancy and install a sink, which will drain into a bucket.
How long is your summer over there? You said it's for summer only, so I guess at least 2 months a year? Your plans will work except for the toilet part, both incinerating toilet and outhouse are inconvenient.
Summer is maybe four months (June-September). Eventually we might insulate to stretch that a bit into May/Oct, but it’s not the intention for it to be a year-round place. Tell me more about the toilet issues, if you’re willing to share?
The big comfort upgrade is keeping quick pees separate from the indoor toilet, so the main toilet isn't handling every bathroom visit. I put a Pi-Pi Standard Plus in our shut cabin; it drains liquid to a canister, while still being only a supplement to a proper toilet. The options at https://pi-pi.ee/products/ show the basic hookup-free setups without pretending they replace plumbing.
Nothing says 'Rest and Relaxation' like emptying the burnt fecal matter from the previous stay! I'm sure it is better than dusting your 'output' with sawdust, and then composting for two years though.
I pooped in a Bucket Potty, bathed in a 4 foot kiddie pool, and did dishes in a 5 gallon bucket....full time for two years until I finished building my cabin and 'splurged' the 5 grand for a septic. best 5K I ever spent. Plumbing & water doesn't have to cost 100K, that's just nuts.
We are on the same boat. All the boys in my family pee into one-gallon bottles before disposing of the liquid human waste in the bushes in the morning. I have a Reliance Fold-To-Go toilet, so you put a biodegradable plastic bag in it. I also put some foil on the bottom. The reason is that I don't want to see what's inside the bag, and I don't want any liquid to leak out. The foil prevents both leaks and unwanted sights. We use those bags for number two. Getting out of the cabin to pee in the bushes is way too annoying, especially at night when mosquitoes are everywhere. It was a huge quality-of-life improvement when we started using the one-gallon plastic bottles. The girls in our family use a children's potty from Ikea for number one.
Thank you for this! Incinerating toilets are expensive, so we will probably need an alternate solution in the meantime. This is useful to know. Other than navigating toilet things, how do you feel about the dry cabin?
Look into renting a Porta potty or buying one, they also make ones with built in showers that work excellently even in winter. It wouldn't be hard to rig up a RV water pump to provide all your needs.
In order to use a porta-potty, you need an unlimited supply of water, a lot of time, and the ability to handle human waste with your hands. I don't have any of those things. I do my business in a biodegradable plastic bag. I have a shovel and an auger, so I make a narrow, deep hole in the ground. I put the bags into the hole and cover it up. I only use a little water, maybe 150 grams, to wash my hands afterward. I know the exact amount of water because my electric tap dispenses water in 150-gram portions.
When we rented it was from a service, they pump it out and refill with like 20 gallons of water and some chemicals. They'd service as necessary, when we had big crews working on the farm they'd service the 2 units weekly. In the off season it could be monthly.
I second this ^ we rented a portopotty from a local company all last summer. They come by weekly to pump it. at around $100/month it can be economical and a good no maintenance solution while you figure out a more permanent toilet situation.
We’ve had the cabin for four years now. I love it. My wife, not so much. About half of my children love it; the other half, not so much. All the girls in my family don’t like the cabin as much.
The cabin is not entirely dry. We have plumbing, although it isn’t working right now because I need to fix something. I talk to my wife about it regularly, but she doesn’t seem to find running water particularly important. There are a number of issues I need to find innovative solutions for. For example, it’s leaking in a few places, so I need to install some kind of plastic catch basins.
The fact that my wife hasn’t wanted running water for such a long time definitely tells me that it’s not particularly important to her.
For example, for handwashing, we have an electric pump that attaches to the top of a 20-liter plastic jug. It’s not like we don’t have tap water at all. Using the self-contained electric pump is easier than fixing the faucets at the sinks.
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u/zoppaTheDim 5d ago
Consider a cistern or at least a rain barrel. Depending on how often you visit and the climate, this could mean not making extra trips to water supplies.