Lyns, I've resisted posting on this one so far, as others already have covered the basic advice. Yes, go for superinsulation, make it as tight as it possibly can be, and install the HRV for controllable mechanical ventilation. Ignore any advice to the effect that you don't want to make it too tight, because "the house has to breathe." Spend extra as required for really good windows. They do make a real difference; your energy model for the house will show you that. Forget the whole house fan. It has little use in the sort of house you want to build. Running a whole house fan in hot weather will just draw hot, humid air through the house and make it hot and humid inside. In an ordinary house, there can be times when a whole house fan can bring in cool night air and provide almost free air conditioning. The tight, highly insulated you want to build simply will not gain heat very fast in summer, just as it won't lose heat fast in winter. Your A/C load for summer conditions probably can be met with one ton of capacity, and it won't needed very often at that. Given that you want the house to be very tight, and will have mechanical ventilation always running (at least on low speed), that means less worry about having an attached garage, not more, provided you detail properly your air barrier at the wall between garage and house. The garage absolutely must be outside the house's air barrier. With ordinary construction, and little attention to tightness of the shell, an attached garage would be more of a problem. I am speaking from experience here. I designed the shell of my own house and was on site for the build, advising the crew of particular things I needed to have done at certain times, some of which I just did myself. The structure is a double wall with 12" cavity filled with dense packed cellulose (R40). The attic floor is R60. Basement walls are R20 where there is concrete and R40 where framed (walkout areas). Sub-slab is R20. Windows are triple pane, around U=0.17, and all casements except for some fixed glass units. Not every window need be operable. The final blower door test came in at 0.8 ACH at 50 pascals depressurization. That confirmed the selection of a two-ton GSHP unit for heat and A/C. The gross footprint is 2,000 sq.ft., and there are two levels, so living space is 4,000 less walls, stairwell, and whatever isn't included in "living space." The energy model, which I did myself, shows heat loss at design minimum temperature to be about 22,000 BTU/hr. Worst case A/C load is less than half that. There also is a small woodstove in the lower level, with a firing range of 11-28,000 BTU/hr. Last winter we actually used that to heat the whole house, burning perhaps half time, while interior finishing was going on. It has an outside air kit, so the stove doesn't depend on inside air supply. I like having a wood fire now and then. Last summer, very little A/C was needed; the unit was loafing, coming on just once in a while, and never running in second stage. This winter has not been an especially hard one for really testing the house and heat pump. Still, there were a few nights getting down around zero for a while, and the heat pump still never went to second stage. I have been told by others that superinsulated houses often do test out better than the energy model had predicted. Lyns, you can have the same level of performance in your new house, and the cost isn't all that much more, if everything is done at the right time during construction. I totaled up everything involving the superinsulation part of our new house, relative to "ordinary," and it came to around $20K, about the price of a new car. With the savings in heating cost, the extra cost will pay for itself in less than ten years, then pay out like a slot machine thereafter. If I blew the $20K on a car, in ten years it would be a rustbucket with no value. Where's the "payout" in that? Moreover, the house really is delightful to live in, with no drafts or cold spots, worth every penny spent to make it better than "ordinary."

Jerry the biggest difference is Zonealarm's two way blocking feature which is lacking in the XP firewall. This means if phone home spies or other malware piggyback in on legitimate software you have absolutely no control over it with XP because it only controls incoming things. There is no down side to having Zonealarm instead of the XP firewall. Once set up it is very easy to control. Just pay attention during the download and install so that you keep ticking the free version to install. If memory serves me right you then need to go to your security window and turn off the XP firewall manually.

Thanks, Cyn. I'll try that. I have a couple days left on my trial. Re Google Sketchup: I've just begun using it. There are some appliances and such like available. You can also pull them out of other kitchens people have uploaded. Not 100% conventient but not dire either. Also, it's really easy to make something that's pretty much box shaped. Here's a picture of my first model, of the 30" Sharp Microwave Drawer. First I saved the image from the web and cropped it to just the drawer using PaintShopPro (any image software will work). Then I drew a box the right size in sketchup, using lines and the Entity Info tool to get the size right. I'm still learning and I accidentally cut the back open, but that doesn't really matter. Last step, import the picture as a texture and fit it to the face of the box. It doesn't have the slight protrusion of the handle, but then even though I'm doing this to scale, it's not plan perfect, so it doesn't matter. The strengths of this program, once one really absorbs how to make boxes, make up for it. [IMG]http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l134/rummylands/30inchSharpMicroDrawerMODEL.jpg[/IMG] Does anyone know if you can make operable hinges? :D

I have used Chief Architect for years but it is very pricy. A few years ago I switched to a MAC and was running Chief Arc through a partition (since I didn't want to pay for the MAC version) It became so cumbersome, I decided to look for a less expensive option. I found they make a "home" version for around $100: Home Designer Suite. It's very intuitive and MUCH easier to use than something like AutoCad. It automatically projects walls into 3D and you'll be able to use it for schematic designs and space planning in no time. Roofs, multiple floor plans, materials lists...they would all take a little longer to learn, but the information is out there. I also use Google Sketch-up (a free program) but it takes much longer to master (in my opinion!} Good Luck!