"The house was long, East/West, and narrow, North/South. It had the usual overhang to shield against summer sun, was backed into an earth berm on the North side. Had an abundance of windows along its South face, an insulated concrete floor to store heat (no hydronics) and something like R-60 in the roof. It has a wood stove in the living room that supplies heat to the whole house... there's a free-standing stone wall behind the wood stove to capture and slowly release heat from the stove."
You seem to be describing what I'd build. A long east/west house with southern windows, overhang blocking summer sun, my original post was about having exterior of the house underground a bit, I'm thinking R75 roof.
The difference with mine is that I'd go with a ductless minisplit for heating and cooling instead of wood. I'd like to go all electric even though I love cooking with a gas stove(might go with propane for that). Reason why I'm not look at a gas furnace for a mostly passive house stems from my current experience from my 2150 sq ft house where 36% of my gas bill is connection fees, city franchise cost, etc. This house is not passive and has no south facing windows. Managed 31 therms($31) in our extremely mild December, warmest December I've ever experienced here. Natural gas total cost for 2011 was $350, fixed fees being $130 of that. Basically what I'm saying is that natural gas is expensive when you don't use any. In my current situation, I need enough heat to where going all electric doesn't make sense but for something mostly passive, it does. I'd probably use a space heater as my backup heat since I already own it, maybe turn the toaster oven on if I really need it, a hair dryer but I'm not looking to need 15k BTU, if I can manage to not freeze the pipes with a 5k BTU(standard 1500 watt space heater) or less I know I'm all set. I don't want to deal with wood, even if it is only a cord a season. Only needing a cord is amazing though, I suppose that's just a couple logs on the colder days.
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