Seeking advice on where to live in our RV (land in Colorado?)

[kcdogger]

Originally Posted by partygrrl

I would recommend going with the dilapidated/fixer-upper house option, preferably one that has an old barn or room to build a carport/roof/storage area for both the MH and your other vehicles. Motorhomes are awesome to live in because they are mobile. Living full-time in a motorhome that never moves is a drag, imho. Issues other people mentioned, like lack of insulation and roof snow load, along with things like propane being a damp heat and condensation build-up during the winter, not to mention the limits of showers and laundry would all be things I would consider (as someone who has full-timed for years both while mobile and parked in one place for an extended time).

It sounds as if you have already pretty much decided on Colorado, but you may want to look into Montana...they get snow, have mountains, and tend to be way more lax with property rules and building codes (and less crowded) than CO. Also look into things like taxes...property tax vs sales tax, etc, can be a huge hidden cost.

I also feel like it is important to reiterate what several others have said...any decision you make about where to live should definitely be done while considering both yours and your wife's future employment because many areas would be completely illogical based on travel time to/from work and winter driving conditions.

Montana would be a bad idea. I think the state is at it's quota of junk yards. NIMBY will be the viewpoint of virtually any neighbor in any state.

[engine103]

Originally Posted by FatChance

+1

Not to single you out, but a big part of the problem is that too many Texans and Californians got tired of where they lived, moved to Colorado to get away from where they were, then tried to make Colorado more like where they left.

Maybe you would have more luck in Nevada, Oklahoma or Arkansas for all the specifics you mentioned?

HEY! Leave Oklahoma out of this. We work very hard not to appear being "Woke" and thus having to deal with the population influx that are creating problems some other states are experiencing.

[rvvolunteer]

Just bought land in eastern Nebraska. County zoning regulations are mostly on line. As I read them, for the county I’m in, I can have one campsite allowed by agricultural 1 zoning. More sites would require a variance. I’m planning on buildings so didn’t look at permanently stationing an rv there, but if it’s a campsite it should be allowed. I would suggest finding land you want and then check zoning. I believe you may find agricultural zoning more favorable for what you are wanting to do than other zoning. Thinking that generally means away from larger towns and not in “subdivisions “. I used internet searches for “land” and state as well as Zillow to find. Zillow was not as helpful as some others because it’s oriented toward houses but it could depend on area.

If you get into an area with temps significantly below freezing you will have to insulate and heat trace water line to below frost depth.

[dieselclacker]

Originally Posted by kcdogger

Montana would be a bad idea. I think the state is at it's quota of junk yards. NIMBY will be the viewpoint of virtually any neighbor in any state.

Yes please stay out of Montana, junk cars and all!!

[Bo]

I live in Colorado and have a place that would fill your wants but Colorado mountain property is getting way to expensive for what you have. For what you want I would look at Wyoming. Wyoming is much more laid back and less expensive than Colorado and the mountains are beautiful.


Good luck and follow your dreams. You are only young once.

[Fanrgs]

I have lived in Colorado for nearly 60 years and my wife is a native. I have two classic cars and a fifth wheel trailer parked at my house. And I would usually be one of those who say that we don't need any more unemployed Texans moving here because we already have too many currently living in every oil/gas-producing town in the state.

However, I will give you some places to look for some land instead. If you really want to be in Colorado, first try the western half of Huerfano and Las Animas Counties. In particular, look along the Pugatory River west of Trinidad and the area south of US 160 between Walsenburg and La Veta. Secord, try the Crestone area along the east side of the San Luis Valley and just north of Great Sand Dunes NP. Third, try the area around Westcliffe in the Wet Mountain Valley portion of Custer County. In the first and third of these areas, you will be in daily commuting distance of a county seat and a potential for a future government or non-profit job for your wife.

If none of those meet your needs, I would suggest expanding your search to include not only Wyoming, but northern New Mexico. In WY, you might try the Riverton-Lander area and the Pinedale area, which is smaller and more remote. In NM, try the area between Espanola and Abiquiu along the west side of the Rio Grande Valley. There are several older "hippy subdivisions" in that area that allow most any kind of home you can think of built on several acres with no HOAs anywhere. There are plywood geodesic domes, rammed-earth casas, straw bales "adobes", old school buses with a house built around them, etc. And it's closer to Texas, has mountain ranges to the east and west, nearby Corps of Engineers lakes with cheap, electric hookup campgrounds, and relatively few tourists compared to the Santa Fe-Taos corridor east of the river.

