Off-Grid Living in Boone County, West Virginia

I'll be upfront: Boone County, West Virginia was a tough one to research. Search after search kept turning up other Boone Counties (Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, Indiana) instead of the real one, and I could not find an official Boone County, WV planning/zoning department page, building code page, or GIS/ordinance host. So a fair amount of this comes down to "not confirmed, ask the county directly," and I want to be straight about that rather than guess.

Zoning and raw land. West Virginia doesn't mandate zoning statewide, county zoning is optional under the state's Land Use Planning Act. I could not confirm whether Boone County has adopted any countywide zoning ordinance at all. If it hasn't, unincorporated land would default to essentially unregulated use, but the incorporated towns (Madison, Danville, Whitesville, Sylvester) may have their own separate rules. You'd want to check with the Boone County Commission directly.

Dwellings, tiny homes, RVs. No official county ordinance turned up on minimum dwelling size, RV occupancy, or tiny homes. This is unclear territory pending confirmation from the county.

Building permits. West Virginia's State Fire Commission maintains a State Building Code, but adoption is optional locally, and fewer than 70 WV jurisdictions have adopted it statewide. Whether Boone County is one of them, I could not confirm. Call the County Commission in Madison to ask.

Septic and sanitation are actually well-documented here. The Boone County Health Department, acting under West Virginia DHHR's Bureau for Public Health rules (the General Sanitation Rule, Legislative Rule 64CSR18), issues septic and sanitation permits locally. Septic tank seals get registered through the state Department of Environmental Protection, and the tank owner is responsible for making sure the seal gets attached to the permit within the state's stated window. Composting toilets specifically aren't addressed anywhere I found, so treat that as unconfirmed.

Greywater inherits the state baseline: it needs to be part of an approved sewage design reviewed by the health department, same as septic.

Rainwater harvesting has no restriction I could find at the state or county level, so it appears permitted.

Wells fall under the statewide Water Well Certification Program, DHHR oversight, implemented locally by the Boone County Health Department, and require a certified driller. I saw a commercial (non-official) claim about a 100-foot well-to-drainfield setback, but couldn't verify it on an official page, so confirm that number with the health department before you dig.

Utility disconnection doesn't appear to be directly mandated by any statute or county rule I found, but it's genuinely unclear absent a confirmed zoning or building ordinance.

Bottom line: for septic, wells, and sanitation, Boone County follows a solid, confirmable state-administered system. For zoning, building codes, and dwelling rules, you're going to need to pick up the phone and call the courthouse in Madison, because the paper trail runs out at the state level.