Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Cost to install utilities and driveway?

My wife and I are considering buying property and having a home built. Right now we are trying to decide between 2 different parcels. One of them is 5 acres and is listed for 45k. The other one is 13.3 acres listed for 83k.

A factor that we want to consider to help decide which property to buy is the cost to get a driveway and utilities installed to the house. We think we would want to place the house on the 13.3 acre property about 550 feet from the road whereas on the 5 acre property the home would be only about 150 feet. Both properties are pretty heavily timbered, mostly pine and Easter red cedar/juniper.

I am sure it varies depending on location and other details but any ballpark ideas to get electricity, water and internet cable from the road to the home site and remove trees and make a crushed rock type driveway? Both parcels are fairly flat.

I'd check local prices on what electric costs per span to your location from the nearest place they can tie in. That can vary quite a bit. I think here it's $4-5k per span. You are looking at 2 to 3 from what you wrote about the different places.

You can get a contractor to put the driveway in and clear it, or you can rent equipment and do it yourself. I do my own, and only get dump truck loads of road base a washed rock to top the base with.

Don't have water lines here, but rather water wells at an affordable depth once drilled.

No internet cable either. Got Star Link, and it's great.

Good luck with your projects!

Yeah, that's like asking, "How long is a piece of string?"
It all depends!

First thing I'd check on vacant property is:
"Does it come with mineral rights?"
"If not, who holds them?"
"Are their any covenants against the property?"
"Are there any building codes?" municipal, county, state

If a water well isn't feasible, is there a RWD or MUD available and what is the cost of a meter?

We are on a "rural electric co-op".
Unless the distance is extreme, they will set one or two poles* with a meter loop for nothing.....if it's for a residence. You'll be buying electricity for years to come. It will more than compensate the cost. You just have to talk to them.
Unless you prefer otherwise, I'd prefer underground feed.

Your real estate agent should be able to answer these questions or direct you to a source that can.

Also remember, tons of contractors are willing to give free estimates on amenities like a water well, driveway, fencing, etc, etc.

Good luck!!!

You doing overhead or underground power?

first which one do you see liking better in the long run?...call the power company and get quotes....call 3 dirt guys have them look at it and give you written estimates...go underground looks better....nobody can give you a ballpark price by asking here....bob

Total electric service installed $3475.

Here it's $10/ft for overhead and $20/ft underground.

400 Amp service jumped me up a little bit, cannot remember cost on that. 200 for house and 200 for possible shop in the future.

Includes however many poles needed, meter and disconnect box. We went overhead. Easier to get that to work in our situation and the guy from power company said he could rebuild my set up in less than 24 hours if need and if it burned up underground it could take several days to get me powered back up. Line is in back so I really don't notice it. That gets me power to last pile and to disconnect. On me to get from disconnect to house which was another $1500 or so for hoe rental, conduit and service wire.

Rock and machine for drive.

4" minus about $17.50/ton.

3/4" crusher run about $19.50/ton.

$125/hour for most skid steer guys in my immediate area.

I used geogrid under my 4" minus base to keep from losing any rock then capped it with screenings or what we also call buckshot and lime. Just over $5k for the drive. About 250'. Almost 2 years ago.

Water was $4100 for tap and meter set. On me to get from meter to house.

Depends on the power company your dealing with. I called my power company had a guy come out and measure to my home site. Power lines along the road in front of the property.
I had two choices one the power company would cut a right of way 20 foot wide to the back about 150 yards or I could bury the power line and they’d install a transformer in the back near the house. Right of way would cost nothing 4000 to bury the line, and that’s what I did to keep from cutting down so many trees. The price was based on the size of the house and not just distance from the road. Eventually the power company will get their money back and then some from the house usage.

My place was hilly and crossed a creek. And it’s been several years so who knows what the prices would be today. If there’s any marketable trees you may find a logging crew that will cut and remove the trees and you can make a few dollars then have the road put in.

When I had my utilities installed on my property, the power was very reasonable. For my water supply I rented a trencher and did it myself.

When I had the forestry mulcher clear the path for my driveway, I had him build in a long sweeping curve so that my my camp wouldn't be visible from the road.


Call the utility companies.

Very good reply above by rockinbar. Two personal experiences indicate that such costs may vary greatly depending on your conditions - location/distance, nature of the property/land and position of the providers.

In one instance, property was at the very end of a long leg on the power grid and in a very remote location, but the jump from nearest link was not long. Year 1999. The cost to install poles/lines/transformer was less than $3,000 - by the rural electric coop - a very user-friendly outfit at the time. In 2001, at a populated rural/suburban location and with a much bigger electric company, a run/install of half the above distance was quoted at about $40,000. No wiggle room - take it or leave it. Left it, but for other reasons.

