Off-Grid Living in Taylor County, Florida

If you're picturing Taylor County as one of those "no zoning, do what you want" pockets of rural Florida, I need to correct that upfront: it isn't. Taylor County (unincorporated land around Perry) has a countywide Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Code administered by the Building & Planning Department, and that code assigns land-use districts with real density limits, things like one home per 20 acres in Agriculture 1, down to one per 2 acres in Mixed Use Rural Residential. So before you buy raw land here, I'd pull up the zoning map and confirm the district, because it controls whether and how densely you can live on it.

Within those districts, the Land Development Code's use tables decide what kind of dwelling is allowed, house, manufactured home, RV, tiny home. I didn't find a county-specific minimum square footage rule or an RV-as-permanent-residence ordinance, so my read is Taylor County falls back on Florida's general building code baseline (no statewide minimum home size) and Chapter 320 RV standards. Confirm your parcel's district and permitted uses with Planning & Zoning directly.

For actual construction, the county's Building Inspections Division enforces the Florida Building Code, issuing permits and inspecting as you go. One practical detail worth knowing: your permit stays valid only if you get an approved inspection recorded within each 180-day window, so don't let a project sit idle too long.

Septic is permitted, but interestingly it's still the Florida Department of Health in Taylor County doing that permitting and inspection, not the state DEP. Florida's 2020 Clean Waterways Act eventually shifts OSTDS permitting to DEP statewide, but that transition has so far only hit Northwest Florida and Marion County. Taylor County residents still go through the local Health Department office.

Greywater and rainwater harvesting are genuine gaps in my research, no county ordinance or Health Department guidance turned up either way. My working assumption is the state Florida Building Code default applies (greywater generally restricted to toilet/urinal flushing via an approved system), but I'd call the county Health Department to get a straight answer before you build any reuse system.

Wells are handled a level up from the county: the Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD) issues well construction permits here, not Taylor County itself. An ordinary domestic well is well under SRWMD's water-use permitting thresholds, so you'd typically only need the construction permit.

There's no explicit ordinance banning full utility disconnection that I found, but in practice you can't get an occupancy permit without a DOH-approved septic and well system in place, so "off-grid" here means off the electric grid, not off the permitting grid.