Off-Grid Living in Strong, Maine

Strong is a small town in Franklin County, Maine, and like a lot of small Maine towns, it doesn't have a comprehensive town-wide zoning ordinance the way a city would. Looking at Strong's own list of ordinances, I see a Shoreland Zoning Ordinance, a Site Plan Review Ordinance, Subdivision Regulations, and a handful of others (road, floodplain, solid waste), but no general "Zoning Ordinance" or "Land Use Ordinance." That's a strong signal that outside the shoreland strip (the 250 feet around water bodies and 75 feet along streams that Maine requires every town to regulate), Strong is largely unzoned. I want to be honest that this is my reading of the town's published list, not a courthouse-confirmed legal fact, so if you're eyeing a specific parcel, call the Code Enforcement Officer to be sure.

On dwellings, tiny homes, and RVs as permanent residences, I couldn't find a Strong-specific rule addressing this directly. It likely gets handled case-by-case through the town's building notification process, but that's not confirmed in what I found.

For actual construction, Strong has a Building Notification Form through the town office. Maine sets the real baseline here: the state's Uniform Building and Energy Code (MUBEC) only becomes mandatory for towns above a certain population, and Strong doesn't hit that threshold, so Strong isn't required to enforce MUBEC. Importantly, the state also says small towns can't invent their own separate competing building code either, so whatever Strong does through its Code Enforcement Officer is likely a lighter-touch local process.

Septic is where Maine's state rules really run the show. The Subsurface Wastewater Disposal Rules, administered locally by an appointed Local Plumbing Inspector (LPI), cover septic systems and composting toilets. Greywater falls under this same state rulebook, since Maine's rules define subsurface wastewater to include greywater, meaning a licensed site evaluation and an LPI permit apply. Strong should have an LPI on file at the town office, worth confirming by phone.

Rainwater harvesting for domestic use has no dedicated Strong or state rule that I could locate. Private wells fall under Maine's statewide well construction standards rather than anything Strong-specific. And full utility disconnection isn't explicitly addressed by any Strong ordinance I found, it just flows indirectly from whatever building notification and septic permitting require.

Bottom line: Strong leaves you a fair amount of room outside the shoreland zone, but "lightly regulated" isn't "unregulated," and the honest answer on several of these points is "call and ask."