Have you ever seen the big tall poles with a propellor on them. They produce energy and for most people who put them in they produce more energy then they use and they start getting a check from the electic company instead of a bill. Problem is for most people the amountof money they are saving is not even close to the cost of the generator. (Est. $10-20,000_ With a bill of $500 dollars a month it would pay for itself in four years and then your electric is essentially free. I don't know about electric heat, but I would imagine you may still need more power than a single wind generator can produce. If you plan on staying in your house for a while it may be a worth while investment. In my case (or my fathers case) it would take too many years for the generator to pay for itself than is worth while for us and we don't have that kind of money upfront. It is easier to pay for the electric bill each month which is a smaller cost than the wind generator even though the long term costs are higher.

Betsy, you must be in "our area" and I'm one of those doing some regretting. It was 34° in my garden this morning but it froze 2 nights ago. The wind has been especially difficult - even when it was freezing, there was a 9mph wind! The day before the frost, there was a 50mph wind!! I haven't lost a tomato yet, they have been covered up for 3 days by buckets held down with a rock . . . except where I ran out of buckets and used large pots. Mistake, the holes in the pots allowed some burning of the foliage. I have replacements for everything but this isn't what I expected. Remember the Winter Olympics? We aren't on the coast (hundreds of miles inland), still - January and February weather was mild, mild, mild. Nothing like being faked out. I've been able to get my tomatoes out before Memorial Day, certainly for the last 20+ years. (The peppers and eggplants can wait.) I can't remember ever keeping the tomatoes under buckets for 3 days running . . . digitSteve

We have a walk out basement with a bunch of windows and two doors - one to the finished area and a double door to my workshop in an unfinished area. You might want to consider that second door if you are going to be storing stuff down there in the winter. I have security concerns about all teh doors and windoes down there too, but I feel like if someone really wants to get in - they'll get in regardless. The two issues I have are - what the finished basement means to the design of the deck and patio outside. In our case we need both and they need to work together. Second issue, and this might be specific to my build, is how the concrete footers are insulated where they are above grade. In our home the footers under the back wall continue above grade by about one course of block - maybe 6 inches. That block is 5.5" thick. On top of the block sits the 2x6 stud wall. So, with the wall and the block being the same thickness, the exterior siding (hardy) and the interior finish (drywall) can run right down the stud wall and perfectly cover the block. Here's the problem - The 2x6 wall is insulated, but there was no interior space to insulate that concrete block. We have radiant heat in the basement floor and we lose a lot of heat through that 6" by 50ft length of wall that is uninsulated. I can tell because the snow melts in that area of the yard before it melts anywhere else. On the interior, all it has is sheet rock and mdf base molding covering the block. The solution (I think) would have been for the wall to have been thicker than the block so that there would have been interior space to put rigid insulation against the block before the sheetrock and moldings were put on. Good luck

We have pretty much the same size lot and after excavation we have a really flat front yard, sloped side yards, and flat backyard. Our builder brought in extra dirt already and we're only just finishing framing so don't have a finish grade yet so it should get even better but we're really happy with it so far. Our last house had steeper front yard and side yard to get the walkout but the lot was only 1/4 acre so there is more room for things to leveled off with this lot,