I read this book: Finding & Buying Your Place in Country by Les Scher and Carol Scher which you can find on amazon. It covers a lot of your questions and then some. As far as the cost to run the electricity to your house, you can call the electric company that services that area and they can probably give you a general cost. One variable in the cost is how far away the house will be from the main line where they tap in, and wether you want the line above or below ground. As the book mentions, the ability to get power, water, phone, and septic are major factors that must be addressed before buying a piece of property. But there are a bunch of other factors like soil and drainage for siting the house that you also need to factor in. Just beacuse you have 220 acres doesn't necessarily mean that you can build a house on all 220. I have seen 100 acre lots for sale where only 1 house can be built not because of zoning restrictions but because of terrain. Also keep in mind that the further away from the main road that you build, the more cost you will add for site preparation and roadbed. Even if you can handle those costs, you have to think about the costs of clearing for getting out in the snow. You can do that yourself but that adds costs for equipment you will need once you move in. We moved from the burbs to a 5 acre lot in the mountains and it has been quite an adjustment. We used to worry about a few danelions in our small yard. Now I worry about huge trees falling into my house. The scale of problems and the time and cost to deal with them is a lot larger than I ever imagined. I laughed the first time I pulled out the push mower to cut a portion of my 2 acres of grass - it is a useless machine. Now I have a 50 inch cutting deck to get the job done. When the large trees go down, it is a day of work per tree to cut it up and stack the wood. Thank goodness I am handy because without the ability to do things myself, we would be spending a fortune to bring in help. The book helped but it didn't cover everything that we went through to build our home and what it is like to live in it now. We love the natural setting and the quiet - but there is a daily cost of our time (and sometimes money) to maintain that. Giving you costs for these items will be misleading because so much depends on the location of your property, the type of property if is (open or with trees, flat or hilly) the local economy, how far away it is from supply companies and tradespeople , etc. All I can say is that whatever you think it will cost, add at least 20% to that number to keep as a reserve fund to deal with any issues that pop up - which they will. And if you are lucky enough to not need the 20% reserve during the build, you will surely use it to buy new toys that you will need to maintain your land and home. Good luck!

Geothermal will work anywhere - without a back up heat assist. The reason, underground the temperature is constant. With a regular heat pump, the heat pump pulls heat out of the air and brings it into your home. So when the temperature goes below a certain point, it needs a backup system - the dreaded "blue light". We dread it because it means high expensive electricity is being used to heat your home. That doesn't happen with a Geothermal System. It doesnt' get that cold underground. It's usually about 57 degrees F down there and the heat pump works great, never really needing your back up system. I know all this because I'm having a home built right now and I had the builder put in a Geothermal Ground Loop System. Of course he subcontracted it out, but I didn't mind because he did get someone familiar with installing them. The system I'm getting is an Advanced Geothermal System. It's what they call a DX system - a Direct Exchange. The copper pipes carry the refrigerant down into the ground loops where the temperature changes it from gas to liquid, or from liquid to gas - depending on what mode the system is operating in - heating or cooling. Regular ground loops systems carry water down into the ground loops and then exchanges it with the refrigerant onces it gets back into the main part of the system. So it does two exchangese - while the DX system only does one (its much more efficient). One other good point to make is that the air heated by a DX Ground loop system is about 100 degrees F. So what comes out of your vents feels warm. A regulare heat pump's air is only a few degrees warmer than the air so that air feels cool all the time. For more information - check out the link associated with this post. And don't forget to check out their links. Good luck with your Geothermal System. I wish the Gov't would push these systems more - they are so darn effecient they'll reduce our dependency on foreign oil very quickly. Ken Here is a link that might be useful: Advanced Geothermal Technology

Also, if you are further down the Peninsula, DaVinci in San Carlos. I bought my white granite from there. I visited 13 places around the Bay and I have to say that IRG was fabulous. If you are more south, more toward San Jose, there are a number of good places there too. Venice Tile in San Jose right near the airport is a fabricator too, and they do top notch fabricating. Search white granite and you will see some of the work that Venice did for me on my kitchen. Will always be a marble lover, but will have to ogle from afar as long as I am married to my DH....he says vehemently "NO!"....I expect the both of you to post your counters so I can live vicariously :)

@lindacottonwood If you use a licensed contractor, he is going to provide it to you for his cost plus a markup. He pays the same amounts that everyone pays buying from the local suppliers. What makes this material cheap is if you live in an area where it is manufactured, and the shipping costs are minimal to the suppliers. Moving such heavy materials 500 miles doubles the cost.