Off-Grid Living in Roxbury, New Hampshire

I've been digging into what off-grid living actually looks like town by town in New Hampshire, and Roxbury is a good example of a small town that's zoned, but where a lot of the fine print just isn't published online. Here's what I found, and where I hit walls.

Zoning. Roxbury is not unzoned. The town has an active Zoning Ordinance, plus a Flood Plain Ordinance and a Telecommunications Facilities Ordinance, all administered locally per the Town of Roxbury's Residents Information page. The Planning Board handles variances, special exceptions, and equitable waivers of dimensional requirements, and meets monthly. That said, I did not get hold of the full ordinance text, so I can't tell you minimum lot sizes, setbacks, or which districts allow what. Anyone serious about a parcel here needs to pull the actual ordinance PDF from roxburynh.org or call the town office.

Dwellings, tiny homes, RVs. Roxbury is on the New Hampshire Municipal Association's 2024 list of towns that voted to allow detached accessory dwelling units, which is a decent sign of flexibility. But I could not confirm specific rules on tiny homes or RVs as primary or secondary dwellings within Roxbury's own ordinance, so treat this as "varies" until you've asked the Planning Board directly.

Building permits. Roxbury enforces building codes locally, through its Building Inspector, Donald Castagna. This lines up with how New Hampshire generally works: the state sets baseline codes, but permit issuance and enforcement happen at the municipal level.

Septic. This one's clearer because it's mostly a state matter. NH DES regulates all subsurface sewage disposal systems statewide under its Env-Wq 1000 rules, reviewing design and issuing both a construction approval and a separate operational approval before use. Some NH towns require a local signature before DES will review your septic application (so-called "Prior Approval Towns"); I could not confirm whether Roxbury is one of them, so ask the town office. Composting toilets aren't addressed specifically in anything I found from Roxbury or DES for year-round residential use, so I'd call before relying on one exclusively.

Greywater, rainwater, wells. I found no Roxbury-specific rules on any of these. Rainwater harvesting appears to follow the state's default plumbing/residential code with no local restriction I could locate. Wells fall under the state's Water Well Board licensing framework, again with no added town layer found. Greywater is the least defined of all: no town ordinance, and DES's guidance mostly addresses treated municipal wastewater, not household greywater. Consider these open questions rather than settled permissions.

Utilities. New Hampshire's statewide rule (via DES/RSA) is that if a structure connects to a water supply, it must connect to a wastewater disposal system. So skipping a well could, in theory, let you avoid mandatory septic hookup, but that's a state-level tripwire, not something Roxbury layers on top of. I found no additional Roxbury utility-hookup mandate beyond this.

Bottom line: Roxbury is zoned and enforces building codes locally, but a lot of the specifics that matter for off-grid plans (dimensional rules, greywater, prior-approval septic status) just aren't published where I could verify them. A phone call to the town office is genuinely the fastest path here.