Our 7 year old daughter is ridiculously afraid of those magic flush toilets - some how I don't think having her use an outhouse would help her mental state :) I don't even really like using those things, I'm always afraid some snake is going to come out of the depths and bite me in the .... lol

too funny -- but maybe a selling point since it looks like it survived the F5 tornado that destroyed Xenia in 1974.

How did you know that? Are you from that area? Or one of those people that chase tornado's?

Me, I'm wondering about the well.

It looks like a nice piece of property! Almost two acres of land with a building for less than the price of the 40' X 60' metal barn we are in the process of having built.

I am in CA so anything less than $100,000. looks like something to be bought out of petty cash.

Barb

"How did you know that? Are you from that area? Or one of those people that chase tornado's? "

I lived in Ohio from 1976-1985 (Cleveland and Cinci) but spent a lot of time down in the Dayton area. The tornado was of historic proportions and people were still talking about it when we lived there.

There's a 5 acre parcel out around there somewhere that I bumped into on the MLS. They wanted about 89? Can't remember. But 3 more acres for about the same price.
Not knowing how nice the pole barn is or isn't its hard to compare price - the house sounds like a tear down and that costs a bunch too. Pole barns aren't all created equal. I don't like them much anyway - but new wood barns can be astronomical.
I wonder how long that outhouse has been there? Current owners bought in 2003 for 75,000.
I mean, can still get a permit for an outhouse? Can "they" make you tear it down?

I thought it was very unique listing!

onlygirlsmom - My 7 year old daughter is also ridiculously afraid of those self flushing toilets! I thought she was the only one. I have to put my hand in front of the sensor to make sure it doesn't go off until she is out the door. I hate public toilets period so it's very frustrating for me.

What I think is funny is "actual working outhouse", um what's to "work" isn't it just a hole?

Some rural areas still don't have codes or permits or anything like that, you just kind of do your own thing and the gummint isn't involved in it. That's mostly where you see the "alternative" building techniques like cordwood and earthships that just don't fly in other more restrictive areas. I know of quite a few properties in Maine that have outhouses/privies instead of or in addition to flush toilets, since the water supply can be unreliable in bad storms (no power = no well pump = no water) or they have wells that go dry from time to time so when drought threatens water usage muse be cut back drastically. Most of these folks don't have the money for fancy gadgets like incinerating or composting toilets.

When I was in college in the early 90s I briefly inhabited a cabin with no real indoor plumbing (or central heat or electricity... very "rustic"!) as a winter caretaker - there was a pump at the sink, which drained through a pipe out the wall, but no bath/shower, flusher, etc. There was a chem-pot but it stank so much and emptying it was so nasty that I bit the bullet and used the outhouse. I did invest in a proper toilet seat for it though, to avoid splinters! Hey, it was free, and I was the usual poverty-stricken college student. I showered at the university gym/pool. The woodstove and kerosene lanterns got old a lot faster than the outhouse, which I think I was just used to from so many years of summer camp and visting various friends'/family's seasonal cottages (more like shacks than the cute little houses you think of when you hear "cottage"; we call them "camps"), so I moved illegally into my SO's dorm room until I could save up enough money to get into another apartment. LOL

"working outhouse" SNORT!

I had a neighbor from North Dakota not to long ago. She said it was fairly common on those far out farms to have an outhouse. People out there trying to live off the land (and I don't mean hippies) can be very poor. I'm not sure but I think she was talking about people going out to try to revive some of the farms that have been left - as is happening all over the heartland.

This is in Ohio, a very populated state, so I can't imagine the "gummint" not having rules about this sort of thing. I'm not against it, I liked the listing because rural life to include outhouses really intriques me. You can buy outhouse calendars, there are websites dedicated to outhouses and I think there are several people, a woman in Georgia?, who are collecting the more unique ones as part of American history. I actually thought about doing that here on my 9 acres (which I'm about to leave:(

That said this is not really rural, nor is 2 acres a farm. I'm wondering if the guy put it in because he bought the place as a fixer upper and the plumbing didn't work. The address of the owners on the auditor's website is different, I don't know that they are actually living there. I wonder if he did a very good job, there doesn't look to be much ventilation or anything. I bet he never got a permit.
WHY AM I SO OBSESSED WITH THIS????? Its like I want to inspect his outhouse building knowledge!

