Not really sure.
My last house had geothermal heat.
Right now I'm renting. Eventually Vanessa and I would like to buy our first house. We both want a (1) floor home with a basement and open floor plan. My last house with the geothermal seemed like it was pretty reasonable to heat/cool.
Right now we have propane and it's expensive. We want a house that's all electric. But what if the electric goes out? Living in the country, that even causes us to not have water.
It would be great to have a house and not have to worry about heating fuels or high electric bills.
Irregardless of what we ended up with, I'd definitely like to have a generator backup.
It sounds like you're looking for the type of house I'm living in right now...
VERY energy efficient. Totally electric. And our electric bill here is cheaper than the electric bill from our last house that had natural gas heat. We did the construction ourselves (dad did concrete construction for a living). Oh, yea, this house is bigger too.
Look into construction using ICF foam block. Our basement and first floor walls (ranch house) are made out of them. Basement walls are 8" core and first floor is 5" core ICF. Basically, you stack these blocks up and install rebar before filling with concrete. Carve out the foam to install electric lines and pipes, then screw your drywall right to the foam blocks. We did an all brick exterior, but you can do siding or whatever on the exterior. They claim that these walls can achieve an insulation value of up to R-50 (standard 2x4 framing is around an R-18 and has cold spots).
We put good Anderson windows in, ones with a good insulation value. Couple skylights and a sunporch with 6'x9' windows.
House is a partial basement, partial slab-on-grade, ALL floors (concrete floors and the floors over the basement part) have heat tubing run in them. We got a boiler in the basement filled with a literal ton of brick. Went on a co-op program with the electric company, they can turn power off to the boiler, hot water tank, and washer/dryer during peak hours in exchange for a big discount on our electric bill. The boiler unit is supposed to be able to be off power for up to something like 12-14 hours before it starts loosing it's ability to heat the house. Hot water tank is a super-insulated 80 gal unit... not quite as good at retaining heat as the boiler, but it's enough.
The concrete floors are all stamped and/or colored concrete. Or entry and living rooms look like large stone along the lines of flagstone or slate. Sunporch looks like terra-cotta tile. Front bedrooms are smooth trowed and acid stained. Office is done in a stone pattern like the living room and entry. Garage was finished with a grit to prevent slipping on a wet floor. Haven't finished the gameroom yet, but that will probably be stained.
Backup heat is a heat pump unit that also handles air conditioning and air exchange (house is sealed tight enough it could probably be slightly pressurized). Right now we don't have the boiler running, but the heat pump is enough to keep the house at nearly 70* even on the coldest of days.
We also have a fireplace (not working yet) that is set up for blowing the heat back into the house. If it all goes to hell, we have a generator and kerosene torpedo heater. (Generator is actually wired into the house).
Ceilings all got R-30 insulation. Sunporch and attached garage were stick-framed with 2x6 walls for more insulation. Insulated garage doors.
All in all, a solid, energy efficient house. Works so well that you can hardly hear the train go past (when it does on rare occations). Tames it to a low rumble and vibrates nothing... even though you can go out on the front porch and throw a rock and hit the train.
Or backyard is where we watch the creek flow past... stocked trout stream.