[Don Juane]

Why Colorado? As a Texas resident, are you SURE about that? Did you look at the winter temps? Are you prepared to live in freezing weather in a RV and do you know all you'll have to do to ensure you don't freeze up? Do you understand the massive loss of heat and cool in a RV? Perhaps outside of a cardboard box, a RV has to be the most energy inefficient dwelling available. Think about it.



Check your proposed city:
https://www.usclimatedata.com/climat...ed-states/3175



"Who can ski in THIS weather!" (Peter Sellers, The Pink Panther)

[swavescatter]

Originally Posted by Fanrgs

I have lived in Colorado for nearly 60 years and my wife is a native. I have two classic cars and a fifth wheel trailer parked at my house. And I would usually be one of those who say that we don't need any more unemployed Texans moving here because we already have too many currently living in every oil/gas-producing town in the state.

However, I will give you some places to look for some land instead. If you really want to be in Colorado, first try the western half of Huerfano and Las Animas Counties. In particular, look along the Pugatory River west of Trinidad and the area south of US 160 between Walsenburg and La Veta. Secord, try the Crestone area along the east side of the San Luis Valley and just north of Great Sand Dunes NP. Third, try the area around Westcliffe in the Wet Mountain Valley portion of Custer County. In the first and third of these areas, you will be in daily commuting distance of a county seat and a potential for a future government or non-profit job for your wife.

If none of those meet your needs, I would suggest expanding your search to include not only Wyoming, but northern New Mexico. In WY, you might try the Riverton-Lander area and the Pinedale area, which is smaller and more remote. In NM, try the area between Espanola and Abiquiu along the west side of the Rio Grande Valley. There are several older "hippy subdivisions" in that area that allow most any kind of home you can think of built on several acres with no HOAs anywhere. There are plywood geodesic domes, rammed-earth casas, straw bales "adobes", old school buses with a house built around them, etc. And it's closer to Texas, has mountain ranges to the east and west, nearby Corps of Engineers lakes with cheap, electric hookup campgrounds, and relatively few tourists compared to the Santa Fe-Taos corridor east of the river.

Please do NOT bring NM into this. No vacancy.

[Tiny Shoppe]

We bought land near Gardner. The ranch land has no POAs or HOAs, however, each county will also have its own building requirements. We plan to live in our motorhome, but we will also be considering a pole barn for it, with living space, in order to comply with our county's requirements. There are other options we are considering, too.
Water and electricity will be costly. We plan to stay primitive with solar/wind, but finding water is not easy, and it is certainly not cheap. We are currently digging a well. On our first attempt, we spent $8,500 to dig a 300' post hole based on dowsing. I received an advertisement for a water locating firm, hired them, and we are drilling on the specified location. Water is supposedly at 500', so it will cost us a minimum of $13.5k. Since we are in a motor home, we don't want to pack up every time we need fuel, water, or a dump station. Yes, there can be rough weather in winter, but having grown up in Northern Colorado, it can easily be 60° the next day. Southern Colorado has a more temperate climate.

[kcdogger]

I noticed that nobody who is offering up all the great locations for relocation has mentioned the lot next door to them is available. Surely one of these helpful, kind, considerate people who just want to help the downtrodden know a relative or friend with some unused acreage. I doubt it would take much convincing to get that landowner to realize how much the value of their property would rise when those old cars, trailers, and assorted other bric-a-brac arrived along with an unemployed family living in an old RV. It would be the beginning of a great subdivision and we all know how much money subdivision developers make.

[oharris]

I have done what you are proposing. We live in Peyton, CO just east of Colorado Springs. Last year we sold our house on 5 acres to our daughter and her husband. Real estate was/is out of control in this area and the only properties they could afford were absolute junk. We wanted to help out by selling them our house but that put us in the same boat. We decided to sell them our house at a significant discount and move into an RV in the yard. We bought the Cameo 5th wheel listed in my signature and moved into that. It worked out quite well, but I also have a car problem and my son-in-law was not enthusiastic about hosting it long term. That led to our purchasing our own property a month ago and we have since moved into that. We were planning to buy an empty lot and live in the RV until we built a house, but found a house that checked most of the boxes for what we wanted so we pulled the trigger on that.

