Frugal and Energy Efficient Living

I love the mountains and the beach, but I don't want to tie every waking moment of my current life and future to an astronomical mortgage, so I've been trying to find comfortable small towns with older, well-built homes just waiting to be fixed up... I grew up along the coast in southern California, and while I yearn for that kind of place, I just don't want to make the sacrifice required to live there ...

Anyway. My husband might know how to do what you're interested in - I'll have to ask. He's a very creative engineering-type person and extremely adept at unique ways of doing things... let me ask him and get back to you. Might take me a while because he's swamped, but I will cut and paste your question into an email and circle back around in a bit.

Are you looking to build one yourself, or have one built based on a schematic?