Since I own a 2 acre parcel of lake front land with no house on it, I'm loving the idea of an outhouse! There are plenty of places where outhouses are still used. I doubt permits are necessary in most places where you'd find an outhouse, but I'm off to google!

Well it gives you some privacy while your out there doing chores, swimming etc. Keeps you from getting poison ivy in some unmentionable places :)

For whatever reason when I was surfing a few years agoI found some websites that discuss ways to build with good features, like ventiliation but that will keep flies out etc.
And make sure you have a "comfort height" bench LOL!
Also - I think there are portable tent ones you can buy. You could just leave it set up if you don't think it would get stolen.

If this is still available after I move I'm going to look at it. Its really the lot - if the privacy is there that I crave, and its very hard to tell till you get there, I might be interested at the right price. I have no desire to try to fix up or live in that little wreck of a place or build a real home again but though it seems like a huge step backward after building my beautiful little place I might just cave and put a trailer on it. I only plan on being there for 10 years but I said that about here and its been 3 and I'm leaving. My new place of employment could be BRAC'ed. After this experience ...what the heck - disposable housing here I come?

I actually had not looked at the additional photos, the property looks really nice to me.

I'm about to show my rural roots, but when I was growing up our volunteer fire department would "practice" putting out fires on old dilapidated trailers and the like. Since you were talking about tearing down the house, maybe the fire department would burn it down!!

Good idea!
Speaking of rural - a guy down the road from here built a nice looking (not by some of the new subdivision standards but nice) right and I mean right in front of the old white clapboard farm house. Looked like they lived in the old house while they worked on the new house.
One day I go by and the they had burnt down the old house (how they did that so close to the other I don't know) - it basically collapsed into the basement and smouldered for days and days. Then one day dirt and graders showed up, the filled it in and its gone. Sort of weird. I think it most states burning all that would have been illegal.

johnmari - so you know how to use a woodstove - that's sort of neat.

I had to look closer when I 1st looked at the listing, we have houses on the main road that look like this. I can't imagine fitting more than 1 person in it, but know that if it's all you have you make due. My son's friends rented one of these tiny houses. It started as 2, then 2 more moved back from CA, then the baby came. Within 6 months, (1 or 2 with the baby) they rented a larger place.

I wouldn't doubt that maybe a truck driver owns this. The barn is big enough to park his truck & work on it. Probably had plans of putting a larger house on the lot. Looks like a nice piece of property.

when I was growing up our volunteer fire department would "practice" putting out fires on old dilapidated trailers and the like. Since you were talking about tearing down the house, maybe the fire department would burn it down!!

Great idea. Most emergency departments also take cars as donations to roll & burn them. It's something to look into if considering this one. Might be able to take the clean up as a deduction on taxes.

I just saw a show last night on the Travel Channel about how antique bottle collectors scout out locations where old outhouses used to be (on private propertys, public, etc.) get permission from the owner to dig them up and find bottles that sell for hundreds of $$'s!

Might be worth the investment :)

Debbie - I doubt its been there long enough.
Looking at acreage in the surrounding area these people way overpaid in 2003 IMHO.

marys1000, LOTS of New Englanders know how to use woodstoves. It's almost more of an oddity if you have never used one! I have lived in houses with woodstoves (cordwood and pellet), wood-fired furnaces, and a wood-fired cookstove as well as ordinary fireplaces. Many people here heat solely with wood and many more supplement their conventional heating system with woodstoves (or vice versa). About half the houses on our "has potential" list have woodstoves we would remove, and we eliminated several because they had wood furnaces and were not cheap enough to afford installing a new oil furnace, tank, etc. (Propane heat is expensive - let's not even talk about electric - and natural gas is not that common.) I am just not able-bodied enough anymore to haul wood two or three times a day, load and futz with the stove/furnace, clean it out, and clean up the wood mess. (We have a wood-burning fireplace, which I do enjoy, but it is only used about once a week so the work is MUCH less.) Give me a nice clean oil or natural gas furnace/boiler any day!

We had such bad storms here over the winter and spring that I know two people who already have enough wood for winter after next (wood needs time to dry) just from storm-fallen trees, all for just the price of gas for the chainsaw and splitter, and for the truck to haul it. People will come and cut up your fallen trees and take the wood away for their woodstoves, while the tree companies will charge you $250+ to cut it up and throw it in their chipper (or "chippah" as we call 'em here) - and then turn around and sell the chips! What a ripoff!

