Updated 1/30/13

Wherein you'll find some pie-in-the-sky scratchings about features I will one day have in a house if I can ever coerce this mess into something coherent.

Siting

Factors: elevation, wind, water, sun

Design

Foundation

Would probably prefer a sane stem wall, properly designed, insulated, and sealed. Slab on foam.

Another interesting option would be to have some kind of thermal mass under a slab. A sand bed or maybe water storage tank. You'd want some careful c/b analysis. My intuition is that in most cases the benefit isn't there. You'd be looking at smearing thermal change across seasons so you'd need a LOT of thermal mass.

Walls

Observation: exterior walls are all about weather proofing.

Clark had some pretty good ideas: metal on advanced stick framing (mooney wall, offset studs, larsen trusses, etc) - OR - stucco > foam > concrete block. Key features are durability and insulation. The block has the advantage of having thermal mass inside the envelope.

I'm hard-pressed to beat those. I harbor a fondness for SIPs, though. Metal structure would be another option.

Other options: straw bale, icf.

Air-tightness is paramount. Properly installed wrap (lapped, sealed). Caulk. Good windows. Upshot of this is the need for ventilation. HRV is the key acronym. Keep envelope piercings to minimum, obviously.

I suspect you'd need relatively high air changes to control moisture?

Roofs

Need way more research here.

If I were advocating a traditional roof design for Oklahoma I'd prefer a light-colored metal roof. Reasoning: we spend more to cool than heat. Obvious con: hail.

I'm torn about attics. My current thinking is to separate the building envelope and roof concerns a little more clearly. Imagine a house built under a carport.

Services

Maybe design around "mechanical core"?

Would prefer to have all ducts, wiring, etc inside the envelope and accessible.

Heat zoned and in-floor. AC zoned vi mr slim style units. Another option would be high-velocity hvac.

Water via pex home runs. Insulation?

12/5vdc could be made available in a few choice, electronics-rich zones. Would be better to have less electronics.

Waste water heat recovery would be awesome, as would grey water collection.

On demand water heating unless it couldn't be made to work with heat recovery.

Strategic thermal masses: under southern windows, somehow integrated with hvac(?)

Be nice to be a net energy producer.

Layout

Something about the notion of getting the kitchen and bathrooms out of the conditioned space during the summer (Clark idea)