Question What does your dream retirement home look like

[Neal]

Not for fulltimers

What is your dream home, land, all including your RV on site look like?

I've seen great pics of RV owners here with nice land, I admire that. My dream home is shaping up to look like a nice house with a RV garage, a big woodshop / barn for any man cave hobbies, possibly a pool depending on location, one redeemed lottery ticket. The house itself would not be large, I really want things to be simple in the future. Land for dog(s) to run.

Part B: Where is the location of the above?

 

[TJ&LadyDi]

Our experience is that just like dreams, our "dream home' has changed over time. We built our first "dream home" 35 years ago and sold it 15 years ago to buy our current "dream home." And, every once-in-a-while, we catch ourselves dreaming again.

Things change and so do dream homes. Pick your "dream home" with the foreseeable future in mind, but remain flexible. Your dream home will probably change over time.

TJ

 

[AbdRahim]

Part B: Where is the location of the above?

Herein is the question. Mine would be much like yours. Large RV garage with office/ band room/ workshop inside. The house would be 2-3 bedrooms (so my wife can have her space, two baths - maybe), and 2 car garage. I don't need much land. It would be nice to live in an RV community, but I have not found one in a location with which I am comfortable. Fl (too hot too crowded, and trapped if quick escape is needed), AL, Az, eh. TN (Crossville = too much crime, but a possibility).

I like SC, but 6% tax on vehicles is a deal breaker for me.

 

[sheridany]

I'll take anything with a garage that can hold my rig enclosed behind a door and I don't have to drive 1:15 one way to just get to the rig...that can get old real quick...

 

[Tjdave]

We need more space for toys than we do for ourselves. A smaller 2 bedroom house with a huge attached shop would be ideal. We have a river view now. That would be nice I guess.

 

[BGMAC]

Well, I bought about 100 acres living in a 2 bedroom house until we built our retirement home In the middle of the property.
Home. We have space for just about anything and a county with no building permits required.

 

[BuckyII]

We feel very fortunate to own a home in Naples, FL where we spend about 8 months of the year. We also own a "Motor Condo" for our RV...it is 20' x 52', air-conditioned with water and sewer connection inside...plenty of room for the RV, some woodworking tools, lumber storage as well as general storage. Best of all, it is less than 2 miles from our home...easy to go back and forth for the things I keep forgetting to put in the car. We escape the heat and humidity of Naples for 3-4 months in the summer.

 

[Jim]

Well, I bought about 100 acres living in a 2 bedroom house until we built our retirement home In the middle of the property.
Home. We have space for just about anything and a county with no building permits required.

Nice place. What kind of drone did you use to shoot the video?

 

[Jim]

Our “dream home” is a little different than most in that we focused more on getting the property right than we did the house. I’m a bit of a “prepper” so I wanted a place where I could hunt food if necessary and have enough land to grow vegies if the stores weren’t working. I wanted a stream for drinking water and to generate power if Duke Energy were to go offline. And I wanted to heat/cool my home naturally to lessen my dependency on the usual methods.

I found and bought 50 acres of land in North Carolina that fit my needs. There was nothing but an old cabin on the property, so we remodeled it and lived there while we planned everything out. The dogs and I spent a great deal of time hiking around the property to find the perfect building site. I wanted a location with a southern view so the sun would heat the home in the winter but have large enough trees to shade the house in the Summer. Water from the spring had to gravity flow to the house in case there wasn’t any power to run a pump.

And here is the result.

In the winter, the sun follows a lower path across the sky and the sun comes through the large windows to heat the home. At night, radiant heated floors take over, supplied by a large outdoor wood boiler that we affectionately refer to as “The Dragon”. I load The Dragon with firewood which heats 380 gallons of water that is then pumped through the floor of the house. It all works on a thermostat, so the house always remains at a constant temp, regardless of the weather outside. The pumps only draw a few amps each hour and can be run off batteries. Aside from my labor, wood is free, so heating our 3,600 sq. ft. home only costs a few dollars each month. One of the unexpected benefits of the outdoor furnace is the unlimited supply of charcoal that it produces, which we harvest and use in our outdoor BBQ area.

In the summer, the sun takes a higher trajectory across the sky, and large trees shade and cool the home while the natural breezes work their way up the driveway. I also buried 200 feet of 8” PVC pipe and a solar fan pulls the cool air from the cold basement area, through the pipe and dumps it into the upper areas of the house to filter back down and be recycled. We have an HVAC system, but it only gets used in the hottest months of the year, and then mostly when we go to town and close the house up with the dogs inside.

On the negative side, we are very rural and depend on satellite for Internet. There is no cell service either, so I set up a ham shack so that I could communicate with the outside world in case of emergency. And the culture shock of living amongst people who (many of which) don’t even have an email address, is challenging. Also, I hated we had to trade in the luxury cars for more “country suited” vehicles like a Jeep and Ford Explorer. And Trish misses being able to go shopping without driving a couple of hours to the city. She's big into crafts and frequent trips to Michaela and Hobby Lobby are a necessity.

All this seclusion is great, and I would not have it any other way. But an occasional break from nature is nice as well, and the motor home lifestyle was just what we needed to get away from our “dream home” and check in on reality from time-to-time.

 

[Neal]

That looks awesome!

 

[jmltech]

We were lucky and found our dream home and retirement home 5 years ago outside of Salida, Co. We have been slowly making our improvements, including solar and last year our RV garage and a his and her workshop. Looking foward to moving next spring to start our next journey in life when we retire. It wasn’t the “dream” home that we imagined, but it was close enough and checked the boxes we both had.

 

[AbdRahim]

@Jim: That is amazing.

 

[BGMAC]

Nice place. What kind of drone did you use to shoot the video?

It was a Typhon G With a GoPro.

 

[J&JD]

In our case we built our dream retirement home 40+ years ago without realizing it at the time. We live in the SF Bay Area near the heart of Silicon Valley and wouldn’t have it any other way. Dynamic, exciting area to live and yet we live in a quiet area with our Rv parked and plugged in in our back yard. Pure luck with the Rv parking as we had no idea when we built that we would own a 40’ Dutch Star.
Love our site and have no interest in locating anywhere else. Take that California haters??.

 

[Jim]

Beautiful @J&JD

 

[stang37]

We like a couple of you had our dream home before we knew it. Early 90’s we purchase our property (185 acres). Four years later we were build a house which turned out to be our dream/retirement home. The house is considerable larger than we currently need now. Built in a small country community where a cell phone might work requires satellite TV and internet if you want the luxuries. The closes Walmart, Krogers, doctor, hospital is 45 miles. We do have small town 12 miles away where you can get gas, groceries and pharmacy. A place where everyone will go out of their way to help a neighbor or anyone else. Great short distance neighbors who take care of the pets, cut the grass and watch our place when we travel. Can’t say enough good things about country folks.

 

[sheridany]

@J&JD Being a bay area person myself, I am so envious of your casa. What I would give to have my rig right next to my home...Beautiful pictures.

 

[Jim]

Part of what I love about living out here on our mountain is the spectacular views throughout the different times of the year. The forest around us has almost reached its fully green state, and the grass is starting to fill in. And then there's stuff like this rainbow that just showed up out of nowhere.

 

[Neal]

Amazing! @Jim you are doing it right!

 

[Jim]

Amazing! @Jim you are doing it right!

Well thank you @Neal, that's very gracious of you to say.