333 Van EdenIdaho Springs · Colorado

Future scale

What this ground becomes with current technology

Every other section of this offering describes what exists today. This one is forward-looking: the systems a buyer would actually build here, the output each one produces, and the permit standing between the idea and the water. The calculators run live — change the inputs to your own plan.

12,000kWh/yr

from an 8 kW array on the graded pad

0.5–3kW continuous

creek hydro potential — subject to a Colorado water right

75lb trout

conservative annual yield from a 1/8-acre creek-fed pond

$30k+avoided

per mile of power line this parcel never has to buy

Read this the right way

The physics on this page is reliable. The regulation is not resolved. Solar output at this elevation and aspect is about as predictable as engineering gets, and the creek's hydraulic potential is arithmetic. But in Colorado, moving water — into a turbine, into a pond, out of the ground — is a property right administered by the Division of Water Resources, and none of it comes automatically with the deed. Nothing here is offered as a permitted or approved use. Treat the numbers as a feasibility study a buyer can start from, and treat every water item as a diligence item.

01

Solar and storage

Size an array and a battery bank against a daily household load, then read the annual production, the capital, and how many cloudy days the bank carries.

Annual production
12,000 kWh

at 1,500 kWh per kW-year

Load coverage
183%

annual production exceeds annual load

Installed capital
$45,600

$24,000 array + $21,600 storage

Energy value per year
$1,800

at 15¢/kWh retail equivalent

Days of autonomy
1.2 days

90% usable depth of discharge, no solar input

Grid extension avoided
$30k–$60k/mi

typical Colorado overhead line extension cost

Planning figures. Specific yield from NREL PVWatts class data; costs are market ranges, not quotes.

02

Micro-hydro on the creek

Flow and head are the only two inputs that matter. Set them from a measured season on the creek — not from a wet-spring guess — and the model returns continuous output and the solar array it would take to match it.

Continuous output
2,794 W

day and night, winter included

Annual energy
14,684 kWh

at the capacity factor set

Equivalent solar array
9.8 kW

the PV array needed to produce the same annual kWh

Energy value per year
$2,203

retail-equivalent

Capital range
$4k–$15k

intake, penstock, turbine, controller

Water right
Required

diversion to a turbine is a use under Colorado law — confirm with DWR

kW = cfs × ft × 0.0847 × efficiency. Output is physics; the legal right to divert is the open question.

03

Mini trout pond on Soda Creek

An off-channel pond fed from Soda Creek just off the north line. Set the surface area and average depth to see the excavation, the stocking, the yield, and — the number that actually governs the permit — the annual evaporative loss.

Surface / volume
5,445 sf

285,120 gallons at 7 ft average

Build cost
$22,113

excavation plus 40-mil RPE liner

Stocking
38 fingerlings

about $66 at $1.75 each

Annual yield
75 lb

~$900 of trout at retail equivalent

Evaporative loss
0.31 acre-ft/yr

consumptive use — this is what triggers augmentation

Aeration and chilling
$0

gravity flow-through from a cold creek does both for free

A pond on flowing water requires a Colorado DWR storage right or augmentation plan and a CPW license to stock. Off-channel construction avoids damming the creek.

04

Water budget and winter heat

Two constraints that decide whether a household fits inside a household-use-only well permit and a solar array. Everything here is a demand-side problem before it is a supply-side one.

Household demand
29,200 gal/yr

2 × 40 gal/day with efficient fixtures

Exempt permit ceiling
~107,531 gal/yr

one-third acre-foot, household use only — verify with DWR

Roof catchment potential
11,438 gal/yr

theoretical; Colorado caps residential storage at 110 gal

Propane season cost
$1,503

45 MMBtu delivered at 90% efficiency

Heat pump instead
5,073 kWh

$761 of electricity — saves $742/season

Or wood
2.8 cords

~$14 in USFS fuelwood permits, plus your labor

Heat pump figure uses a 2.6 seasonal COP. Well yield and permit type are unresolved diligence items — see the water section.

The technology register

10 systems researched against this specific parcel — elevation, aspect, creek, and county — each with the figures behind it and links to the primary sources so a buyer can check the work rather than take it on faith.

PowerPublished figure

Solar array on the graded pad

The single highest-certainty system on this site.

