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$119,000 / 160ft2 - Red Feather Lakes cabin
410 Monoma Road, Red Feather Lakes, CO 80545
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It’s an eco-friendly build, with recycled everything — from the shipping container to the steel skirting to the shelving. It’s small, but the minimal footprint minimizes the building’s impact on nature. We sited the cabin to avoid cutting down trees and positioned it in harmony with the hillside’s rock formations.
It’s off-grid meaning that the electrical is supplied by portable batteries charged by 200-watt solar panels and heat is provided by an EPA-certified wood stove. Plumbing is a haul-in-your-own-water affair. I’ve had several cabins in Red Feather over the years, and the ones with the full-blown plumbing system were the most troublesome due to early freezes. You never knew when to drain the system to keep it from freezing, and heat cabling for the water pipes just made the crawlspace a comfortable spa retreat for the field mice.
The cabin doesn’t have to be off-grid. There is electrical at the property line provide by PVREA. This cabin has a Sun-Mar composting toilet that complies with county health department regulations, but Larimer County allows outdoor options such as vaulted privies. You can also install a complete waste vault/fresh water tank setup. Red Feather lots are also grandfathered in state law to allow for drilled water wells on small lots — if it meets setback requirements — so options abound for creating year-round infrastructure.
This cabin shell was started in a state-certified modular home factory, then built out on site by an experienced general contractor/owner in 2023 following Larimer County’s seasonal cabin building regulations. Every step was signed-off by certified architects, structural engineers and/or county building inspectors. It's got a proper foundation, proper wind load, proper snow load and proper egress. This means you’ll have a solid starting point for converting this cabin into a full time residential property if you choose.
Inside, the cabin is quiet and comfortable. Outside temperatures rarely get out of the 80s in the summer, but about 30 percent of the cabin exterior has operable, Andersen 100 insulated glass with screens. This means lots of ways to allow cool summer breezes to wash through the interior. I've also endured rain and hail storms, and I can say that inside the dry, comfortable cabin it's not bad, not bad at all.
The cabin site is a quiet location at the north edge of the Red Feather Lakes area, which is a non-HOA development established in the 1920s comprising hundreds of small cabins on small lots. Not crowded except for summer holidays such as July 4th, but with that comes an awesome fireworks display. It’s a cozy community but still offers the dark skies, fresh air and quiet, traffic-free days.
Red Feather Lakes sits at 8,200 feet in altitude and is a great way to escape the summer heat. The one-mile dirt road to this neighborhood and this seasonal cabin is rutted and rocky in a few spots, but keeps out the lookyloo traffic. The real charm is lake and fishing access, with excellent trout fishing on eight stocked, private lakes. The initiation fee for fishing privileges is $1,150 for property owners, then $460 annually. It’s twice that if you don’t own property.
If you’re looking for something in an isolated forest setting where you can poop in the woods, this is not for you. Red Feather Lakes has cabins large and small, new and old, but they’re built in clusters so you’ll have neighbors. My neighbors are fabulous, long-time property owners. Some show up occasionally, but many are year-round residents.
All other housing developments in the area other than Red Feather Lakes proper have HOAs which dictate RV usage and minimum size and architectural style for built housing. Land’s cheap in those developments, but there’s a lot of fine print that comes with it. I don’t know about you, but I head to the mountains to get away from the HOA. Don’t need another one once I get there.
Although I’m the owner of the cabin, please contact real estate specialist Jack Keeler for a showing via the Summit Real Estate office at show contact info .
While I’m familiar with a lot of Larimer County rules and regulations, I don’t know all of them. Please note that nothing stated here is a warrantee or guarantee. As with all real estate purchases, it’s advised that you exercise your own due diligence.