It’s time to develop rural property in Tennessee!
This page gives the why and how to develop rural in Tennessee. First, the “why”.
More people need to develop rural property Tennessee because the state’s infrastructure isn’t keeping pace with growth.
Around 80,000 people per year are moving to Tennessee. That growth presents a great opportunity for property developers and home builders in the Volunteer State.
Unfortunately, like most other states, Tennessee’s infrastructure isn’t keeping pace.
Aqua Tech’s Decentralized Sewer Systems can allow you to develop rural in Tennessee.
With complete sewage collection, treatment and disposal solutions, we enable municipal density development on rural property1. That translates into better land use, more available land to develop, more affordable housing, and a much larger ROI.
But rather than just take our word for it, here’s a hypothetical development2 on a real piece of property in the Nashville area.
74 Affordable Housing Units on 24 Acres in Dickson County, TN
Here’s a real property we found listed on landwatch.com
This property has city water but no sewer access. Someone might develop this parcel under the current, A1, zoning into 16, 1.5-acre, estate lots. But we recommend that you…
Don’t develop rural in Tennessee with septic systems
Low-density residential developments with septic systems have been the go-to for rural development for decades. This approach just won’t work very well now. Here’s a bottom-line cost to return table to illustrate what we mean:
Not only does that ROI bear a strong resemblance to peanuts, it’s by no means certain these lots and/or homes would sell very quickly at the location. Especially considering that this is the average home price in the area:
The market would support higher density development of affordable homes, though.
Here’s a comparable subdivision very nearby. Just .8 miles north of this property sits the Seasons at Hickory Pointe Subdivision3
Every red rectangle in this site plan represents a home that has already sold. The green rectangles represent units that are still for sale, like Lot 79:
If the 24 acres in our hypothetical scenario could be rezoned from A1 to a Medium Density Planned Unit Development, someone could develop up to 74 residential lots with homes very similar to those in The Seasons at Hickory Pointe.
Here’s a piece of the Dickson County zoning regulation for MDRPUD that allows for up to 6, single-family lots per acre with planned open space and common areas.
Of course, such high-density development couldn’t be achieved without a workable sanitary sewer solution.
A developer might pay the $860k+4 to send a sewer extension to the municipal line. That would actually pencil. But it’s very unlikely that the town would have capacity.
With Aqua Tech’s Decentralized Sewer Systems, you don’t need a municipal sewer “will-serve” to develop high density. Consider the following:
Develop Rural with Decentralized Sewer
The first thing we need to do when planning for decentralized sewer is determine whether we can dispose of the amount of water the development will produce. We’ll start with a flow projection in conformity with TDEC’s design flow table.
From the above table, we can see that we should allow for 100 gallons per person per day from residential dwellings. To estimate the number of persons in the development, we’ll consult the US Census profile for Dickson County.
Inputting that information along with a little increase to cover standard deviation returns this flow and organics projection:
So, the decentralized sewer will need to treat and dispose of just under 23,000 gallons of wastewater per day.
Aqua Tech’s wastewater treatment technology can easily achieve surface water discharge levels of treatment. With surface water disposal, no acreage is required, and full municipal density is possible even without municipal sewer access. However, Tennessee like many other states, requires that those seeking an NPDES permit demonstrate that subsurface disposal is unfeasible. Also, the property would need to be adjacent to a waterway with constant flow.
Our hypothetical 24-acre development doesn’t have access to a waterway. And the soils allow for subsurface disposal.
The subsurface scenario
According to the NRCS Soil Survey Report, the entire property consists of the Sengtown series.
The official soil series description shows silty clay loam and gravelly clay within the first 29 inches.
The structure is “subangular blocky.” The total depth of the soil is over 80 inches.
According to TDEC’s “Design Criteria for Sewage Works,” Chapter 17, the likely hydraulic loading rate with subsurface drip irrigation would be .25 gpd/sf.
By dividing 22,900 gallons per day by .25, we arrive at a disposal area of 91,600 square feet (2.1 acres). Since we’re already planning a cluster/conservation subdivision, we can readily devote this much property to our drip field.
Taking into account the zoning regulations and loading rate, our hypothetical site plan might look something like this:
Aqua Tech’s wastewater systems can easily support other subsurface disposal technologies such as traditional drain fields, chambers, or low-pressure pipe (LPP). We can provide tankage and controls for timed, pressure dosing to these systems, but we don’t provide the disposal equipment itself which is more economically sourced locally. Talk with your design engineer about what disposal type makes the most sense considering your soil type and regulatory requirements.
Don’t have a design engineer? Fill out this form to contact one that Aqua Tech recommends.
Now, let’s look at the decentralized sewer numbers.
In the graphic below, you’ll see the bottom line of our simplified proforma for a conservation subdivision on the 24 acres.
Click on this PDF link to see the rest of our calculations.
As you can see, the ROI to the developer is over 10X what it was with a low-density rural development with septic. And the lots are a lot more marketable!
But Aqua Tech has one more development hack to bump that ROI even higher. With STEP Collection, we can slash hundreds of thousands of dollars off your upfront sanitary sewer cost.
Look at these bottom-line numbers with STEP Collection:
Check out this example design
Here is some of the design documentation for a community sewer system we’re installing for a similar-sized development in Nash County, North Carolina.
Ready to Develop Rural in Tennessee?
- Contingent on local zoning and regulatory approval. ↩︎
- Some elements in this scenario assume entitlements that might not be obtained at the location. ↩︎
- This subdivision is just within the Dickson, TN, incorporated boundary while the property for this hypothetical scenario is in the county and currently zoned A1. ↩︎
- Assumes $200/ft for 8″ sewer line installed over .8 miles with stead ↩︎