A few Q's for those who've built

DH & I have come to a decision. Mum & dad have a block of land, which they are living on. They have a shed & are living as they build iykwim. From the very start dad has told us to stop the rediculus rent paying & do the same.
Now our house is being put on the market, I think we've decided to do it. We only want to do the same as they are doing. Put a shed out there first & either live there til we save to buy our own place, or build a house out there later.
But we want to save, while having our luxuries... So a few questions...

1, Can someone let me know how much it was to have a power pole put in, or power connected up? There is a pole & box already there, but mum & dad are using it, so I think we need a whole seperate set up.

2, Phone line & connection etc? How much did it cost you? There is no phone line out there at all yet. Not sure if Telstra has any lines underground though. Will have to find out. I'm hoping there would be, as I assume others on the road would have a phone connected.

3, If you have a septic system, how much did it cost you to have it installed?

4, If anyone has installed solar power, we are more interested in doing it this way than connecting electricity, then maybe gas for our hot water. Can I ask how much this cost you? We are looking at 3kW I think?

Any info would be much appreciated :)

Electricity is around $300, as is Telstra connection.
From memory gas was a bit cheaper, maybe $200

Not sure about water.

We werent aware of this at all so it came as a shock when we found out :(

Solar power - this varies greatly depending on the compnay who does it and the quality of the panels and the system that you use. The govt have a loan scheme where you can borrow up to 10K interest free for up to 4 years, so that might be worth looking in to.

I've heard of a few people doing this, sounds like a great way to start!
Do you need council approval etc to live in the shed? What permits etc do you require?

Yeah, well mum & dad's isn't DA approved (they didn't build it), but we are planning to do it all properly. Will have to look into that.

We won't need to worry about water. We are going rain water & growing up where DH did & his family is we know what we need for that :) We've already lived out there on rain water, so we know what size tanks we'll need etc.

Thought that about the phone, just wasn't sure about power, since DH thinks it runs into the thousands to have a pole put in? We would prefer solar though. Thanks for letting me know about the loans :)

The government interest free scheme doesn't apply to building new homes and is over now anyway - it was a big mess actually trying to get one of the loans!

If you are talking a block which does not have water, power etc connected, it will cost you much more - as you say, if you need a pole, you may be looking at several thousand dollars. Septic may run as much as $10000 - you may also have to have a certain amount of water storage if you are not on town water supply due to council rules about fire fighting - where my brother was looking was a minimum of 10000 gallon potable and 10000 for fire fighting. So there is easily another $20 000 for water tanks.
I know all this as my brother recently has been looking to buy land and build - also check out your rates for certain areas as some are more expensive than others.

Ok, thanks. We've looked at tanks. I will find out whats needed for fire fighting, we knew this would be needed to be taken into account, but the tanks we looked at you can get 45000L tanks for about $6000. $20 000 seems like quite alot? Thats only about 12 000 gallons, but thats massive compared to the rainwater storage most people have.
Where we lived previously thats what we had & we had the biggest tank in town. All the new houses were only putting in about 20 000 litres.
Will look more into that though.

We looked at buying acreage and living in a shed, heaps of people do it who have their heart set on acreage and are happy living there for as long as it takes to be able to afford to built their house on the land, then the bonus is you get a house in the end and a spare livable shed for visitors! BUT we ended up thinking that it could be years before we could afford the loan to build on top of the cost of the acreage so we opted for a town block in a hinterland area which is still very green and beautiful and we got the bonus of a beautiful big new house from the start for the same cost as what acreage and a shed would have been. Another factor for us was that we knew we were going to start a family so we wanted a house now... not in 10 years time iykwim... I know this doesn't answer any of your questions but I guess I'm giving you something to think about ;)

A GF of mine has finished her house in country NSW in the last 12months. She was looking at well over $6000 each for power and telephone connection if she went with the main suppliers. But if you ask around and get private contracters you can get it for a bit less. Apparently if it's needed more than x number of metres from the road the the price increases dramatically.
But don't forget properties are usually required to have larger tanks than the houses in town.

We are in the process of building on 5 acres at the moment..To get underground power/phone connected from the road up to our house site (about 170m) cost us $7000 (but the distance it has to go will change your price). We found that different electricians varied HUGELY in their quotes, so shopping around was definitely worth our while. We have a temporary power box put in for the builders, then once the house is built they'll be another small cost to connect up to the house.

Septic tanks cost us around $10 000- $11 000 (our house is a 5x2).

Not sure about solar power.

Tanks wise, we put in a 125 000L tank that cost us around $9000.

GL!

oooh, to have a pole put in..yeh Im not sure. If its already there though (you said your parents were using it) wont your power hook up to the same pole?

ETA: A girl at high schools family did this. Big shed. They ended up just building their house inside the shed (it was that big - 4br house) so it looked like a regular shed on the outside and a normal house on the inside.

Thanks guys :)

What we will be doing is just starting with a shed with toilet, shower & basic kitchen in it. Then as we go we'll seperate it up into bedrooms etc. We want it big enough to make into a house. As Pandora said.

I was talking to mum yesterday & there is another power point on the box they aren't using that we can use to start with. They can also make it a 3 phase power supply. Not sure what that means, but I'm guessing its split on one box?

Thanks for the phone line info. Thats something we'll have to look more into. Dad's got a spot picked out for us which is closer to the road than their place, but I'm not sure exactly where it is. Will have to go see. Mum & dad haven't worried about it, but I'm not so sure I can go without my BB!! With the bad mobile service out there I don't think wireless or satellite internet would work very well. I don't like the idea of only having mobiles either. Too expensive.

I'm pretty sure the abount of tank water we've decided on will be enough. We lived on a property before & had about the same amount. Others we knew on properties had less, but alot of them had bore water as well. Thats not an option out there. There are also 3 dams out there, & as far as I know, this is taken into account with fire water supply.
Our last place on tank water was in a high risk bush fire area. I don't think it is here. Well I'm not sure there of course, but its more rainforesty here, where as it was dry & brown out there & fires would just take off. (Just thinking out loud)

Anyway, thanks again for the estimates on prices :) Gives me a better idea on how much we need to get started :)

Another thing?
DH reckons even though he & dad will do most of it, he refuses to do the concreting, so, what size was yours & about how much was it?
I realise this can vary depending on contractor etc, but just for rough ideas?
Thanks again :)

just wanted to throw in the idea of a biolytix system to the mix instead of a septic. it's a blackwater treatment facility and I think it is actually priced similarly to a septic from memory (about $10k-ish?) - only it allows all your waste water to be reused for your plants. Apparently the water coming out is at least to pottable standard, but australia has no home black water treatment facilities that are approved as pottable so any water from it must be used subsurface. It should at least be enough to give you a nice garden around your home.

We wanted to install one but we're in the 'burbs and our council said NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Grrrrrrrr. Apparently there isn't even an approved greywater system where we are. Infuriating.