Think about where HVAC units are usually located. Lots of times the air handler is in the attic or under the house. If it's in the attic you may be losing lots of energy, partly due to leaky ductwork, but partly due to the fact that you're pumping cool air around in a space that's over 150 degrees in the summer. In my new home near Columbia, I changed the location of the units and all of the ductwork so that it would be inside the box rather than outside. While my solution is not the standard one it worked out perfectly for my design. Since the whole underside of my house was the garage, The fire rated sheetrock sealed the lower side of my envelope for me. In the attic I used 2x10's and batt insulation for the floored area of my attic. I realized that I could use 2x10's in the rest, the same batt insulation, and cover the other areas with 1/2" OSB. I taped up the joints with fortiflash tape, although HVAC mastic would work even better. I could get my supply ducts inside the 2x10's okay, and I dropped the hall upstairs 1 foot to get my returns to work. This solution allowed me to use standard fiberglass insulation which is a lot cheaper than the sprayfoam kind. Like I said, this may not be the solution for your project, especially for remodeling, but I'll cover another option in the next post.
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