General

• Built according to best available energy efficiency and conservation theories
• All heat-bearing chimneys (furnace, water heaters, dryer) should be Franklin-style if possible (and ideally through the heat exchanger!), to keep the heat in the house. Problem: how to bypass these in the summer, when venting heat is key?
• House is two stories above ground, plus an attic, and a full basement. Basement tall enough that a 6' person need not duck under anything to get around.
• If at all possible, include a corner tower.

Exterior

• Brick or other low-maintenance (rough or cut stone?)
• Possibility: on south-facing wall, trellises at least 18" away from the wall, for ivy to grow on and shade the house in summer.
• Long-life shingles (40+ year)
• Possible greenhouse built into the roof. Must face south.
• Roof should be heavily insulated where there is no greenhouse.
• Absent greenhouse, or if possible with greenhouse, solar-cell shingles on the roof to provide adjunct electric power.
• 2 car garage
• Enough yard space for a good-sized vegetable & herb garden, where it can get sufficient light each day (6+ hours of sunlight)

Front porch

• Two-deck porch along the entire front of the house (with roof on second-floor porch? Or possibly leave second floor a deck).
• Ideally at least first floor porch should be screened in, or screenable
• Should be large enough for a four-person table, preferably larger.
• Wireless network must be able to reach the porch.

Interior

• Hidden mounting points for wireless networking base stations (perhaps in closets, or under stair treads).
• Under-stair-tread storage where reasonable
• Double plywood flooring
• Closets near all entry doors, sufficient to hold 2-3 pair of shoes per person (assume 4)
• Not sure if the rest of house should have closets or go for the more flexible armoire theory.

Walls

• Exterior walls are 2x6 construction, with full insulation (avoid the blown-in stuff).
• Interior bedroom walls should be sound-damped somehow (likely with more insulation).
• Triple-pane windows with low-maintenance frames (fiberglass, vinyl, aluminum, or anything else that doesn't need to be painted), preferably with the glass outside the screens.
• Windowsills should be waterproof (not merely varnished wood) inside and out.

HVAC

• House to be built as tight as builder knows how. Ventilation will come through a built-in heat exchanger.
• Gas-fired furnace
• Forced hot air heat
• Avoid air conditioning as much as possible – use central heating system to drive a central fan in the summer. Possibly use the ground to cool air – heat pump system?
• For summer ventilation: an attic/whole house fan, to draw air into the house and vent it into the attic. Good for quickly cooling the house at night.
• If possible, use spare heat from the greenhouse and server room to help heat the house in winter.

Wiring

• Separate conduits for power and data (ethernet, audio, audio control (video & video control too?))
• All power circuits ground-fault interrupt
• Physical electrical components to be the safest available system
• Lights on separate circuits from wall outlets
• All wall outlets on the same breaker must be in the same room.
• Plenty of wall outlets in each room (one every 8 feet?), both power & data (ethernet, audio, audio control (video & video control too?)) panels on each.
• Possible house-wide UPS? (Probably silly)

Attic

• Floor heavily insulated between rafters
• Floor bare plywood, nailed down
• Walk-up, with either fixed stairs or pull-down stairs substantially more like stairs than a ladder.

Second floor

• All bedrooms face north or west.
• At least one half bath and one bathing room on the second floor.
• Possibility: a half bath in the master bedroom.

Bathing room

• Patterned after a standard Japanese bathing room, where the theory is to wash first with the shower, and then soak, clean, in the tub.
• Entire room, including ceiling, is waterproof (tiled?)
• Shower drain in the floor.
• No shower stall
• Shower head & controls mounted in the wall near the floor drain.
• Shower control should allow you to set the temperature of the water without having the water running – so the water can be shut off without altering the temperature setting.
• Japanese-style tub built in.

Master bedroom

• One dormer large enough to fit a king-sized bed under

Other bedrooms

• If feasible, a dormer large enough to fit a double bed under

Main floor

• Kitchen faces east.
• At least one half bath on the main floor.
• One room on the main floor must have sufficient space for a good stereo system, decent-sized TV/VCR/DVD player combo, and storage for CDs/DVDs/videotapes; this room must have data feeds from the stereo and TV to the server room/data closet.
• Fireplace.

