Three approval tracks, not one
The most common misunderstanding we correct on a first site visit is that off-grid development runs through a single permit office. It does not. A raw-land build touches three separate approval tracks that move at their own speeds and answer to different authorities.
| Electrical and plumbing work | New Mexico Construction Industries Division (CID), with county requirements layered on top |
|---|---|
| Water well | Permitted and recorded through the licensed New Mexico well driller; domestic wells are administered by the Office of the State Engineer |
| Septic system | Its own site evaluation, permit, and pre-cover inspection |
| Local requirements | Set county by county — access, addressing, and structures vary |
Because they are separate, they can run in parallel — and because they are separate, nobody automatically tells the other two what happened. That coordination gap is where most off-grid schedules slip.
What CID inspection means in practice
The Construction Industries Division is the state body that reviews electrical and plumbing work in New Mexico. For an off-grid property, the practical translation is that your solar wiring, your service and disconnects, and your buried water piping are subject to inspection even though no utility will ever read a meter on the parcel. Off-grid changes the interconnection paperwork; it does not change the wiring standard.
The inspections that matter most are the ones that gate covering work up. On the Torrance County water system we completed in July 2026, the water line was CID-inspected before backfill — roughly 520 linear feet of trench through rock at a minimum depth of 30 inches, which is not a trench anyone wants to open twice. Treat every buried or concealed run the same way: it stays open until the inspection is done.
The county layer, and why it changes the answer
State-level rules are the floor. What sits on top of them is genuinely local: which structures require a county permit, how driveway and access approvals work, how an address gets assigned to a parcel that has never had one, and which office wants to see the site plan first. Two parcels forty miles apart can have meaningfully different checklists.
We have worked Torrance County’s process directly, on a full water system with a CID-inspected line, and that experience is specific to Torrance County rather than transferable boilerplate. For any parcel, our first call is to the county — before pricing, not after — because the answer determines the order of operations and sometimes the design. We would rather tell you the honest version, which is that the requirement list is county-specific and subject to change, than publish a checklist that reads authoritative and turns out to be wrong on your land.
Well permitting, in general terms
Domestic wells in New Mexico are administered by the Office of the State Engineer. In practice, the paperwork tied to the drilling itself is handled by the licensed New Mexico well driller, who is also the party that files the well record after the hole is completed — depth, casing, water levels, and what the formation produced.
That is a large part of why we subcontract drilling. Every well on our projects is performed by a licensed New Mexico well driller under our management; we do not hold a drilling license and do not claim one. The filing goes in under the driller’s license, and the completed well record is handed to you for your permanent records. For current requirements, timelines, and fees, confirm with the Office of the State Engineer district office or with your driller — those specifics change, and we do not publish numbers we cannot date and defend.
Septic approvals
The septic system runs on its own track: a site evaluation of the soil and the parcel, a permit issued against a specific design and location, then an inspection before the system is covered. It does not ride along with the CID inspections, and it does not follow the well filing. It also constrains the site plan, because separation distances between the septic system, the well, and the structure are the reason the house pad sometimes moves after the site evaluation comes back.
The practical consequence: settle the septic location before the well is drilled if you can, and before the house pad is graded in every case. Moving a septic design is paperwork. Moving a completed well is a new well.
Sequencing solar, well, and septic together
When all three happen on one parcel in one season — which is the normal case on raw land — the sequence we run looks like this:
- Confirm the county checklist first. Call before design, because local requirements can move the house pad or the access route.
- Site evaluation and septic siting early. Its separation distances set where everything else can go.
- Drill the well next. Depth and yield are unknown until it is drilled, and both feed the pump sizing and the solar load.
- Design the electrical and water runs once, with the inspections in the schedule. Trenching gets planned around the pre-backfill inspection, not squeezed in beside it.
- Open the ground once. Where code separations allow, water line and conductors go in on the same trenching mobilization — that is an efficiency, not a permission to share a raceway.
- Inspect, then cover. Every buried run stays open until the inspector has signed it off.
The full order of operations for a raw-land build, including what each stage costs to coordinate, is in our land development checklist. For the water-side specifics — pump sizing, cisterns, and the trench itself — see solar well pumps in New Mexico.
What we handle, and what stays with you
We schedule and meet the inspections on the work we perform, we coordinate the licensed driller’s filings on the well, and we build to the standard the inspector is going to hold us to rather than to what would pass unobserved on a remote parcel. What stays with the property owner is anything that runs against the deed: applications made in your name, county-level structure permitting for the residence itself, and the records handed to you at completion. We tell you which is which in writing before the job starts, so nothing sits in the gap between us.