Off-Grid Living in Moore County, Tennessee

Moore County, Tennessee is a strange animal in the off-grid world because it isn't really a "county" in the usual sense anymore. Lynchburg and Moore County merged into one consolidated city-county government back in the day, so there's a single Metro Council, one Metro Planning Commission, and one Board of Zoning Appeals covering everything, no separate "unincorporated county" that's more lenient than the town. That matters if you were hoping to find a quiet rural pocket with no zoning, because that pocket doesn't exist here the way it does in a lot of other Tennessee counties.

On zoning, Metro Moore County actively enforces its zoning ordinance, and I found that the Metro Council recently gave the planning office a cease-and-desist tool so it's not just sending toothless letters anymore. That tells me enforcement is a real, live thing here, not a paper rule. I could not find the specific zoning-district language on raw land camping or occupancy, so if you're eyeing a piece of land to live on without a conventional house, call the Planning office before you commit.

Dwellings are where it gets interesting. I found a documented case where residents had to go before the Planning Commission and get referred to the Board of Zoning Appeals just to move a fifth-wheel trailer onto family property, even with separate water, sewer, and electric planned and the arrangement described as temporary. That strongly suggests RVs and similar dwellings aren't a by-right use in Moore County, you're looking at a special-exception process through the BZA. I don't have confirmation on tiny-home standards (Appendix Q) being adopted locally, so ask directly.

Building permit and code enforcement details are simply not confirmed from anything official I could find. Tennessee law lets counties opt out of the state residential code for single and two-family homes, and I don't know whether Moore County has done that. This is a call-the-office question.

Septic is state business here. Moore isn't one of Tennessee's contract counties that run their own septic programs, so it's TDEC's Division of Water Resources, not a county health department, that issues septic construction permits directly. There's no confirmed dry-cabin or composting-toilet exemption, so the state baseline applies.

Greywater rules are unclear, no county-specific guidance turned up, so you're relying on the state plumbing code, which allows subsurface greywater irrigation but isn't consistently enforced. Rainwater harvesting looks fine, no county restriction found and Tennessee doesn't restrict collection generally. Private wells are permitted using a state-licensed driller under the Water Well Act; no Moore County-specific well permitting portal surfaced. And on utilities, I found no ordinance forcing hookup to Metro Utility Department water or sewer, but service districts likely exist, so check locally before assuming you can stay off the grid on water and sewer.

Bottom line: Moore County's consolidated government structure means one set of rules for the whole county, active zoning enforcement, and RV/tiny-home living as a special exception rather than a given. Several practical questions (building code, greywater, well permits, mandatory utility hookup) are genuinely unconfirmed and worth a direct call.