Controlled house fires as "practice" for fire departments happen in less-rural areas too. I have watched the FD do controlled burns in cities of 30,000+ where the houses are on standard town lots (1/10th of an acre). Basically they have experienced crews and plenty of pump trucks for minding the nearby houses, while the firefighters getting the training concentrate on the house being burned. You can get a tax deduction for the value of the structure if you donate it to the fire department for this purpose (although not all fire departments will accept these donations). They actually advertise these "live burns" in the paper here and crowds of people come and watch - the fire department uses the opportunity to educate people about fires and fire safety.

On the craigslist for Portland, Oregon, there is a posting from someone who builds new outhouses. So I guess they're still in demand, out in the rural areas maybe.

I could probably heat a house with a wood stove but it would be a whole nother thing to make myself a meal on one.
I'll just throw in here - I love my geo-thermal, very low electric bills and that's everything (well except, water, cable etc.)

Check out the link - 4 books on Outhouses on the one page! Some people bought more than one book. So I'm not so weird after all. D**n, when did I get trendy?

If I get there and drive by this property and can see neighbors and bikers on the bike trail behind it I will cease to care.
If however it has some privacy I will be tormented by the idea of (1) trying to get them to come way down in price when they obviously overpaid and won't want to or more likely won't be able to afford to and (2) the idea of building again - that is, if my house here ever sells. My beautiful little house on 9 acres. +Sniff+

Our first home purchase in New Hampshire had a furnance that burned wood or oil. We burned wood for 2 years. Took 8-10 cords/season to heat the house. The home was built in 1848, had 5 fireplaces, & ZERO insulation. The original kitchen was detached from the main house & burned long ago. So, they moved a barn that was on the property to the house, connected the two, & the barn became the kitchen. It still had the barn timbers, hooks, tack racks, etc. The barn was 2 stories...so you could access the kitchen from the upstairs bedrooms by walking through the second floor of the barn & then down the barn stairs to the kitchen!

The second home we purchased in New Hampshire was built in 1887. It had an attached kitchen & servant's pantry...so, my kitchen was in two separate rooms connected by a swinging door. In one room was the frig & stove. In the other room was the sink & dishwasher. There were zero built-in cabinets in the frig/stove room. There were two cabinets in the sink room. We used Hoosiers for storage. That home had a woodstove which we used to heat the house & cook in the winter. As long as it was above 25 degrees outside...the stove would keep the house at 55 degrees. I loved cooking on the stove. I did not love hauling wood, banking the stove before bed, or cleaning the ashes (we finally purchased an ash vac which helped a lot!).

There are hundreds if not thousands of outhouses in New Hampshire.

The home we're in now, in CT, started life as a small hot dog stand/restaurant in 1946. It was converted to a home in 1965 & a vaulted sunroom with 9' Paladium windows overlooking Mystic Cove & the Mystic River was added in 1985. We purchased it in 2003 & have, basically, rebuilt the entire place. Now, it's "modern" with granite, SS, & even cork floors! But, we still have the hot dog stand windows in the garage. :)

New England has lots of non-conventional homes...one of many reasons I love it here so much. I could never again live anyplace, voluntarily, that had "subdivisions".

Tricia

Opps. forgot the link

Here is a link that might be useful: Books on outhouses

I like my indoor plumbing as well as the next gal, but I can tell ya that I've been in too many situations in the great out-of-doors where I would've welcomed the sight of an outhouse!

Interesting to know there are companies that build new outhouses. I can see the need in a rural area or on hunting leases.

A woman after my own heart. I wonder if she lets people look. There are some people from Georgia here arent' there?
and to keep it someone on topic - she's in real estate

Here is a link that might be useful: outhouse collector

Ah....according to the township (I called) the property was checked in 1997 by someone interested in putting a new house on the property.
It would require a new mound septic system due to water table and soil type. 10-20,000
Apparently as some point there were complaints about
sewage being pumped into a neighboring field.
I wonder if that's when the outhouse went up? If/when the old septic when south.

I grew up in Dayton, and was out riding my bike when that tornado went through Xenia. I remember that the weather seemed "weird".