Here are some sources of information which have contributed to my thinking regarding the design of an off-grid house.
The book list is pretty-much complete but the web links are really only a starting point: sites which say something about my current thinking.
Books
...I have, in roughly the order in which I first read them.
"Sod it": An Introduction to Earth Sheltered Development in England and Wales. Edited by Peter Carpenter, Secretary of the British Earth Sheltering Association.
The New Autonomous House. Brenda and Robert Vale.
General discussion of off-grid houses in the UK with particular attention to the authors' autonomous house in Nottinghamshire with some mention of the Hockerton houses, as well.
Ecohouse 2: A Design Guide. Sue Roaf, Manuel Fuentes and Stephanie Thomas..
A wide range of topics about low impact houses around the world with a number of examples in different climates including the main author's house in Oxford.
Intermodal Shipping Container Small Steel Buildings. Paul Sawyers.
Use of 20, 30 and 40 foot shipping containers of as components of house construction.
Solviva. Anna Edey.
Self-heating, highly productive greenhouse and house on Cape Cod with particular emphasis on the problems of nitrate contamination from waste disposal with septic tanks, etc.
Wind Energy Basics: A Guide to Small and Micro Wind Systems. Paul Gipe.
Introduction to home scale wind turbines.
Windpower Workshop. Hugh Piggot.
Construction of home-made wind turbines. Very useful background on the workings of turbines even if you don't plan to make one yourself immediately.
The Not So Big House. Sarah Susanka.
Discussion of living in smaller than typical houses. Not terribly useful as it assumes that the typical house size is that of current Americans so a "small" house is still reasonably large by most European standards.
Building with Straw Bales: A practical guide for the UK and Ireland. Barbara Jones.
Useful general discussion of the use of straw bales here.
The Housebuilder's Bible: An Insider's Guide to the Construction Jungle. Mark Brinkley.
General discussion of self-builds in the UK. Rather assumes a reasonably conventional house, though.
The Green Building Bible, 3rd Edition, Vols 1 & 2. Green Building Press.
Series of articles on various aspects of green building. Some are just general advocacy whereas others contain lots of useful data.
The Water Book: Find it, move it, store it, clean it...use it, 2nd Edition. Judith Thornton.
Out of the Woods: Ecological Designs for Timber Frame Housing. Pat Borer and Cindy Harris.
General advocacy of self building timber-frame post-and-beam houses using the Segal method: simple construction (particularly use of individual foundation pads rather than more complex foundations), with standard material sizes laid out on a regular grid. Detailed in parts but stops short of some useful information in others.
How To Find And Buy A Building Plot. Roy Speer and Michael Dade.
Timber Framing for the Rest of Us. Rob Roy.
Says on the cover: "a guide to contemporary post and beam construction". Covers post and beam construction using metal fasteners to connect the parts rather than the more traditional but more skill-requiring use of clever joints. Complements Out of the Woods as it gives more detail on structure and span though less on the Segal Method.
Creative Homeowner Ultimate Guide to House Framing. John D. Wagner.
I was given this book by somebody who got it in the US. It's about standard timber framing (as it would be called in the UK) - stick or platform framing as it's called in the US. It's got lots of useful details for me but it's surprising how much house building terminology changes between British and American English - enough that it could be really confusing using this book on the wrong side of the Atlantic. It's nice to look at the pictures, though.
Earthship Volume II - Systems and Components. Michael Reynolds.
Describes the systems, particularly for electricity and water in Earthships. It's an oldish book (1990/91, third printing 1993) and really needs some editing and updating but still is a useful introduction to at least some approaches to off-grid living.
Internet
General Web Sites
Build-It-Solar: Huge range of pages and links on things to do with or associated with home-built solar power.
Energy Self Sufficiency Newsletter: An archive of PDF files of a newsletter about off-grid type living. Some OK articles and some pretty good articles which have influenced my thinking quite a bit.
Laren Corie Homepage: Beginnings of a useful site on solar design which would be much improved by collecting some of his email list postings. His Thermal Attic site is even sketchier but also potentially interesting.
Greener Shelter: Don Stephens' articles on Annualized Geo Solar - storing heat in the ground under a house in the summer and getting it back out again in the winter.