Kitchen

• Gas-fired stove and oven
• Sink preferably flush with the counter (rather than having a lip raised above it) and with at least two (possibly three) sections.
• Large enough for two people to work comfortably, with sufficient room for a stationary third (or possibly fourth) person to work.
• Oven/stove, refrigerator, and sink each are in the center of one wall.
• Fourth wall is an island, possibly opening onto the living room.
• Dining room is through a normal-sized doorway (with no door) in one of the other walls.
• Counters made of Corian or some other solid counter material, rather than Formica over wood.
• Cabinets made of finished wood or veneered plywood, rather than particle board or worse.
• If such a thing exists, the floor should be made of something waterproof yet relatively soft, to avoid breakage if things are dropped on it. However, it must also be impervious to dropped knives.
• Leave enough space to hang a good sized pot/pan/utensil rack from the ceiling, either over the counters or the island.
• Possibility: separate but attached pantry, or storage closet for food

Dining room

• Enough space for a china cabinet and/or credenza, as well as a table large enough to seat 8.

Mud room

• Built in shed area to store garden & yard implements.
• Part of garage, or if garage set apart from the house, a walk-through area between the garage and the house.
• Concrete or flagstone floors.

Basement

• Walls and floor of basement all poured concrete
• Floor drain
• Lower extension that is a combination root cellar, wine cellar, beer cellar, and fermentation room.
• Ideally two offices (his 'n' her)
• Possibility: brewing area near the root cellar (requiring storage for brewing gear and a stove, possibly a small refrigerator).

Server room

• North facing
• Separate cooling system from the rest of the house (perhaps a window AC?)
• Dedicated 30A circuit with built-in UPS
• All interior data lines terminate here (possibly all power lines too)
• All exterior data lines (phone lines, cable TV, other data lines) terminate here (possibly all power lines, including breaker box, too)
• If possible, use the heat generated by the server room to help heat the house in winter.
• Should have enough space for one two-post rack, two people (with chairs), a table, and storage of diagnostic equipment (dumb terminal and separate keyboard & monitor)

Root cellar

• Entirely underground: at least one foot of dirt on top of its ceiling, preferably have the ceiling below the frost line.
• Floor must be suitable for a root cellar (deep sand?), but have concrete paths to access the wine, beer, and fermentation areas.

Other utilities

• Gas-fired continuous water heaters near all places where hot water is needed (all sinks, shower, tub, dishwasher, clothes washer). No single large tank heater. (Check economics of this vs. tank heating.)
• Plumbing made all out of the same corrosion-resistant stuff (probably copper) (standard iron pipe for main sewer?)
• Upstairs and downstairs (and basement?) are separate heat zones.

Water conservation systems

• Graywater: shower water and clothes washer water drains into a tank which is pumped back into the toilet. Tank overflows into the sanitary sewer.
• Graywater: tub water drains into a tank which is pumped into the clothes washer. Tank overflows into the sanitary sewer.
• Rainwater: downspouts feed into large interior water tanks. Water tanks in turn overflow into a deep dry well (to try to put extra water back into the water table, rather than into the street gutters). Dry well overflows into a storm sewer. Pumps send rainwater to the exterior spigots for watering, and to the greenhouse (if existent) for any irrigation system it might have.
• All conservation systems must have an automatic switchover to house water if the tanks are dry; must also have some means of switching manually.

Beyond the house: what sort of place should the house be in?

• Prefer to be in or near a town with a minor league baseball team
• Prefer to be in or near a town with a still-functioning downtown, one that has lots of little independent shops and very few to no chain stores. Ideal would be a town that can prevent a downtown-sucking store (Walmart) or mall from landing nearby and destroying that downtown; or a suitably strong downtown that a traditional downtown-sucker will not affect it.
• If not within walking distance of downtown, at least within walking distance of a retail cluster, and with easy access, ideally by public transit, to downtown.
• Prefer to be in a town that is the major urban area within (say) 20 miles, rather than a suburb. Lowell (MA) or Ann Arbor (MI) are acceptable. Belmont (MA) or Birmingham (MI) are not.
• Prefer a brewpub in town somewhere (ideally downtown).
• Sidewalks are mandatory.