I am in early stages of building a 1100-1200sqft home. We would like to build as green as possible and with Panelized construction.We want min.9'walls,brick ext.,8-10'on12' pitch hip roof. Home can be 24-30'by40-50'. We need to build on slab and working with $100,000-$130,000 budget excluding land. I would like to do some work but would consider turn key offer.We will be wanting avg. to above avg. finishes. I have built 4 houses,all stick built,with me serving as contractor. we are building in Tn.,about 220 miles from where we live now in Ms. I am open to suggestions ,as this my first  attempt at Panelized and Green construction. Thanks in advance for your help.

To hit performance numbers pay attention to window glazing types appropriate to the direction it's facing to optimize winter & summer solar gains. Site factors such as orientation count. No amount of wall-R can make up for 50 square feet of high-gain un-shaded west facing glass (even low-gain low-E windows.) Overhangs & awnings on the south facing window can optimize winter & summer passive gains, but on the east & west side exterior insulating shutters or shades may be necessary if you can't just shrink or eliminate them. North facing windows don't have to be huge to get good daylighting, but can be an R3 hole in a high-R wall- going big would be pretty lossy in winter with no countervailing daylight hours gain.

Sub-slab and slab edge insulation should be factored into any high-performance building too. Most of TN is in US climate zone 4, so referring to Table 2 on p.10 of this document, R7.5 under the slab (1.5" of XPS, or 2" of EPS) would be conservatively cost effective in a long-term analysis:

http://www.buildingscience.com/documents/reports/rr-1005-building-america-high-r-value-high-performance-residential-buildings-all-climate-zones

Note: All R values in that table are "whole assembly" R-values with the thermal bridging of structural elements factored in. Eg: A 2x6 studwall with R20 cavity insulation comes in at R13-R14 after the R5.5 studs are factored in. Hitting those R values cost effectively means using lower-cost methods & materials, eg: An R45 compact roof using closed cell foam is going to run ~$7-8 per square foot, but if you set it up to insulate to R60 at the attic floor with cellulose it'll be $2/foot (maybe $2.50 if you use half-inch OSB to support the insulation without sagging.)

Don't assume that a panelized construction process guarantees air-tightness- it doesn't. At the design phase is the best time to define a continuous primary air barrier (extending on all sides of the cube, even under the slab) but it needs to be followed up on and inspected during construction. Blower door testing of the glassed-in shell and rectification of all leakage prior to finish recommended.

It's useful to run energy modeling of the building for it's climate, orientation and site factors using tools like DOE2. BeOpt is a freebie download tool running DOE2 underneath that is useful for cost-optimizing it, and is capable of answering questions like "do I get more value out of lower-U windows on this side at cost-Y versus going higher-R in the attic at cost-Z. See: http://beopt.nrel.gov/

Designing for taller walls to accomodate any heating/cooling ducts within the insulation & pressure boundary of the building is almost universally a performance winner. This isn't the "business as usual" approach to small-house slab-on grade homes in TN, so expect some push-back. But if you go sufficiently high performance on R values air-tightness and window-U you may be able to eliminate large ducts altogether, leaving only ~3" ducts for heat-recovery/energy recovery ventilation:

Designing the building for total heating loads of under 2-tons (24,000 BTU/hr) using high-R walls and better performance windows can put it in range of heating the whole thing with a single mini-split heat pump (or 2-3 head multi-split), which can deliver very high efficiency in a zone 4 climate (often meeting or beating ground source heat pump performance at a fraction of the cost.) The 99% design heating temps in TN are ~+15F give or take a few, a temp at which decent ductless split systems have a coeffficient of performance (COP) of ~2.5. At the average January temps the COP is over 3, and during the shoulder seasons it's 4+, so you should be able to hit an average of about 3 at a minimum but will likely do better. The cooling SEER of these things run from the teens even into the 20s, nearly impossible to hit with ducted AC. Getting the heating loads that low should be pretty easy on a house that size in TN, but getting the cooling loads that low takes a bit more optimization of glazing issues, attic-R and roof design. (CRRC-rated "cool roof" shingles may make the difference in some cases.) Air sealing a panel-built house is usually pretty easy compared to stick built, but you can count on every electrician & plumber with a drill to attempt to mess it up for you.

In any new green construction some consideration should be given to orienting a large pitch of the roof for photovoltaic (PV) panels. A gabled roof with a ridge running E-W would give you more PV area to work with, and back-ventilated PV panels offer reasonable shading factor for the south facing pitch. Although it's not as heat-rejecting as cool-roof shingles, the power gained from the PV during the cooling season would offset the modestly increased cooling load many times over. (If you do go with a gabled E-W ridge design with PV, use standard roofing materials on the north facing pitch, since the value of the very modestly lower summertime gains on north pitches won't likely exceed the value of the higher wintertime losses the way it would on other sides of the house.)

Going high-R on panel-system walls can get expensive, but going for R20 rather than code-min is probably going to be worth it on higher comfort and reduced HVAC sizing.

