A basement you can park your Hummer above. The poured concrete waterproofs it to keep wet vehicle from dripping into bonus room.
I’ve never built a house but I will share the most awesome things I’ve done for my house/seen in other houses:
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An expensive whole house air filter that is part of the whole HVAC system. Not sure if this works on anything other than forced air but WOW does it make a difference in air quality. I’m a smoker (ex smoker!) and people always compliment me on how my house doesn’t stink. I think it also makes a huge difference in my allergies in the summer.
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A whole house humidifier. It’s never static-y here, nor does my skin dry out. I just have a cheap model, I wish I had one that was controllable from the thermostat.
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Cable TV connections on each wall of the main TV room. My parents have this and it’s so much easier to re-configure furniture this way.
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Good windows. My front window is double paned but cheap. Cold air pours in at night and hot air bakes the living room in the day. I have a new sliding glass door which was expensive and I honestly do not feel any temperature at all from it. AWESOME.
Wow, a lot of good replies. Thanks.
2 story house, no basement, 3 car garage on a 115’ wide 15,000 sf south facing lot. We are designing in for a lot of sun (10 foot high ceilings with transome windows, bay windows, good double windows but will check on the triple, skylights, 2 story foyer, a big mud room, covered patio area as this *is *Seattle, heat pump, tankless water heater, heated bathroom floors, unfortunately no solar, and there will be more.
I have to confirm tomorrow that we have completed the assessment and will proceed to close. Not overly nervous which is a good sign.
That’s a good point; I’d hope someone somewhere along the building process would understand that houses do indeed need to “breathe” to be a healthy environment. Even here in the frozen north our houses aren’t airtight - they can’t be.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:52, topic:571983”]
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[li]Since it’s 20 feet from the house, I can’t run heating/cooling to it easily.[/li][li]Having to walk outside and open two different doors while carrying groceries–especially when it’s below zero and there’s two feet of snow on the ground.[/li][li]Can’t run hot water out there, and can’t install a water heater because the garage freezes in the winter.[/li][li]It’s farther from the car to the house when carrying something heavy.[/li][li]More external walls to paint/maintain.[/li][li]The inconvenience of having to go outside in rainy/snowy/cold weather to get a tool from the garage.[/li][li]The useless strip of land between the house and the garage (we already have a lovely deck in back - I don’t need another one in front between the house and garage).[/li][/ul]
My current home is the first I’ve lived in with a separate garage, and it’s less efficient and more annoying in pretty much every way. I can see doing it after the fact when you’re adding a garage to a house that didn’t have one, or maybe doing it if you live somewhere that doesn’t get cold, rain, or snow. But even then, why design your home to make you walk farther on purpose?
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There are a couple of really good reasons to have a detached garage - the first is security - someone breaking into your garage doesn’t have fairly easy access to your house, too, and the second is that you have built-in fire protection from garage to house and vice versa - I think (but I’m not certain) that the cost of house insurance is reduced for houses with detached garages over attached garages.
We have a detached garage at our house, and the minor inconveniences are barely even noticeable to me. Of course, this is our first house with a garage, and I think having any garage at all is heaven. 
With track homes there could be thousands of feet of wire. Check the price of #12 and #14. I think you will get your answer.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:42, topic:571983”]
I see a lot of people suggesting this, but it seems like a waste of money to me. Make sure there’s cabling to a central location where you can put the wireless router. Why hard-wire all over the house? Cabling is expensive and clutters up the room. A lot of my Internet-ready devices don’t even have Ethernet ports–they’re wireless only!
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Ignore this guy. It is cheap to run cat6 before the drywall goes up and it can be used for so many different things. If I was trying to future proof my house I’d actually consider running fiber also. Hard wired connections are faster, more reliable and more secure. One thing I forgot was putting a electrical outlet next to the central hub for the modem and router. You can also use the Cat6 for security cameras and a friend of mine used it to run S-video. I don’t agree about the conduit, but leaving some fish tape in the walls is a good idea.
Also for my home theater, I had all the speaker wire prewired and a b-channel wired to ceiling mounting points downstairs. I also had video cable run for my projector and an electrical outlet in the ceiling for it. When I built the house in 2003, the cable installers didn’t know what DVI was, so I bought the 25 ft DVI cable and had the installers put it in. Today, you just put HDMI cable in, but I just use a HDMI to DVI adapter with the DVI cable I preinstalled. I use the ethernet cable for the Roku box and have a HDMI switch for it and my upscaling DVD player.
My master bedroom closet is huge, so I had an electrical and cable outlets installed in there and use it for my office.
This sounds stupid, but it happened to a friend of mine. Make sure your house fits on your lot. The first architect didn’t check the setbacks and it turned out the house couldn’t be built on the lot without a zoning variance.
Also make sure they use quality plumbing connectors. The cheap plastic connector on my upstairs toilet broke and caused a lot of water damage.
But your garage isn’t completely detached: the breezeway connects it to the house and when it rains it gives you both a place to grill and a way to reach the garage without getting wet.
Those conduits I mentioned for cables of any kind? If you’re using solid insulation (in Spain the usual system is just double walls: brick-air-brick), the conduits go in before the insulator gets put in place.