In some places it may be fairly easy to find a decent road contractor who needs work, has good equipment and sources and can do the job well and soon. Competition is a big factor, along with rep - but that seems the best way if you can manage it. Confronted with such a need in that noted remote setting, and with only otherwise able rancher type guys who "might be able to manage doing that with a borrowed trailer and my tractor", I decided to become a first-time road builder. Had built a heavy 20 ft. dump trailer that would haul 8 yards of rock, yanked it with a big Dodge/Cummins and went about 60 miles to get material. Our road was only about 1/2 mile of single track including two short legs near the house, but quite a bit of work for one guy.

Scraped/leveled/slightly crowned the routes, shoved up a bit of berm or made runoff paths as needed and then dumped/spread rock - first layer larger/heavier stuff (got a bunch of material which had been ripped up from a previous highway) and got it well-packed down, then a solid layer of 3 inch rock well packed, then a run of 1 inch and finally some smaller stuff with good fines. We wound up with the best section of roadway for miles - but was only our entrance way. Then, sold that monster trailer for almost what we paid to have it built - and never had an issue with the road.

Where we are now - rather flat and hardly any bad weather - just call and order sized rock 20 tons at a time, truck drives in and rough spreads it, I finish spread/cleanup with a JD 970 and then watch a ball game. Still have that big 2000 Dodge, but now sometimes wonder why.

In this economy things are at least 30+% higher than Pre-Biden. Utility cost is local to you and something you must research yourself. What's the terrain like on each place? How much dirt work will have to be done? Will dirt have to be brought in to make a pad for the foundation? You can discuss a lot of stuff with a local builder or three. Lots of things to consider. Biden won't be here forever and things should go back down eventually if you have the time to wait it out.

Thanks for the replies gentleman. The water line will obviously need to be underground so a trench for that will already be dug. Can electricity and internet be placed in the same trench with conduit off to the side of the water line?

JFC

I’d recommend doing a lot of Googling OP. Try to get semi up to speed before posting. Buying and building seem to be over your head at this time.

Buying should be straightforward. Even building shouldn’t be overly difficult if you have some basic knowledge and can afford to pay a contractor to do everything. If you’re looking to cut cost and do some of it yourself then you definitely need to do a lot more research and probably learn some skills.

Based on the question now and questions in the past you don’t seem to have any plan or idea what it is that you are doing.

I didn’t intend for that to sound snarky. I’m just a little baffled by your questions.

Buy the property you want. The difference in cost of a driveway and utilities is small compare to having your new house where you want it. If you buy something to save 4000$ on utilities you will be kicking yourself down the road.

All I know is cutting roads in this rocky, mountainous terrain cost a king's ransom these days.

Depends, I've paid between 5K to 10k for electric alone depending on length of run.

Well, another 10k to 15K depending on depth.

Septic runs 3k to 7k depending on region and what's required.

I can alter and extend existing utilities pretty damn cheap, location doesn't dictate where I might build on a property.

I allow 30k to 40k for utilities alone, a road/driveway is a wild card everywhere has different terrain to deal with.

Could run a couple grand, might be 10k or 20k.

If everything is pre-existing it could easily save ya $40k to $50k.

Urban dwellers got it dinked when all they gotta pay is a few grand worth of hook-up fees, you pay to live rural.

Yes, you can include the water line in the same trench. Best to have a two foot bucket and put water on one side of the trench and power on the other side for required separation- especially if something has to be repaired. Don't forget to put a tracer wire with your water line so they can locate it later if it becomes necessary. A word or two of warning- don't use PVC for your water line coming in. A buddy is dealing with this now and he has had to repair his pvc line that runs about 450 feet to his house over and over and now he is faced with replacing the entire line soon. Use PEX or CPVC if you can and you shouldn't have any problems in the future.

Prices vary greatly in different parts of the country so it would be almost impossible for someone on an internet forum to guess at what your prices will be. Also , with the economy as it is the last couple years the pricing of electrical equipment has gone up drastically. I am a retired electrician and contractor and my son still works as an electrician running some pretty good sized jobs. He tells me what things cost these days and I about fall over when I heard what it cost. It really brought it home to me when I had to pay our local utility over $10K to bring power to my house location on 2.5 acres we are building a new home on. The run is approximately 450 feet to a transformer near my shop and another 60 feet to the house service. That price doesn't include the things I need to supply- transformer vault ($1800), 400/320 service meter/main to serve my home and 36 x 50 shop ($2K +/-) . and my own underground to house, shop , and pole service is coming from (approximately $3.5K), and the excavation which I will probably rent an excavator and do myself. And this is in this area- no idea what it might cost in your area. Best to call the utilities you need to deal with and get an estimate of cost up front so you aren't weak in the knees later.

$14k for septic here and that was from a lower priced contractor. Tanks, pumps and piping were somewhere around half of that.

8 years ago I paid a contractor $9k to bring in electric roughly 550 feet. He buried the cable using a ditchwitch. Our local electric company installed the pole next to the road, no cost to me.

More good info. Thanks. We found out that the 13.3 acre property does not have the view potential that we thought it would so we are planning to make an offer on the 5 acre property.