Additional costs of acreage living

[cidley69]

Considering moving to acreage west of city. Doing budget, wonder how much extra to factor in for maintenance, etc.

Anyone with direct experience with rural costs for:

Well upkeep? Well installed in 2010, 10 GPM flow. Is only shocking it once per year required? How much does that cost?

Septic? If you treat this right, anything required annually?

Driveway snow clearing? Driveway is 300 m. I plan to purchase quad/old truck with plow, but if paying for clearing how much cost?

Other cost considerations?

[vengie]

Watching my good friends go through this recently the only advice I have is try to have as much maintenance equipment thrown into the deal as possible.

[ExtraSlow]

Your hobbies are now property maintenance, and equipment maintenance.

[killramos]

Yea if you are already considering paying someone to plow half a km of road that’s probably a bad sign.

[corsvette]

We've got an older house on city water with a septic. Plan on pumping the septic yearly. Can't say what Alberta prices are but here in the Okanagan it costs around $500. If you look at an older home pay close attention to septic stuff. Ours is going to require about $20,000+ in work this year. The field isn't draining properly and there's no remedy except for a complete re-do. You also need to train your family that nothing odd goes down the toilet, no q-tips, female pads, etc.

Find a decent bobcat. Budget around $20,000 at least. They're about the handiest thing you could have on an acreage as you can get all kinds of attachments. Trust me, 4x4 plow trucks get stuck, even with tire chains. I have a small tractor and it's pretty useless to when it comes to snow. Bobcat FTW.

And as mentioned, plan on dedicating a shit ton of time, money, and effort on yard work.

[gwill]

I'm looking at acreages right now for another property. Prepare to over pay on the house. Seeing multiple offers on first or second day. Nothing is sitting that's nice.

[shakalaka]

I don't mean to be rude, but I wonder if you need to think about all this so closely, then are you really ready to make the move towards average living?

I say this because it is a dream of mine to have a decent sized 5000'ish sq. ft. place, with multiple garages, pool, and other luxury amenities in the acreages in the woods outside the city somewhere eventually. And I just don't feel ready to do it quite yet (unless I got rid of my cars), so gotta wait until I can do both. So I wonder if it's something you're truly ready for, you shouldn't really need to worry too closely about such additional associated expenses.

Or maybe I am just too casual about it.

[gwill]

have to factor in more gas for the drive to work, extra maintenance on vehicle, less time with kids and family if your not working from home.

Shitty internet is a big one for me....other issue is accessibility for stuff for the kids. If it's too remote there's less to do for the kids or your driving them everywhere on your day off.

[Tik-Tok]

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Your hobbies are now property maintenance, and equipment maintenance.

Those aren't the worst hobbies to have.

[ExtraSlow]

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Those aren't the worst hobbies to have.

They are better than my hobbies.

[killramos]

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Those aren't the worst hobbies to have.

It’s good to know going in though lol

[Anomaly]

I'm on a water co op so no well, but septic cost is $350 - $400 year for pump out. Our place is also older (late 70's) and needed a new tank when we bought the place and was fortunately caught during inspection. Was 21k for a new tank + field installed.

How many acres are you thinking? If you're just a few acres and don't need to do much earthwork\landscaping etc you can just pay someone to clear your driveway...otherwise Bobcat or a 4x4 ~25-35ish HP tractor with FEL makes life much easier. As already mentioned definitely get as much equipment thrown in as possible. I didn't and had to buy everything, and on top of that the land (only 8 acres) was pretty neglected by the previous owners so it was in rough shape. Ended up buying;
-Riding mower
-200 liter towable sprayer (for herbacide)
-30hp Kubota tractor
-Bale spear
-Harrows
-3pt Auger
-towable tine rake

Oh, and don't let your wife buy any fucking horses.

[never]

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Your hobbies are now property maintenance, and equipment maintenance.

This!

We have been on an acreage for about 13 years. If you’re handy, additional costs are pretty minimal.

Septic - there’s just two of us, we get it pumped every second year, about $350/time. Also add a monthly treatment but that is minimal. Frequency will depend on your family size, use, and tank size.

