It's interesting how many different items are being mentioned by Americans that are unheard-of over here - Attic fans, for example! Do attics have very open venting from the rest of the house, so that that evacuating them causes air to flow up from the house? Insulation has been a big thing here for quite some time, and the Building Regulations insist on quite high levels of insulation these days. I've never seen a house with shingles for a roof - slates or tiles are the norm. Central Heating is usually by hot water, either with radiators (often with a thermostatic valve on each one) or increasingly these days underfloor. I've been thinking of building myself a house for some time - here are some of the things that I've thought of including: Basement, divided into separate rooms for woodwork, metalwork, painting and glueing, electronics, a "computer room" where central storage is housed, along with house-control equipment, CCTV recording, and switching of audio and video signals. An exercise area with TV screens to take away some of the boredom of exercising! Whole-house sound system with opt-in switches by the light switch in each room, so you can switch it on as you enter a room. A whole-house intercom rather like in Star Trek :-) Kitchen/dining-room arranged such that the cook isn't shut away from the crowd while preparing a meal - a breakfast-bar would separate the two areas so people could sit and talk to the cook without getting in the way. A snack-preparation area away from the main cooking area so that tea and coffee, sandwiches, and so on can be made by others without getting in the way of the cook. A storage room between the garage and the kitchen, to allow bulk-buying without cluttering up the kitchen. A "cloakroom" for storing outside clothing, umbrellas, shoes, boots etc. and space to put them on and off, with stools, footrests etc. to make this easier. Outside storage rooms for garden equipment, rather than cluttering up the garage with it (since everyone keeps so much stuff in garages, why not have the space designed-in elsewhere so you can get cars in the garage? :-) Laundry room on the ground floor with a laundry chute from above to save collecting clothes upstairs and gathering them up later. Dumb-waiter (goods lift) between all floors. Fireman's pole for quick descents (growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional :-) Home cinema room with a gallery at one end, and a dance-floor under an easily-removeable section of carpet. Great for parties! An office equipped with everything for dealing with post, paying bills, storing financial records, printing, photocopying, letter-writing, etc. The letter-box would discharge into this room, so it would most likely be beside the front door. A delivery safe on the outside, so that delivered parcels could be left safely. A "snug", a small room which is fully cushioned, with music facilities, for snuggling together! A sheltered but semi-outside sitting space for watching wildlife, rain, thunderstorms etc. A rooftop "room" with an openable roof/walls (?), for stargazing and summer-evening meals. An underground tunnel that leads into a summerhouse in the garden. When working out the design, rather than think of what rooms etc. are needed, I did a functional specification - I listed all the things I *do* in a house, rather than just putting rooms together, and it gives you a different result. For example, the bedrooms would be equipped with places to put clothes that you've taken off and are going to wear the next day (anyone who changes all their clothes completely every day is not from my planet! :-) In the bathrooms there would be places to hang clothes while you're in the bath/shower, proper hanging rails away from the wet area, rather than just a hook on the door that most people seem to make do with - am I the only person who's had trousers fall onto a wet floor? The kitchen would have waste and recycling chutes built in to the worktops - it amazes me that most kitchens are designed without even a waste-bin, which then ends up standing in the way somewhere! >From the garage the route into the house passes the storage room and the cloakroom so that shopping can be put away and outside clothes taken off and hung up without traipsing through the rest of the house first. There would be a lot of "green" features - excellent insulation, all outside doors would open into a lobby to give an "airlock" effect, solar water-heating panels, rainwater harvesting, photovoltaic roof (with both grid-tie and battery-backed inverters), heat-pump recovery of waste heat, possibly a wind generator, passive ventilation-stack, maybe underground heat storage. There's a lot more but I think I may have waffled on too much already... And if I achieved my ultimate goal - being the sole winner of a triple-rollover on the lottery - I'd have a hangar and a runway! Cheers, Howard Winter St.Albans, England -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist