Off-Grid Living in Wexford County, Michigan

I'll be upfront: Wexford County, Michigan is one of the trickier places to research because the county itself gave up its zoning authority. Back in 2015 the Wexford County Board of Commissioners voted to repeal the countywide zoning ordinance, effective at the end of 2016. Since then, zoning has reverted to individual townships and cities. Most rural townships banded together to form the Wexford Joint Planning Commission (WJPC), which administers a joint zoning ordinance covering thirteen participating townships. But Cedar Creek Township and the cities of Cadillac and Manton run their own separate zoning and permitting. So the very first thing I'd tell anyone eyeing land here is: find out which specific township or city your parcel sits in before you assume anything about what's allowed.

Building permitting, by contrast, is more centralized. The Wexford County Building Department issues building, plumbing, mechanical, and electrical permits for most of the county, enforcing the 2015 Michigan Residential Code and 2021 Michigan Building Code (both state-level codes adopted locally). The exceptions are the City of Cadillac, City of Manton, and Cedar Creek Township, which issue their own permits.

For dwellings, tiny homes, and RVs, the old county zoning ordinance (still referenced in places) explicitly bars using things like RVs or manufactured homes as accessory sleeping structures. Whether a tiny home or RV can be a primary residence really comes down to the township or city ordinance, so I'd call ahead rather than guess.

Septic and wells are handled at a different level entirely: District Health Department #10 (DHD#10), which serves ten counties including Wexford. You need a DHD#10 permit for a private well and for a septic system, and DHD#10 does site evaluation and final inspection. Homeowners can install their own septic system, but anyone else doing the work has to be DHD#10-licensed. Unlike a couple of neighboring counties, Wexford does not appear to require point-of-sale septic/well evaluation, so it looks voluntary here rather than mandatory.

I couldn't find anything specific to Wexford on greywater reuse or rainwater harvesting, at the county or DHD#10 level, so I'd treat those as governed by Michigan's state plumbing code baseline until a local official tells you otherwise.

As for truly disconnecting from utilities altogether, no source I found says that's flatly illegal, but there's also no document that spells out how you'd legally build a code-compliant home with no well and no septic. Practically, that permit chain (building permit plus DHD#10 well/septic) functions as the gate you'll have to pass through either way.

My honest bottom line: Wexford's patchwork of township rules on top of a fairly firm county building/DHD#10 permitting structure means you really can't get a clean answer without naming your exact township first.