Off-Grid Living in Hull, Massachusetts

I'll be straight with you: Hull, Massachusetts is about the least likely place on my site to recommend for an off-grid homestead, and it's worth understanding why before you get attached to a lot there.

Hull is a small, densely built peninsula town south of Boston, and it is fully zoned under its Zoning Bylaw (Chapter 410), adopted under the state's Zoning Act (MGL Chapter 40A). That bylaw divides the whole town into residential, townhouse, waterfront, and business districts. There's no agricultural or "unrestricted use" district that off-grid or homestead-style projects typically look for elsewhere. Basically all land use has to fit into one of these defined categories, so raw-land occupancy in the classic off-grid sense (parking a camp trailer on bare land and building slowly) is going to run into zoning fast.

On dwellings, I didn't find any Hull-specific allowance for tiny homes or RVs as permanent residences. The bylaw does let existing undersized lots rebuild as of right, but only if the new structure meets all the other zoning provisions, which suggests there's no carve-out for alternative dwelling types. Massachusetts does have a state building code baseline (Appendix Q covers small dwellings generally), but Hull hasn't layered its own tiny-home rule on top as far as I could confirm.

Any construction project in Hull starts with the Building Commissioner, who reviews the project and tells you what kind of approval you need, whether that's a straightforward building permit, a zoning variance, or Planning Board site plan review. There's no way around this step.

For sewage, Hull's Board of Health enforces the statewide Title 5 code (310 CMR 15.000), administered by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection but enforced locally. Composting toilets need a permit from the Board of Health. Greywater isn't addressed separately in what I found; it falls under Title 5's general wastewater treatment rules, meaning it likely needs the same soil-absorption handling as blackwater unless the state carves out an exception.

Rainwater harvesting has no specific Hull bylaw that I could locate, so the safe assumption is the general Massachusetts approach: fine for outdoor use, more restricted for indoor or potable use under the plumbing code.

Private wells fall under the same Board of Health oversight as septic systems, working alongside the state DEP.

Bottom line: nothing I found says off-grid living is outright banned in Hull, but the permitting path runs through the Building Commissioner and Board of Health at every turn, and the zoning bylaw doesn't leave much room for the kind of low-infrastructure, DIY approach off-gridders often want. Call before you buy land here.