Off-Grid Living in Potter County, Pennsylvania

I've been digging into what off-grid living actually looks like in Potter County, Pennsylvania, and the first thing I want to flag is the most important fact of this whole brief: as of my research, Potter County has no countywide zoning ordinance. The county Planning Commission has only recently started talking about zoning, partly spurred by concerns about protecting the area's dark skies and managing growth, but the commissioners haven't enacted anything yet. That means, practically speaking, zoning in Potter County is a township-by-township and borough-by-borough question, not a county one. If you're eyeing a parcel here, your very first call should be to that specific municipality, because rules can swing from "wide open" to "fairly restrictive" within a few miles.

On dwellings, tiny homes, and RVs, I couldn't find a Potter County-specific policy. Absent local zoning, Pennsylvania's statewide Uniform Construction Code (UCC), administered by the PA Department of Labor & Industry, sets the baseline for anything with a permanent foundation. Whether an RV or tiny house on wheels counts as a legal dwelling is going to depend on whatever occupancy rules the township or borough has adopted, if any.

Building permits are a state matter with local enforcement. Pennsylvania's UCC requires a permit before most construction and a certificate of occupancy before you can use a building, but who actually issues that permit is whatever code official the local municipality designates. I could not confirm a single Potter County building office, so this is another "call the township" situation.

Septic is handled under the state's Sewage Facilities Act (Act 537), with PA DEP running the Sewage Enforcement Officer (SEO) certification program, but actual permitting is done by each municipality's appointed SEO. There's no unified Potter County health department for this. Greywater isn't addressed separately in anything I found, so it defaults to being treated as sewage under Act 537, restricted in practice. Rainwater harvesting for non-potable use appears fine under the general state baseline, just don't expect it to substitute for an approved potable supply.

Wells are permitted, licensed at the state level under Act 610, with the Potter County Conservation District serving as a resource agency for watershed and wellhead protection rather than a permitting body. Living fully off-grid, disconnected from utilities, isn't addressed at the county level; any occupancy-permit requirement forcing hookups would come from a township or borough ordinance, if one exists.

Bottom line: Potter County is refreshingly light on county-level red tape, but that just pushes the real answers down to the township level, and you need to ask there directly.