What is a covered patio? Sorry but google would give me pics of Spanish patios with demin awnings, it keeps trying to be helpful…
The door between the house and an attached garage should be a fire door with a good lock and deadbolt on it. Why is that any less secure than the door between the house and the outside?
Also, building code requires that the wall between the house and the garage be a firewall. If there’s a discount for detached garages, it certainly wasn’t offered to us when we bought this place.
Before you begin designing have regular discussions about what you actually will use. Don’t build rooms that are traditional but that you won’t use. Ours was just a remodel but we demolished the dining room in favour of a larger kitchen with an eating area for example.
Also - pathways in the kitchen - if anything make them slightly larger than recommended and pay close attention to things like the stove, dishwasher and fridge openings. I really regret where we had to locate the fridge since every time I open the door it blocks access to the back door and freaks the dogs out. Apparently if they can’t see the door to the backyard the backyard ceases to exist. It’s a rough life for them.
I highly recommend putting conduit in the walls before insulating. Today it’s cat 6 or fibre, who knows what you’ll want or need in the future. I completely agree with over provisioning electricity both at the panel and in each room. Make sure they label the panel. I love the idea of building wide surge protection, that’s brilliant.
Not all outlets need to be at floor level. Our kitchen redesign included a dining alcove and we put in two outlets at table height. Just in case future owners cared more about aesthetics we put them one on either side of the window so the curtains will hide them even if they’re open, but it’s awesome to be able to plug in your laptop without crawling under the table.
Radiant floor heating in bathrooms is a gift from the gods and should be worshipped.
It’s worth a few hundred bucks to talk to a lighting specialist when the building design is finished and before you start putting up walls. Really.
Make a list now of the million tiny things that irritate you about your current house. Those are the ones you don’t want to replicate in the new one. You’ll find others but it’s good to get rid of the first set at least 
Speaking as a gimp - consider resale even if you plan on being hauled out feet first, someone is going to own the place after you are [unless you are going for some sort of viking funeral?]
Look at the code for handicap access - many of them are easy to implement. Doors that are wider than normal [also great for moving furniture in and out] Hallways/passages that are a bit wider than normal [also great for moving furniture along in] roomy bathrooms [you do not have to install the grab rails, but roomy bathrooms sell]
Having one exterior door that is low/no threshold also makes it easy to roll in heavy appliances, and if you ever screw up a leg/foot makes it easier to get in and out while you are healing.
One my neighbors, who is an established contractor, installed his exterior doors bacwards. His logic is that in the winter when the wind is blowing against the door it is actually blowing the door closed and creating a tighter seal. Makes sense in theory, but I am not so sure about practice. Also I would definately put in a bigger electrical panel. If you need more power later for an outbuilding, pool or hottub the power is there. I have a bad habit of putting up new buildings and yard features, power is now a problem.
I prefer my detached garage because it keeps the fumes from painting and whatnot from getting in the house. Also noise from the compressor, air tools and power tools is not as much of an issue. I guess it depends on what you use the garage for.
I have no idea why anyone has a problem with 14/2, it’s rated to handle the 15 amps then some, so the breaker will pop long before the wires integrity will be affected. Code only allows for so many circuits on a breaker and I am yet to see it being an issue on any house I have wired. It’s like saying run 8 for a dryer instead of 10 or 6 for a range intead of 8, it makes no sense. I know my father in law ran 12/2 in his place during a remodel because he thought it would save money on his power bill in the future…huh?
I am still a little leary of infloor hot water heating, I would not want to have to fix a leak that is buried in 2 1/2 inches of cement somewhere in the floor. I guess we will see in another ten or fifteen years if it is stable.
I know that about ten years ago the talk was to run multi conductor bundles, 2 cat5, 2 coax some fibre and something else i think, but I don’t know how well that went because placement would still be an issue.
Most of the spray foam is for exterior walls so you can still do drops on interior walls as long as you can get it from the panel, I think a conduit from basement to attic would be fine.
When you say heat pump are you talking about geothermal or an air to air system?
To clarify, the NEC is silent on the # of outlets on a circuit.
A range should be on 6 ga. Although the odds of a problem with 8 I admit are minuscule.
The distance from the electric panel to the appliance is important, the voltage drop in the wire does waste electricity, a heavier gauge would minimize the problem. Curiously, however, many breakers do not accept wire gauges much heavier than would be called for in their rating, leading to what I consider to be an additional potentially problematic splice.
NEC trivia;
Q:
Can you wire something ‘better’ than code?
A:
No, something is either wired to code or it isn’t.
(Yes, the building inspector here is a total butt, and yes, I have tangled with him)
If you’re going with 10’ ceilings then put in double receptacles for lights/ceiling fan so you can control both separately. You can have them roughed in and install them yourself later. Lots of ways to save money.
I’m in Canada and the CEC only allows 12 outlets per breaker and number 8 is good to 45 amps and when used with a 40 amp breaker should cover a range.
I only put is #12 and 20 amp breakers. I never have a problem of #14 wire being used on a 20 amp circuit, unlike some of the origional wiring. When I am wiring anything up all I have to do is grab the box of romex, it is right.