So we are moving our family of 5 into an RV. I announced this on social media a while ago and I instantly got messages to share the process and the COST of doing this. So many people want to build their dream home or find land to buy, and just aren’t sure what the process will be. Well let me walk you through what we are doing right now, and how much it is costing us.
Full disclosure, there are lots of ways you could do this whole process. That was one of the things that was really hard for us to decide. How did we want to tackle this beast? This is the way we feel, is the best for US. There are other options, and there are other ways to do this. One of the ways was to tie into the house build as a whole (tie into electric, water, and septic that would be a part of your house). This wasn’t really an option for us, because of a couple of things.
First, the placement for our RV would have been tricky. Our septic tank was going to be to far away to make it financially make sense to tie into it. We would have had to level out a huge chunk of land and poured a lot of gravel, that we ultimately would never use again, and our RV would have sat in the blazing sun all the time. Then the other issue was putting it in our future driveway which would have made construction around it a huge pain in the butt. Plus parking on nails, navigating construction parking, waking up to the extreme noise every day, and just being in the middle of construction ALL THE TIME. Nah, I’ll pass.
Second, We didn’t want to float any of this house construction until our current house was sold. So funding a septic system, water, electric, etc, for a full house before we sold our current house was just not going to happen. We are trying to make smart financial moves here. It’s a key part to the whole plan. So the next best thing was to make some lasting improvements to the garden section of our property which we could afford and were planning on doing anyways.
First up was buying the RV. We found a 35ft 2008 Heartland Bighorn on craigslist for $8000. My dad is actually the one who found it, and I’m not sure if I wanna thank him or strangle him for that yet. This thing is rough. It smells like an animal, and it’s dirty. We have to do a lot of work on it before we can move in. I had almost convinced my husband to get a slightly smaller RV, that was previously owned from a dealership here local. But this one won out, because we were able to negotiate a much lower price of….$6000. I’m not going to lie, this was a big break for our budget, but in hindsight I’m not sure if we made the right choice here. I’ll let you know after we live in it for a few months.
Second, was getting water. I won’t lie, we had a friend do this for free. I don’t know how or why he did it for free, but we don’t question the good Lord when he hands us a gift. We just smother it with thankfulness and move on. So getting water to the garden was done for the cost of a connection fee at the water company which was roughly $1200. If I were to estimate the cost of running water the way that we did I would say close to about $2000 in labor and material.
Then we needed a driveway to park this sucker in. All of our quotes were astronomical. We didn’t need a long lasting driveway. Honestly, we will probably never use this driveway again, after the RV is gone. We just needed rock on the ground so we could park in the rainy wet months. So we did it ourself. We rented a skid steer, had 120,000lbs of rock delivered, and a weekend of our time. The skid steer rental was $500, and the rock was $1500.
Then, we needed electric. This was super important and almost did me in. The transformer box that the electric has to be connected to, was putting the path of the conduit right through our beloved garden. We honestly thought all of it would have to go. Thankfully, it didn’t. We (really it was Andrew, but I was there!) figured out a work around and saved out garden, from the electrical ditch! We rented a mini excavator for $500 and dug the trench, laid the conduit, had it inspected, and had the electrician man come and work his magic, and we had power. All in all we paid about $3000 for all of that!
So right now all in we are right at $13,000! Mind blowing, I really did not expect that at all. I do feel confident we will be able to resale our RV at the end of this adventure, but right now we need just a few more things to get it so be ready to live in. That includes:
- Cleaning supplies
- Paint
- Beds for the girls
- Underpinning for the winter
- Heated hose
- Longer Electrical cord
- Honey Wagon
Those items should be around the $2000 mark. Bringing our grand total to roughly $15,000.
But Kourtney, you didn’t say anything about your black water?! Oh right…we are going to put it in a honey wagon and haul it weekly into town to dispose of it! kthx, byyyyeeee.
Seriously, this is truly getting more and more wild by the minute, but I am sooooo excited to get this started. Seriously, can’t wait to live in this thing with my family. I think it is going to make for some of the best memories ever!
