I have used UCLA's HEED and various other models. The heat loss in this 1600 sf house should be ~ 25k btu /hr at the design temp of 10 degrees F. Of course, with about 50 tons of concrete in the house, the mean temp of ~ 30 degrees has more relevance. HEED estimates that the house will stay between 55 and 85 with no additional heating and cooling. I suspect it will come down to how well I can insulate those windows on cold nights. For the moment, I am aiming for R4 or R5 using bubble wrap radiant in shoji screen shutters.
Passive solar is a crap shoot in south central Pa even though winters are moderate. Some Decembers Santa Claus makes more appearances than the sun. I bought a wood stove boiler to stand in during gray stretches and to heat 300 gallons of water storage for DHW and on-demand radiant at some unknown interval. It should add a degree per hour to the slab at full blaze, or about 10 degrees/hour to water storage. A heat pump water heater will take over DHW in the summer and knock down the humidity in the house in the process.
My goal is $0 for heating and cooling, not counting chain saw gas, but I'll decide after the first winter if that's more wood than I want to handle.
Truth be told, firewood is quite attractive compared to my task at the moment.