As far as legality, strictly speaking what we were doing wasn't legal. As far as I know you can buy property and live on the property in an RV for up to a year while you build your permanent home. There are lots of people living in RVs on vacant or occupied properties just like we were. No one ever bothered us, and we never bothered anyone. I feel like you can get away with it for a while as long as you don't make too many waves. If your property doesn't look bad, I doubt anyone will turn you in. That being said if you have the unfortunate luck of moving in next to a neighborhood busybody all that could go out the window. Like I said, no one ever bothered us, but we were fortunate to be off the radar of said busybody. I have no doubt if she would have known what we were doing she would have turned us in.

The winter months were not bad, but we did have to make some adjustments. My 5th wheel has double pane windows so it is better insulated than most, but still falls far short of what a sticks and bricks house has in terms of insulation. Propane is expensive and you go through a lot of it if rely on your furnace for all your heat. A 1500 watt space heater provides a surprising amount of heat in a small space like an RV and really doesn't use THAT much electricity. The problem with them is the thermostat that comes with them is mounted on the unit and doesn't work well for regulating heat in in a room. What I did was install a programmable thermostat with 2 stage heat. The first stage was connected to an outlet which the space heater was plugged into. If the temperature got more than 2 degrees below the set point the furnace would kick on. We also used another space heater in the living room area to warm that up a bit while we watched TV or whatever. We also used an electric blanket at night and were able to tolerate having the temperature as low as 60 degrees while we slept. The programmable thermostat would also turn down the heat during the day while no one was home and then warm it back up again before we arrived for the evening. What I found was down to about 20 degrees overnight low the space heater would take care of it. Anything below that the furnace would kick on and off and below zero it would run almost constantly. I tried running a 2nd space heater in the bedroom on cold nights like that, which did help with propane use, but also resulted in frozen pipes.

I learned to just suck it up and buy propane through the cold snaps and be thankful that they didn't happen that often. Before we started using the space heaters, during a cold week we would go through as many as 3 30 lb propane bottles (at a cost of around $80). After the modifications, we got that down to a little over 1 bottle per week at the most. Our electric bill did go up of course, but it was no where near the cost of propane saved.

I also parked the Coachman in my signature in Tabernash, CO and used that as a ski cabin last winter. Tabernash regularly gets below zero in the winter and has lots of snow too. I only used it on weekends, usually just one night, and I didn't keep any water in it so I didn't have to keep it warm the whole time. I had power all the time so I could run whatever I wanted while I was there. I used the toilet and flushed it with RV antifreeze and I used wet wipes to wash my hands. I brought drinks with me and took them home when I left. This worked quite well for what I was doing. I had over a foot of snow on the roof almost all winter with no ill effects. The biggest problem I found was that while the interior warmed up pretty quickly once I turned on the furnace, the mattress took forever. At first I was using an electric blanket, but that left me too cold on the bottom and too warm on the top until the mattress warmed up. I switched to a heated mattress pad, which worked better, but I had to turn that down once the mattress warmed up.

Hope that helps if you decide to do this. If given the opportunity I would do it again. We saved a bunch of money not having a mortgage. If I had it to do over again, the only thing I would have done differently is get rid of the cars and other junk in the yard to keep the kids happy. We could have gone on like that indefinitely.

[Smokey3214]

Your collection of goods sounds perfectly normal for Texas. Perhaps even a sign of affluence.

You are unlikely to find any place in Colorado where that will work. Colorado is nothing like Texas.

[CoMaddMax]

So... I have lived in Co most of my life, grew up here and my job took me all over most of the country, the pacific north west, upstate NY, TX, SCAL and NCAL. CO has places in the area call South Park, yes it's a real place. You can get land up there fairly cheap (for CO) and there are places that you can park an RV, no HOA's or POA's. You might need to be off grid in some locations. The winters are cold and snowy. Big storm's can drop 1 to 2 feet easily it that area. I live on the front range (any place along I-25) and it isn't cheap and even where I live 15 miles out in the country south east of Denver you can't live in an RV. I'm getting ready to retire and I'm looking up in that area for a summer place for my 5th wheel. The pacific northwest, east of the mountains is a great option with less extreme winters. WY is also a great option, less expensive than CO but winters are colder. I can understand wanting to get out of TX, it was my least favorite place I have lived, but I don't like 100+ degree days! What I would do is store the cars and explore these area's. US the summers when your wife is out of college and get out of the HEAT! Good luck with your search!

[TXTiger]

You might want to look into the Dakotas rather than CO. I am looking at property in So Dakota my self. I know a few years ago there was an oil boom in No Dakota and many oil workers were living in RVs all around No Dakota.