Well - it’s pretty minimal, shocking is super easy, filtration equipment is relatively minimal maintenance. Biggest water related expense is water softener salt and that’s only $5-6/bag.

Snow removal - IMO, a plow truck is the way to go…can cover bigger areas quickly and once you get the sequence routine and snow loading areas, it’s a relatively quick job. And the nice things about a truck are you have heat, tunes and you can use it for a lot of other stuff. Quads with a plow suck other than being better at small detail stuff…quads are cold, you get covered in snow, they don’t move as much. Some of my neighbours use them and I generally have to help with heavier snowfalls. Skid steers are okay for snow removal, not my favourite…though they are good if you have tight areas and need to pick up and move snow.

But skid steers are handy…though you don’t have to buy one…you make friends with neighbours that have them. I just give a buddy maintenance money for his and we use my dump trailer to move it around so I get to borrow whenever I need to move gravel, etc.

Depending where you are looking, a good chainsaw is a must purchase. Our place backs onto Kananaskis (McLean) so we have lots of old growth. I could probably retire now and spend most of my time just cutting trees.

The issue with having an acreage is you have more space…and more room for projects, friend’s stuff, random junk, whatever. So budget for that.

And budget for extra garages! Finished one last year and have a big area cleared for a 3600 sqft shop…that blows the other additional costs of being on an acreage out of the water!

[VTEXTC]

The other aspect to living outside the City is that any type of service/labour/delivery work costs more. There is always a perceived "luxury" tax or so it seems for any work done outside City limits. Not that you'll be having a new sofa delivered every week, or major maintenance work done, but you will notice a surcharge for this type of work, whether explicitly quoted or not.

[vengie]

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Oh, and don't let your wife buy any fucking horses.

Probably the most prudent advice you'll receive in this thread

[littledan]

One thing to consider is emergency services as well. In calgary, if your block heater catches fire the fd will be there in 6 mins. On an acreage, could be 45 mins +. Rural fire departments save a lot of basements.

Garbage is another consideration. You may need a pickup to haul trash to the transfer station.

But overall I would 100% be down for acreage living. With no fucking horses.

[ShermanEF9]

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Yea if you are already considering paying someone to plow half a km of road that’s probably a bad sign.

I can't imagine what that would cost. my neighbors 30m driveway is like $400 a month to do.

[ThePenIsMightier]

+1 for trash. My friend is forced to haul his recycling into the city. It's quite a pain. Enough so that he just burns it. Take that Gondek!

I'm more concerned about potable water. Wells are not very reliable in southern Alberta and you could end up with a plan B of hauling water in or drilling another well.

[ZenOps]

Starlink is a godsend for hilly dwellers. In Alberta at least its flat, so cellular is a slow and expensive alternative.

You will want to get a HDTV antenna and try to point it to a city with Digital service, just so that you don't eat as much data to get a little bit of entertainment. Its actually far more reliable than satellite if you have clear line of sight.

Water in Alberta tends to have natural sulphur (from all the carbon fuel and natgas) which can be pretty nasty and expensive to remove if you are sensitive to it.

Making friends, or getting a po box with a local township that is on Amazons ship list will save a ton from having to run back into the city to get a rubber washer.

[bjstare]

Some more info about the actual location would be pertinent. A lot of these concerns are more applicable to areas further from town (vs springbank within a couple km of city limits). If it’s an established development of 2-4ac parcels, they frequently have an hoa that will handle things like water co-op, engage services for garbage pickup, etc. Some of them have normal Telus or Shaw service to the house.

The fire station thing can be an issue, but again, less of a chance if you’re close to the city. This also has insurance implications (both from a proximity to the fire dept, as well as if the fire dept has certified the source of water for the hydrants is sufficient-that one was a pretty big lever on insurance cost for the last quote I got).

The requirement for a skid steer, tractor, combine, tandem dump truck, whatever else has been mentioned is highly contingent on what type of land you buy, and obviously how much if the grounds keeping you want to hire out. If you’re on a 2ac lot you can get away with a good garden tractor and a couple implements.