Off-Grid Living in Tooele County, Utah

I've been digging into what it actually takes to live off-grid in Tooele County, Utah, and the honest answer is: it's doable, but only if you work with the county's process rather than around it. This covers unincorporated Tooele County only, incorporated cities like Tooele City and Grantsville run their own zoning and are a different animal entirely.

Zoning and land. The county's Development Department administers a Land Use Ordinance that governs where dwellings, living quarters, and short/long-term residences are allowed, zone by zone (their use-table system, Table 16-4-3.3). Raw land isn't automatically buildable. If a parcel was split off through an agricultural partition, it may not legally be a residential building lot until it's run through subdivision approval. So before you buy bare acreage dreaming of a cabin, check with Development Department planning staff about that specific parcel's status.

Dwellings, tiny homes, RVs. The county does allow a mobile home or RV to serve as a temporary residence while you build a permanent home, or in genuine emergencies, but only with a permit from the zoning administrator, and it's time-limited (the ordinance describes windows in the range of six months with a possible extension, and an outer cap around a few years). Once your permanent home gets its certificate of occupancy, the RV has to stop being lived in, though it can stay parked. This is a county rule, not a state one.

Building permits. Tooele County enforces Utah's state construction code locally. Any construction, alteration, or utility connection work needs a permit, and the building official has to sign off before utilities get connected. Site plans get checked against required setbacks from wells and septic systems.

Septic and water. Septic systems go through the Tooele County Health Department under their wastewater regulation (Reg. #12), with a certified designer's plan and a plot map showing well/septic/property-line distances. Wells fall under a separate county health regulation (Reg. #5) for permitting and inspection, layered on top of the state's own water-rights permitting through the Division of Water Rights, that state piece isn't optional and isn't county-specific.

Greywater and rainwater. I could not find a Tooele County-specific ordinance for either one. That means the state baseline rules likely apply, but I'd call the Health Department's Environmental Health division directly to confirm before you build a greywater system, since local health departments sometimes add their own wrinkles even without a published ordinance.

Full utility disconnection. There's no outright county ban I found on going off-grid, but practically speaking, the permitting system (certificate of occupancy, capped RV occupancy, utility sign-off requirements) means your off-grid power, water, and septic setups still have to pass through the same inspection process as anyone else's.

Bottom line: nothing here is impossible, but almost everything routes through either the Development Department or the Health Department, so build your timeline around calls to both.