Off-Grid Living in Salt Lake County, Utah

If you're looking at Salt Lake County for an off-grid setup, the first thing I have to flag is that "the county" often isn't who you'll be dealing with. Salt Lake County is heavily incorporated: Salt Lake City, Sandy, Murray, West Jordan, South Salt Lake, and other cities each run their own zoning and, in many cases, their own building department. The county's own zoning ordinance (Title 19, on Municode) only governs unincorporated land, with building permits there handled through the Greater Salt Lake Municipal Services District (MSD). So step one, before anything else, is confirming whether your parcel is incorporated or unincorporated, because that decides which rulebook applies.

On zoning for raw land, I did not find a county page saying you can just park a yurt or tent on vacant residential land and live there. Salt Lake City, as one example, treats wheeled structures as RVs and doesn't allow RVs as permanent housing, and it requires a permanent foundation for a home to count as a dwelling. I have no confirmed county-level statement that unincorporated townships are more lenient, so this needs a direct call to Planning.

Building permits are mandatory and follow Utah's statewide adopted code, administered locally (MSD in unincorporated areas). There is a narrow exemption for small detached accessory structures and low decks under a certain size, but anything bigger, or anything with plumbing or electrical, needs a permit and still needs zoning sign-off.

Septic is squarely the Salt Lake County Health Department's job, countywide, incorporated or not. No one may build, occupy, or own a building with an onsite wastewater system, or install/replace a septic tank, without the county's written approval and a permit. Design work has to go through a certified professional under the state's administrative code. I could not find a standalone county page on composting toilets as a septic substitute, so verify that directly with Health. Greywater doesn't have its own published county ordinance either, best guess is it flows through the same Environmental Health Division that handles septic, under the state's greywater rule, but that's not spelled out publicly, so ask before you build a greywater system.

Rainwater harvesting looks straightforwardly fine, governed by Utah's state rainwater law with registration through the state Division of Water Rights; I found no county rule adding restrictions. Wells work the same way: the State Engineer and Division of Water Rights run permitting, and I didn't find any Salt Lake County addition to that beyond normal zoning setbacks.

Whether you can legally live fully off-grid, no municipal water or sewer, no grid power, isn't answered on any county page I found. That's a case-by-case zoning and permitting question, and it depends heavily on which specific district your land sits in. Don't guess on this one; call Planning or the Health Department first.