Dana,thank you for the info. I will try to digest it,since most of this is new to me. Now,my house will face east and will be 36-54' across front. I am planning 9' walls with as much insulation as possible.I am planning hip roof but not locked into it. I would like your thoughts on hip or gable roof,energy and strength wise. Thanks again

" as much insulation as possible" covers quite a range. Better to pick a number and design the framing/roof to fit. Going with a vented attic & cellulose insulatoin, using the BSC's guidline of R60 would mean ~18" depth in the insulation, and it would have some dead-weight heft to it to the tune of 2-2.5lbs per square foot. While this is within the weight spec for 3/4" gypsum, it's usually better to support the insulation with half-inch OSB and leave a utility chase between the OSB & ceiling gypsum to be able to run all ducts & electrical etc. below the OSB, and use duct mastic to detail the OSB as a primary air-barrier.

Air-tightness is critical to the thermal performance of a house, and it would be a shame to build with an air-tight panel system only to leave it leaky at the top. Putting any ducts or air handlers above the insulation (even if you insulated it) would be a mistake, since it increases the difficulty of air sealing the top of the building, adds a direct heating/cooling load to the HVAC by running it outside of conditioned space, and any duct leakage would drive air-infiltration many times greater than the natural stack effect & wind forces.

To accommodate 18" of cellulose + a duct/utility chase below may take taller than 9' walls. If you went with so-called "energy heel" trusses to accomodate more attic-floor cellulose that extends at full depth out over the top of the wall-panel to the exterior siding you might get there though. This would be more difficult to do with a hip-roof structure, and adding height to the walls would be easier if you go with a hip roof design. Truss roofs easier & cheaper to build than hip roofs, as a general rule.

Hip roofs form something of a monocoque shell structure and withstand racking forces better than gable roofs, but unless you're in a hurricane zone that's not usually a big consideration. If gabled, putting the gable end facing the street would give you more PV development area, but could make for a VERY high roof if you're sticking with a high pitch.

With the front of the house facing east the summertime AM solar gain will be huge if you have much window area, even if you went with low-SHGC heat rejecting glass. It's probably worth finding architecturally appropriate insulating exterior shutters or exterior shades for those windows. DO minimize the glazed area on any unshaded west side windows. PM gain occurs when the outdoor temps are higher and the house has already been subjected to the sun all day and adds a significant amount to the peak cooling load (more so than east-facing glass, which takes the gain during the cooler hours of the day.) Exterior shades work well there. too. On the south side a lot of mitigation can be achieved by designing sufficient overhangs or installing awnings that shade the windows mid-day in the summer, but still allow solar gain in the winter when mid-day sun angles are lower. No amount of roof-R or wall- R is going to be able to offset high-gains from west facing windows- minimize their size and shade them from the exterior to keep the AC size modest, and AC energy use low.

Dana,once again thank you for much needed help.I was not thinking when I put 9' walls instead of 9' ceiling.Your earlier post had moved me from roof insulation to joist insulation,and I had not made it completly through the thought process.At present I am exploring radiant heat and maybe be a ductless AC. Once again, I know I am behind the learning curve and your help is appreciated

Radiant heat is a nice luxury to have in cool climates at code-min R values but unless your average heating load during mid-winter waking-hours is over 5 BTU per square foot the difference in comfort is barely noticeable. In higher performance buildings it may not be worth the expense (and it almost always IS a cost-adder.)

The 99% heating design temp for Memphis is +21F, a temp at which pretty-good ductless heat pumps have good capacity and a coefficient of performance (COP) of about 3 (50% better than most ducted air source heat pumps), and you may be able to cut the total HVAC expense by both heating and cooling with a ductless. Codes-vary- you may be required to have 100% backup for any heat pump, but at low loads a few kilowatts of electric baseboard can handle a lot. If it's cheaper to take the radiant floor money and put it into higher thermal performance in the building envelope and heat with mini-splits, the higher-R envelope can be as big a boost in comfort as any radiant floor, and the operating cost would be lower.

Using the same equipment for both heating and cooling can cut quite a bit into the upfront cost for mechanical systems, but heating with ductless works best in higher-R homes with more open floor plans. That said, I have relatives in the northwest (in a somewhat cooler winter climate than Memphis) heating with a single-head mini-split in homes with R & U values that are well below current code min, and doing just fine- experiencing higher comfort than when they heated with the propane gas furnace, and they laugh every time they pass the propane truck on the road. :-) For a small well insulated house in Memphis this is a real option.

If you're on the gas grid it may still be cheaper to heat with gas than with a ductless- is just depends on your actual electricity and gas rates. The mean temp in Memphis in January is in the low 40s (see: http://weatherspark.com/#!dashboard;a=USA/TN/Memphis ), and you should see a seasonal average COP of about 3.5 with a better-performance ductless. That means for every kilowatt-hour of energy use you get:

(3412 x 3.5=) 11,900 BTU

For very therm of gas in a 90% boiler you would get (100,000 x .90=) 90,000 BTU

So every therm of gas gives you the same heating as (90,000/11,900 =) 7.5kwh of electricity.

If your electricity is 10 cents/kwh, heating with a ductless is like heating with (10 x 7.5=) 75 cents/therm gas.

But you really need to look at your actual rates, which vary a lot regionally. (Here in MA we have 15 cent electricity an $1.10 gas, both above the national averages.)