Steve those are a lot of good ideas. But I plan on installing geothermal in the beginning as with the metal roof and siding. I hate doing things twice. All of these ideas are why I started this thread so early..to plan it out now and come up with all of the crazy ideas first and then build the house. I do plan on building a large garage probably 40x50 or so that will be slab and a planned on putting radiant heat in the slab when I built it even tho I'm not sure when I'll get around to actually heating it. My main concern for radiant floor heat is the humidity issue in the summer. The girlfriend and I can take a fair amount of heat but when it gets humid the ac goes on. So that being said I know there is a huge thread on radiant floor heating on this site that I'm starting to read through again. I'm ok with radiant floor especially matched with a geothermal/solar heat system as long as it's in the budget. What threat budget is? I'm not sure just yet. But that's why I want to get ideas now and price them out to see what I can afford and what I can't.
Does anyone remember off the top of their head what the best option for new construction radiant floor is? I know I'll get to it in the thread eventually.
Also other interesting thought was we both would like a hot tub. But I don't like the idea of that giant power hog. But does any know of anyone has successfully used a geothermal heat pump to heat one?
Also more info on the property. We plan to have a kinda large pond. It's a requirement
so I plan to put the geothermal pipe in the pond and or in the ground for a closed loop system.