California - Site
Owning land means that there are choices in where to put the house, although the steepness of the terrain limit those choices to just a few spots, and the location of the utility power pole makes an even smaller number of sites practical (since being off grid is an expensive proposition). We also didn't want to disturb any additional ground: we already had almost 2 miles of roads, a house site, a horse barn site and a pad that was dug out and never used. In fact we wanted to restore some of the disturbed sites.
Luckily the old horse barn site was right next to both the well and the power pole. The only downside is that we would only have about 15lbs of water pressure since the tank sits only 30 some feet above this site. The upside is that our water and power lines shorten from the current 800 or so feet to less than 100, and we no longer have to drive up and down the steep rocky dirt road to the current house. In retrospect, the fire department would have required over $100k worth of road improvements in order to get a permit to stay in the current location.
There are other sites with much better views (especially the unused one that was already carved out), but they are very windy (50-60mph gusts during winter storms are not unusual.) The advantage to this site is that it still has a very good view and is somewhat protected because it is down 30-50 feet from the surrounding hillsides. Also the house will be nearly invisible from almost all of the surrounding hills.
The above photo is of site with the buildings gone, and was taken from the driveway at the northeast. The small concrete slab is 12x12 and held a wood framed tack room that was part of the old horse barn. We deconstructed it and will reuse the materials to build a small pump house that will also have our PV on the roof and be the main junction box for all the utilities. The bare spot in the far edge of the hill is where the hay barn used to be--its also where the guest house is going. The rest of the site will be "courtyard", although exactly how walled it in ends up being is not clear yet. The intention is that it demarcates an area that we will maintain landscaping: the rest of the site will be wild or semi-wild.
We spend many hours over the course of a few years establishing the position of the house and the guest house but were really not able to get a good position until the horse barn was gone because it sat over where the house was going. Once the site was completely cleared we were left with this slab which we decided to leave as a future patio. We even moved the house 18" east so that the patio door would line up with the patio. Given how I don't really like landscape elements lined up, I'm not sure what I was thinking, but I'm sure it will end up OK. The positive side is that it shoved the guest house over along with it (to keep the relation, which in this case is carefully not exactly aligned), and that made our future courtyard bigger.
The above photo is a topographic view with the approximate position of the houses shown. The driveway entry to the site is at the top, leading to the required fire truck turnaround and a proposed parking space for the guest house (essentially a way to get rid of spare dirt and get something useful out of it). The two buildings are 40 feet apart: close enough to feel connected, but far enough to have some privacy.
The characteristics of the site, in particular the view and the entry location dictated the overall layout of the house. The houses are oriented just a bit more than 10 degrees to the east of south, which although less than ideal in general is better for passive solar in this climate because it reduces late summer passive gain. The PV will be on the pump house, which will probably end up oriented east of south, but hopefully not as much.