http://ecorenovator.org/forum/renova...country-2.html
Pier and beam. Slab quote was over $4k. This was less than $1k. Additional benefits of a crawl space include room for a composting toilet storage tank as well as my water pumps and hot water storage tank. Walls have been completed and I hope to be dried in is about 2 weeks. For heat exchangers I found them on ebay under "water air heat exchangers". I have a few plans for heating including a copper water coil close to my wood furnace to help boost the output when occupied. There will be 1 to 2 minisplit heat pumps mostly for cooling. My main strategy is to insulate and build as tight as affordable and reduce my heating requirements and let the solar do what it can when unoccupied. Sadly winter ended about 2 weeks ago. Its been in the mid 70's lows in the 60s, today made it to 83f with high humidity.