These are some features I'd like my house to have:

  • at least one giant bathtub and a sauna

  • its location providing

      

    • absence of casual sight and hearing of the neighbors' daily activities

    • the ability to grow: 

        

      • Pumpkins and other vegetables

      • fruit trees 

      

    • adjacent moving water (stream?, ocean?), for aesthetic reasons

    

  • a large kitchen with:

      

    • Commercial grade food preparation equipment

    • Lots of Stainless Steel & No Aluminum

    • A Massive Electric Stone Oven

    • Solid State Thermocouple Type Refrigeration

    • Homemade Storage Cabinets & Drawers for Bulk Food made from thick pieces 
of wood that fit very closely

    

  • its own: 

      

    • electrical power, (preferably hydroelectric )

    • fresh water

    • sewage treatment

    

  • An internet hookup

  • Concrete or stone floors w/ hot water pipes (for hydronic heating) in them & (homemade?) ceramic tile on top

  • Steel reinforced concrete grid exterior walls built with cemet foam type Insulating Concrete Forms, enough rebar 
for seismic zone 4 and a coating of structural surface bonding cement (eg., Q-Bond) on the outside.  

      Some example of cement foam type ICFs are 

    •  Recycled Styrofaom type

        

      • Rastra, invented in Austria in the 1970's, the first of this type.

      • Amazon Gridwall 

      • Perform Wall

      

    •  Autoclaved Aerated Concrete - The blocks are often used with little or no poured concrete.

        

      • Xella USA (Georgia)

      • Xella Mexico (near the border with Texas)

      • Taylor Trading Company

      

    •  Do it yourself (non autoclaved) concrete foam (cellular concrete) for making your own form blocks.

        

      • Goodson Associates

      • Allied Foam Tech

      • LiteBuilt Aerated concrete

      • Cellular Concrete LLC

      • Elastizell

      • Foam Lite Industries, Inc.

      • Geofill Cellular Concrete

      • Portafoam

      • Provoton

      • Vermillion and Associates

      

    
These days I'm liking composite steel joists for making floors.

      Some manufacturers are

    • Hambro, a division of Canam Steel.  Hambro's my favorite because
they use a design (for their D500 joists) where the support for the poured concrete is removable.

    • Vulcraft, a division of Nucor

    • Vescom

    • CMC

    
I'm also fond of the roof built for the Eden Project in the UK, and of Buckminster Fuller's idea of
having a roof supported other than by the walls.  Having worked on a house for a few years, the
notion of building a roof like this one first (likely supported by precast concrete columns and guy wires), 
and then building the house underneath it is one I'm fond of.  I doubt I'll be able to use the Eden Project's 
transparent teflon (ETFE), though.  Probably I'll end up using translucent urethane vinyl.

    

Here's an example of the sort of thing I had wanted do if I had large amounts of money.  I drew 
this house in a 3d modeling & animation program (Caligai Truespace) and excerpted the 2d floor plans for the web page.  I'm aware that this drawing isn't necessarily
structurally realistic.  I hope to adapt several of the ideas in this to a much smaller, structrually 
correct retirement house for myself in the future. 

    

    
Here's a link back.