Off-Grid Living in Clarksville, New Hampshire

Clarksville, New Hampshire is about as close as you get to a regulatory blank slate in this state, and that's a big part of why I keep getting questions about it from off-grid folks. Clarksville, up in Coös County, is one of only two New Hampshire towns (the other is Pittsburg) without a Planning Board formed under RSA 673:1, and it's one of 19 towns statewide with no traditional zoning ordinance at all. No zoning means no municipal use-district map telling you where you can or can't put a dwelling, cabin, or off-grid setup. That's genuinely favorable if you're looking for a light-touch town, but it also means there's very little written town-specific guidance to point to, so a lot of "what's allowed" questions still funnel through the Selectmen at the Town Office and through state agencies.

A quick honesty note: I ran across a website claiming to be Clarksville's town site with a "zoning ordinance" and building department, but its content actually cites Indiana statutes and an Indiana address. That's clearly a mismatched or scraped page, and I'm not using anything from it here.

On buildings, New Hampshire runs a State Building Permit Program through the Division of Fire Safety, which steps in for municipalities that lack their own code enforcement and request state help. Whether Clarksville has a local building official wasn't confirmed from an official town source, so confirm directly with the Town Office, and if there's no local inspector, the state program is your fallback.

Septic is state turf regardless of zoning. NHDES requires any structure hooked to a water supply to have a wastewater disposal system, systems must be designed by a permitted NH septic designer, and (aside from homeowners installing for their own primary home) built by a permitted installer. Wells fall under the state Water Well Board, and I found no Clarksville-specific well restrictions.

Greywater reuse and rainwater harvesting both sit in gray zones: no dedicated statewide DES greywater rule exists, and no Clarksville ordinance fills that gap that I could find, so treat greywater as unclear and check with DES or the town before building a reuse system. Rainwater harvesting looks fine under the general state code baseline, with no local restriction found, but I'd still confirm with whoever handles building questions at the Town Office.

Living fully off-grid, disconnected from utilities, looks plausible given the lack of zoning and subdivision oversight, but it isn't explicitly spelled out anywhere I found. The one hard rule that still applies no matter your utility hookups: if you have a water supply to a structure, state law says you need a compliant wastewater system.

Bottom line: Clarksville's lack of zoning is real and unusual, but "unzoned" isn't the same as "unregulated." State septic, well, and building-permit rules still apply, and local specifics on tiny homes, RVs, and code enforcement aren't documented anywhere official, so a call to the Town Office is worth it before you commit to land here.