Alaska Hauled Water Home Mortgage

An Alaska hauled water home mortgage is a loan on a house that has indoor plumbing and gets its water from a delivery, into a tank or cistern, rather than from a well or a city main on the lot. The kitchen sink works because a truck filled the storage. The mortgage question is whether the program you are using will accept that water source as it actually exists. It is not a question this page can answer with a gallon minimum, because no lender guide reviewed here publishes one.

This is not the Fairbanks dry-cabin mortgage. A dry cabin is a different building, often without the plumbed system a hauled-water house is built around. This is not the well-water testing article. That article is for a well. Ordering a well test for a house that has no well produces a PDF about the wrong source. People buying on the road system out of Fairbanks run into both kinds of listings in the same week. The photos can look similar. The water does not.

Alaska Home HQ is educational. It is not a lender and it is not the Department of Environmental Conservation. Rates vary. Subject to credit approval.

What an Alaska hauled water home mortgage file shows

DEC’s best-management-practices manual for private drinking water systems says the manual is guidance, not a regulation. It also says the manual does not cover water-haul systems. Those systems, the manual says, need design considerations of their own. A hauled-water house is outside that booklet on purpose. The booklet is still useful as a boundary: do not lift a well-construction detail out of it and pretend it is the tank rule.

The number people sometimes borrow from the state is in a different DEC document, and it is not a tank size. The onsite wastewater installation manual sets a daily design flow of 150 gallons per day per bedroom for a year-round residence. It says a residential dwelling that uses a hauled-water system may use 100 gallons per day per bedroom. That is wastewater design flow, the figure used when someone sizes a drainfield or similar system. It is not a lender’s minimum storage capacity, and it is not a rule that the tank must hold a certain number of days of water. This page will not convert 100 gallons per bedroom into a required cistern. No such conversion was fetched from a mortgage guide.

Write down the tank that is there. Say whether it is buried, in a heated space, or exposed. Say who delivers, how the water gets from the tank to the fixtures, and whether the plumbing is the household supply or a single spigot. The appraiser can photograph that. An underwriter in another state may not picture an Interior winter. The photos and the comment on the appraisal do that work. A verbal “we haul water, it’s fine” does not.

What the loan program still has to decide

Property standards differ by program. This article did not find a published gallon minimum to print, and it will not invent one. Ask the lender, before you waive the inspection, whether the program on your file accepts delivered water for a primary residence and what the appraiser is expected to note. If the guide is silent, silence is the fact. It is not permission to type a tank size into the purchase contract.

A house can be on the electric grid and still haul water. It can also be off the grid. The off-grid financing guide is the broader property, including power. Use it when the listing is off-grid. Use this page when the specific issue is delivered water into a plumbed house. Mixing the two produces a file that argues about batteries when the condition was about the cistern.

Wastewater still exists. A hauled-water house with flush toilets has a septic, a holding tank, or some other system, and the lower design flow in the DEC manual is about that design, not about skipping the inspection. The dry-cabin article is where an outhouse listing belongs. If the listing has both a cistern and a flush toilet, inspect the wastewater on its own track and describe the water delivery on this one.

Winter is the practical test. Delivery depends on a truck, a road, and a tank that does not freeze solid. Breakup can close the same road. None of that is a gallon rule. It is a reason the appraisal should be honest about access and about whether the tank and the lines are protected. A seller’s December delivery receipt shows a recent fill. It does not show what happens in April if the driveway fails. Ask for a stretch of receipts if the lender wants a pattern, and do not fabricate a minimum number of months.

A Permanent Fund Dividend can pay a delivery bill or a tank repair you agree to fund. It does not make the system acceptable to a program that has not accepted it, and it does not replace the appraisal comment.

How to label the source so the file stays clean

Use plain words. “Private well” is wrong if there is no well. “Public water” is wrong if the borough does not serve the lot and a private hauler fills a tank. “Hauled water to an interior plumbing system” is a description an underwriter can underwrite or decline with eyes open. Include the hauler’s name if you have it, the tank’s location, and any treatment the household actually uses on the delivered water. If you tested the water, include the lab report. If you did not, do not borrow a neighbor’s well test. There is no well.

Subject to credit approval and to the property qualifying under the program. A hauled-water house in the Fairbanks area can be an ordinary home for the people who live there. The loan is ordinary only when the water source is described as what it is and the program accepts that description. Alaska Home HQ will not promise the acceptance.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is a hauled-water house the same as a Fairbanks dry cabin?

No. The dry-cabin article is about a cabin without the plumbed setup this page describes, while a hauled-water home has indoor plumbing supplied by delivered water stored on the property. The listings can sit near each other outside Fairbanks. The water systems are not the same document.

Does DEC require a minimum tank size for a mortgage?

The private-water manual says it does not cover water-haul systems. The wastewater manual’s 100 gallons per day per bedroom is a design flow for a hauled-water dwelling’s wastewater, next to 150 gallons per day per bedroom for a typical year-round residence. Neither figure is a lender minimum for tank volume. This page does not add one.

Can I send a well-water test for a house that only has a cistern?

A well test answers a well. If the house has no well, say so, and describe the delivery and the tank. A neighbor’s arsenic or bacteria result is about the neighbor’s source. If you test the delivered water or the tank, label that sample as what it is.

Will FHA or a conventional loan accept hauled water?

Programs differ, and this article did not find a gallon threshold to quote. Ask the lender which property standard applies to the loan you want, and put the real system on the appraisal. Silence in a blog is not an approval. Subject to credit approval and to the home qualifying.

Does hauled water change the septic design math?

DEC’s onsite wastewater manual allows a hauled-water residence to use a daily design flow of 100 gallons per bedroom, compared with 150 for a year-round residence on its standard figure. That is a wastewater design fact. It still leaves the inspection, the as-built, and the tank-and-delivery description as separate parts of the loan file.