Alternative Architecture Wilderness Project*

AlienArchitect

Ive been in the cumulative process of amassing research on modular home and alternative architecture building recently for awhile now and would like to get a little project going here. What Im trying to do is establish an economical wilderness retreat in isolated Illinois. Ive explored a plethora of housing options from Yurts, to mobile homes, to pre fab, to modulars, to container conversion. Pretty much the ones that I think are the neatest and most cost effective are the containers. Alibaba is a killer site that has cutting edge pods for next to nothing. Id like to spend anywhere from $5000 to $15000 on the aggregate project, land, shelter, and services all including. What Im wondering is If anybody has any brainstorms on how to implement a project like this as far as building a financially thrifty container, finding land in Illinois on the cheap, and procuring services to automate the whole process from design, assembly, delivery, and finally installation. Im trying to find "Off the Grid" land in Illinois with no population around it for approximately 5 radial miles. This being rare I may need to employ a real estate agent or researcher of some kind in my project plan. Any tips or pointers on how to find suitable construction property in Illinois, container concepts, and services for research and full scale project automation? I may go the custom design route and submit my modification schematics to a supplier for tweaking. Alibaba has lots of providers that do this on the cheap. Thanks for any input, ideas, or info!