Don’t Buy an Off Grid Cabin Build it! A little advice to save yourself some money on your off grid cabin build. Don’t buy retail lumber. Invest the money into a portable sawmill and mill your own lumber from the trees on your land. You’ll save tens of thousands of dollars on lumber costs.
The November 2014 issue of my magazine I did a good article on Building A Cabin On A Budget. It will save you tens of thousands of dollars on your cabin build!
You can build a log cabin for less than $10k in tools and equipment instead of buying lumber to build with. Invest in the tools! Not the lumber!
Buy land with plenty of timber to harvest for building your cabin. When you’re done harvesting, simply plant more trees to replace the ones you cut down. You need about 50-100 logs on average to build a 500-1000 square foot cabin.
Most people just want a small cabin, and if it’s your first build you should build small anyway to make it a bit easier and simpler. It’s a learning experience an the experience you learn on your first build will allow you to build a bigger and better cabin for your next home. Then you can turn the old small cabin into a guest house, mother-in-law suite, or rent it out on AirBNB for an income.
So yeah…don’t buy lumber. Never pay retail for lumber if you can help it. You’ll still have to buy the fixtures and hardware, wire and pipe to install your electrical and plumbing, but the largest cost of the build is materials and labor. Labor can be as much as 50% or more of the build cost. Materials is the other half.
So save as much money as you can and build your own cabin from the lumber on your land instead of buying building materials.
You will save much more money and gain the building experience to build a bigger and better off grid cabin later on down the off grid road.
HAPPY OFF GRIDDING!
May all your off grid dreams come true!
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