Off-Grid Living in Hancock, New Hampshire

I've been digging into what off-grid living actually looks like in Hancock, New Hampshire, and the short version is: Hancock is a zoned town, not open country, so anything you do with land or a dwelling here runs through the town's Zoning Ordinance on top of state rules.

Zoning. Hancock has an adopted Zoning Ordinance (authorized under NH RSA Chapters 672-679) dividing the town into three districts: Residential (R), Village Commercial-West, and Village Commercial-East. All of Hancock is zoned residential in character, and the Planning Board administers Site Plan Review for development. If you're eyeing raw land, check which district it sits in and talk to the Planning Board before assuming you can just build.

Dwellings, tiny homes, RVs. I couldn't find explicit language in the town's published ordinances addressing tiny houses on wheels or RVs used as permanent dwellings. That doesn't mean it's settled either way, it means you need to call the Building Inspector or Planning Board directly and ask how they'd classify your specific setup.

Building permits. Hancock has its own Building Ordinance, and the town's Building Inspector enforces it, including determining zoning district boundaries. This is standard delegation from the state (NH RSA 155-A) down to the municipality, so Hancock, not the state, is who signs off on your building permit.

Septic and composting toilets. This is the trickiest part. NH DES regulates septic (called ISDS, Individual Sewage Disposal Systems) under RSA 485-A and rule Env-Wq 1000. The key rule: if your structure has any water supply hooked up, state law requires wastewater to go to an ISDS or sewer, composting or incinerator toilets don't get you out of that. The exception is if there's genuinely no water piped to the structure, in which case a privy can be used, but it still needs Hancock's local Health Officer to approve its location and construction under RSA 147:8.

Greywater and rainwater. I found no Hancock-specific ordinance on either. Rainwater harvesting appears to fall under general state plumbing code with no local override, and greywater reuse is genuinely unclear at both the state and town level, so ask before you build a greywater system.

Wells. No Hancock-specific well ordinance turned up. Private wells fall under the state Water Well Board (RSA 482-B), and I'd still confirm with the town whether anything additional applies to subdivided lots.

Full utility disconnection. The cleanest legal path to skipping a septic system is having no plumbed water at all, since that's the one carve-out DES allows. Otherwise you're required to connect to an ISDS. This makes true off-grid living possible in Hancock, but it means genuinely no running water, not just no municipal hookup.

Bottom line: Hancock's rules are a mix of state septic and well law plus a real, enforced local zoning and building structure. Nothing here is "no rules apply," so plan on calls to the town before you commit to a piece of land.