Off-Grid Living in Conway, New Hampshire

Conway, New Hampshire is a zoned town, so anyone thinking about off-grid living here needs to work within the Town's Chapter 190 Zoning Ordinance, enacted under the state's RSA 674:16 authority. I want to be upfront: Conway uses a "permissive" zoning scheme, meaning if a use isn't specifically listed as permitted or allowed by special exception in a district, it's not allowed there. That's a stricter starting point than unzoned towns you might read about elsewhere in the North Country.

On raw land: your lot generally has to front a properly classified road (state or Town highway, an approved private road, or an improved Class VI road) to be considered buildable. If you're eyeing a landlocked or unroaded parcel, that's a conversation to have with the Planning Board before you buy, not after.

For dwellings, Conway allows one accessory dwelling unit by right on a single-family lot, administered by the Building Inspector, but both the main house and the ADU have to be used for long-term residency, not short-term rentals. Tiny homes on wheels are a genuine gray area: I could not confirm an official Conway classification for THOWs, and general New Hampshire practice (per non-official sources) tends to treat them as RVs. Don't assume; call the Building Inspector before you commit to that route.

Building permits are required by the Town for erecting, altering, or demolishing structures, and you need a certificate of compliance before you can use the finished structure. Conway has adopted the 2021 IBC, IRC, and NFPA 101 codes, so your build has to meet those standards on top of any zoning approval.

Septic and water supply for ADUs specifically must comply with RSA 485-A:38, a state law administered by NH DES's Subsurface Systems Bureau, not a separate Town ordinance. I didn't find a Conway-specific rule on composting toilets, greywater reuse, or rainwater harvesting; these appear to fall back to state plumbing code defaults since Conway has adopted the IRC, but you should confirm directly with code enforcement since local interpretation can vary.

Wells are state-regulated, and Conway's own ADU rule leans on that same RSA 485-A:38 standard for water supply. As for going fully off-grid and disconnecting from utilities entirely: I found no explicit ban in Conway's code, but the permit requirements (a building permit, certificate of compliance, and RSA 485-A:38 compliant water/sewage for ADUs) functionally require any permitted habitable structure to show a working water and waste system. That makes a truly "unplugged" dwelling hard to permit as a legal residence here, even if it's not banned outright.

One more local quirk: the Kearsarge Lighting Precinct inside Conway runs its own separate zoning ordinance, administered by the KLP itself, not the Town. If your land is in that precinct, different rules apply and you'll need to check with them directly.