Clear Creek County sits in one of the better solar resources in the country, and thin air at roughly 8,300 ft means cooler modules and slightly better performance per rated watt than the same array at sea level. The honest caveat here is aspect: this ground falls to the north at roughly a third grade, so a roof-mounted array is the wrong instinct. The graded pad's open sky and the cleared bench are what make it work — plan on a south-tilted ground mount or pole array on the pad rather than counting on the roof plane.

  • Specific yield~1,500 kWh per kW-year
  • Installed, off-grid~$3.00 per watt
  • 8 kW array output~12,000 kWh/yr

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PowerPublished figure

The incentive picture changed — read this before you budget

The 30% federal residential credit is gone. Colorado's is not.

The federal Residential Clean Energy Credit (26 U.S.C. §25D) applied to systems placed in service through 31 December 2025. Public Law 119-21 accelerated its termination, so a solar or battery system completed in 2026 gets no 30% federal credit and there is no carryforward. Any pro forma built on 30% is wrong by a third. What survives is state-level: the Colorado Energy Office heat pump tax credit is a contractor-applied discount that does not require a utility account, so it still reaches an off-grid buyer. Xcel's rebates do not — every one of them requires a grid connection.

  • Federal 25DExpired 12/31/2025
  • CO heat pump creditStill available
  • Xcel rebatesGrid-connected only

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PowerPlanning estimate

LiFePO4 battery bank

Storage, not array size, is what decides whether off-grid feels normal.

Lithium iron phosphate has displaced lead-acid entirely for this application: no watering, ~6,000 cycle life, and a real 90% usable depth of discharge. The design question at this elevation is winter — size the bank for the four-day December storm, not for the July average, and pair it with a small inverter-generator you hope never to start.

  • Installed cost$700–$1,300 per kWh
  • Usable depth90% of nameplate
  • Cabin bank10–20 kWh usable

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PowerBuyer to verify

Micro-hydro on the creek

Small, steady, and the perfect complement to solar — if the water right allows it.

A creek turbine produces around the clock, in winter, and through the storms that flatten a solar array. Even a few hundred continuous watts is a large share of a cabin's load because it never stops. The physics is settled; Colorado water law is the constraint, and it is a hard one. Under prior appropriation nearly every surface stream in this state is already fully appropriated, and research for this page found no blanket exemption for small non-consumptive run-of-river hydro. The realistic path is acquiring or changing an existing right, or a decree through water court, possibly with an augmentation plan. Start with the Division 1 Engineer. Treat this as an option a buyer investigates, not a system this parcel comes with.

  • Power formulakW = cfs × ft × 0.0847 × efficiency
  • Realistic output0.5–3 kW at 1–3 cfs, 20–60 ft head
  • Capital$4k–$15k for a penstock + turbine set

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ConnectivityPublished figure

Starlink

The reason this parcel can carry a full-time remote professional.

Starlink is what changed the economics of ground like this. A dish on the pad delivers low-latency broadband where no carrier will ever trench fiber, and it draws little enough power that an off-grid array handles it without a second thought. Residential service currently runs roughly $55–$120 a month depending on tier, and SpaceX has moved between selling the hardware outright and renting it for about $10 a month — check the price at the moment you order. The one real risk at this elevation is sky obstruction: run the Starlink app's obstruction tool from the actual pad before choosing a mount location, because ridgelines and conifers are what break this service, not distance.

  • Average draw~40–75 W
  • Monthly~$55–$120 by tier
  • Annual energy~500 kWh/yr

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WaterBuyer to verify

Roof catchment and cistern

Legal in Colorado now — but small, and not a water supply.

Colorado legalized residential rooftop collection in 2016 under tight limits, codified at C.R.S. §37-96.5-103: two barrels, 110 gallons total, residential, outdoor use only. That is a garden supply, not a household one — though a 2025 bill (HB25-1106) proposed removing the limit entirely, so confirm the current rule before sizing anything. The larger opportunity here is engineering demand down. A 1.0 gpf toilet, a heat-pump water heater, and greywater reuse to landscape move a mountain household under 40 gallons per person per day, which matters enormously when the well permit is household-use-only. And note the acreage: exempt-well eligibility in Colorado turns on the 35-acre threshold, and neither claim is close, so the permit category here needs DWR's own answer rather than an assumption.

  • Legal storage110 gal / 2 barrels (verify)
  • Catchment yield~0.62 gal per sq ft per inch of rain
  • 1,200 sf roof~11,400 gal/yr theoretical

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FoodBuyer to verify

Mini trout pond on Soda Creek

The most compelling — and most heavily regulated — idea on this parcel.