The NEW Independent Home online edition: Interesting extracts from the book of the same name; must get the book at some point.
Green-Trust.Org: General blog about topics related to off-grid living in, I think, upstate New York.
House 2.0: Mark Brinkley's (author of The Housebuilder's Bible) blog.
Nomadness: One of Steve Roberts' many web incarnations discussing geeking out a live-aboard boat - somewhat more mobile and compact than anything I have in mind (though...) but many philosophical and technical overlaps particularly with respect to control systems. See also Dramanauts, his partner, Sky Myers', blog.
Solar Closets and Sunspaces: Article about using water to store the energy in solar warmed air. See also Nick Pine's other pages.
House Web Sites
Web sites about particular houses or similar real-world sites.
Daystar: The Four Mile Island Solar Home: A house which has been off-grid in Massachusetts for 15 years. Probably the closest thing aesthetically and technically to what I want to build though I hope that with 15 years' more experience in the world about off-grid living it should be possible to reduce the amount of combustion needed.
Earthship Brighton: I have some reservations about some details of the general Earthship design and some doubts about whether it translates directly from the US South West to the European climate but they're still interesting in many ways. I've visited the Brighton Earthship twice, once when it was a complete structure but had a lot of work left to be done and once when it was nearly complete.
Earthship Fife: The "other" Earthship in the UK.
Hockerton Housing Project: An interesting row of houses in Nottinghamshire (designed by the authors of the The New Autonomous House). I did their standard tour a while ago. Very inspiring and informative, but maybe I should have done the technical tour but I'm not sure they did them then. In particular, I have some doubts about some aspects of their design (I think too much thermal mass in the conservatories but the insulation is placed in the wrong place to make good use of the thermal mass in the berm to the north).
BedZED: Beddington Zero Energy Development, (Wikipedia) a group of about 100 homes and workspaces in south London which are interesting of a number of reasons though, to me, the most important are the use of solar energy and thermal mass to dramatically reduce the heating requirements. I visited in, I think, spring 2007 (for OpenStreetMapping) but had a look round the show house and talked to one of the residents about it.
By Example: The Quest for Sustainable Living: Lots of different details (mostly because they're in Arizona) but similar overall philosophy to what I have in mind: particularly the experimental, phased nature of their approach to construction. I saw this site ages ago but have only recently re-read it - it seems to have expanded a lot.
Sustainable Living-Quiet Earth Trust "Straw Bale": Rachel Shiamh's strawbale house in Pembrokeshire which I visited during her open day in August 2008.
The Yellow House: Interesting renovation of an otherwise tedious house in Oxford to greatly improve its efficiency.
Cumbria's First Underground House: House built into the side of a disused quarry in Cumbria. Early Grand Designs subject.
Renewable Energy generators' Journal: LiveJournal community which is mostly Rowan Langley reporting on the practical experiences of his PV system in Harrow.
That Roundhouse: Really low-impact house in Pembrokeshire. Somewhat more extreme than anything I have in mind but it's a great pity they've had so much hassle.
Build Blogs/Stories
Web sites telling the story of the construction of particular houses.
The First Little Pig: "A chronicle of a self-build eco-home in the Scottish Borders": timber frame infilled with strawbale but clad conventionally with breathable membrane and wooden cladding rather than the lime plaster often used with straw bale. One of the more detail build blogs, too.
East Cambusmoon Farm: A new build near Loch Lomond designed to "use less than one fifth of the energy used by a modern home built to current building standards".
Steve Carter's Loch Torridon build: Large log build on the west coast of Scotland.
Es-Cargo.qc.ca: A couple building an Earthship-like house in the wilds of Quebec.
Structural Insulated Panel (SIP) House: Construction of a fairly conventional house using SIPs but with a few nice systems.
oscar and lisa's earthship build: Spanish/Australian couple's Earthship build in southern Spain.
Four Elements House: Dutch couple's project to build a rammed earth (I think) house in Belgium. Just beginning.
Mailing Lists and Forums
Green Building Forum: UK oriented forum on general green and greenish building. In general a bit more reality-based than many online lists. I've learned a lot of practical stuff here, particularly with regards to the management of moisture.
Fuga de Ideas: Site about "passive annual climate control systems": see particularly the forum and Tom's PAHS
More lists I have been active on in the past