Annual flowing mountain runoff about 50 yards off the north boundary is exactly what a small cold-water trout pond wants: gravity-fed, oxygenated, no aerator, no chiller. Built off-channel on a diverted side flow rather than as an in-channel dam, it keeps fish passage intact and stays clear of a dredge-and-fill question in the creek bed itself — though whether this drainage is a jurisdictional Water of the U.S. is a question for the Corps, not for this page. What no design escapes is Colorado water law: open water evaporates, evaporation is consumptive use, and consumptive use on an appropriated stream needs a storage right or an augmentation plan replacing every depleted drop. Stocking is separately regulated by Colorado Parks and Wildlife under the lake-license and aquatic-wildlife-release rules, with fish-health certification. Three agencies, one pond.

  • Stocking guidance100–300 trout per acre
  • Evaporative loss~30 in/yr net at this elevation
  • Regulatory pathDWR right + CPW license + county

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HeatPlanning estimate

Cold-climate heat pump + wood backup

The pairing that beats propane at 8,300 ft.

Modern cold-climate air-source heat pumps hold useful capacity well below 0°F, which was not true a decade ago, and the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project has modeled their life-cycle cost against gas and propane in Colorado's climate zones specifically. Run as the primary system on solar-plus-battery power with a small wood stove for the coldest nights and for outage resilience, a tight cabin here needs no propane tank at all. Wood is genuinely cheap on this side of the divide: personal-use fuelwood permits on adjacent National Forest run about $5 a cord with a four-cord minimum. And the Colorado heat pump tax credit reaches this buyer even off-grid, because it is applied by the contractor rather than by a utility.

  • Seasonal COP~2.6 at Colorado design temps
  • Cabin heat load~45 MMBtu/season
  • Wood equivalent~3 cords/season at ~$5/cord

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FoodPlanning estimate

Passive-solar greenhouse

Turns a 90-day season into a 210-day one.

The frost-free window at this elevation is brutally short, but the solar resource that makes the PV array work also makes a thermally massive greenhouse work. A partially bermed, insulated-north-wall structure with a water-mass battery can hold interior temperatures near 50°F on the coldest nights and stretch a growing season from March into November without supplemental heat. Ignore the viral $300 walipini builds — at this elevation the excavation, drainage, and glazing are where the money goes, and a real one is a four- to low-five-figure project. The graded pad already has the flat, open footprint it wants; on a north-falling slope, orient the glazing south by structure rather than by following the grade.

  • Build cost$8k–$25k for 200–400 sq ft (quote it)
  • Season extension~4 months
  • Supplemental heatnone, if mass is sized right

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FrontierPublished figure

The frontier column

Worth watching, not worth budgeting.

Three technologies keep coming up for sites exactly like this one and none of them are ready to underwrite a purchase. Atmospheric water generators work, but at this altitude and humidity the yield per kWh is poor. Direct-to-cell satellite service is arriving and will eventually make a cell booster unnecessary. And residential-scale sodium-ion storage promises to remove lithium's cold-weather derating entirely, which is the one real weakness of the battery plan above. Track them; price the parcel on solar, hydro potential, and the creek.

  • Atmospheric waterhigh kWh per gallon at 18% RH
  • Direct-to-cellrolling out now
  • Sodium-ionbetter cold performance, early market

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The order to do it in

  1. 01

    Get the DWR determination first

    One written answer on what well permit each account can obtain governs everything downstream — the pond, the greenhouse, the household size, the resale value. Nothing else should be spent until it is in hand.

  2. 02

    Measure the creek for a full year

    Flow and head are the only inputs the hydro model needs, and a single spring reading will overstate both. A $200 staff gauge and twelve monthly readings turn the micro-hydro line from speculation into a design.

  3. 03

    Build solar and Starlink on the existing pad

    These two need no water right, no new grading, and no county process beyond a building permit. They are what makes the parcel livable, and they are the cheapest certainty available here.

  4. 04

    Then the pond, on its own timeline

    Off-channel construction, a storage right or augmentation plan through DWR, and a CPW license to stock. It is the slowest item and the one that makes the property unlike anything else on the market.

Want the underlying survey, hydrology report, and civil drawings to run your own numbers?

Document roomRequest information →

Figures on this page are planning estimates derived from published reference data and the owner's site documents. They are not quotes, appraisals, engineering designs, or representations that any system, use, or permit is available on this property.