I'm also doing most of the work on my house, just went thru the insulation part. Here is what I did, just for comparison. (this is a 2100 SF house) Insulated the 2x6 walls myself with standard R19 batts For the vaulted ceiling, spray foam. Walls around this ceiling, that back toward attic: spray foam Area under floored attic (approx 250 more SF): spray foam. Rest of attic: blown fiberglass 12 inches. I am going to roll out more fiberglass on top of this myself. Garage: 6 inches blown fiberglass. I've forgotten the exact footage of all that I had sprayed/blown, but the spray bill was $1400, and the blown $875. I think the wall insulation total was around $700, I may spend another $400 or so on attic blankets. So thats about $3400 all together, with me doing alot of the labor. The foam is expensive, but when you see it go in, you realize how good it is. When you have areas like the ceiling, and under attic floor where you've only got 6 inches to work with, I felt I had to spring for the stuff to get a good r-value.

Sheesh....what brought that on?? I was just pointing out ways to save energy.....I would think the foam would be most effective. My concern is about the spray on the underside of the deck. I'll attach some other observations I made building our new home. Most strategies may only save a few percent but when you combine many of them, you can make a real dent in your energy consumption. How to keep your electric bill low Pick plan with garage shielding house from sun...i.e. not one with a garage on the side or end of house. Remember in Florida, it's all about solar heat gain..through the roof, windows, and walls. Choose a lot that allows you to orient house with garage on west side facing afternoon sun. This allows garage to block afternoon solar heating of the part of the house 'hiding' behind it. Minimize size and amount of west facing windows and doors. Use double pane, low-e glass in vinyl frame windows and fiberglass or vinyl doors. Plant trees and large shrubs to shade the west side of the house. 10' ceilings are desirable. Although you have more cubic feet to cool, you'll feel more comfortable at a higher temperature. A higher ceiling allows the air to stratify. The warmer air will accumulate at the top, well above your head where you can't feel it, the cooler air will sink, making the 'lower level' you live in more comfortable. With a high ceiling, activities that generate heat such as refrigerators, dish and clothes washing, showers, etc., that introduce heat into the living area have their heating effect minimized by the heat-at-ceiling stratification. Ceiling vents in a high ceiling house should be directed down rather than trying to spread the air sideways. Sideways deflection mixes the air, defeating startification. Ceiling fans are not as effective with the higher ceiling as they tend to dislodge the hot air and send it down, causing the air conditioning to run more. Spring or fall, when the windows are open, is the best time for ceiling fan use. Small pedestal fans and the popular 'tower' fans work better during AC use, circulating the cooler, lower level air. Air movement from them may let you set the thermostat higher and save energy. Running a ceiling fan in the winter to 'get the hot air back down' is counter-productive as any reclaimed heat won't compensate for the wind chill effect you'll feel. With 10 foot ceilings, a floor level air return is preferable to minimize disturbance of stratification but with normal 8 foot ceilings, a ceiling return will make the structure more comfortable by evening out the temperature. Have 24" roof overhang to shield windows and much of the wall area from midday sun. The goal is to allow maximum view of clear sky from all windows to minimize need for interior lighting during the day without direct sun entering house during the summer. A 24" overhang will usually do this in the summer , while in the winter, the lower position of the sun in the sky will allow it to shine in for some solar heating although the desired low-e window glazing will minimize that. Be sure the engineering is correct for the wind load where you are building. Two story structures in Florida require extra planning to minimize heat gain as they usually present more wall area to the sun. You lose the 24" overhang advantage shielding the windows and walls on the lower story. This can greatly increase solar heating through the windows and walls of the lower floor which will then convect the heat to the upper level. This is an advantage in northern climates but a liability in the south where cooling is the main concern. There is some advantage here in less roof/attic space, however.. Use hip roof construction...much stronger than gable design...will qualify you for a substantial discount on your windstorm part of your insurance. Check with your agent. Use either galvanized ('bright metal', no colors) roofing...expensive, especially on recommended hip roof designs (a lot of waste cutting the metal with all the angles of a hip roof) or use a radiant barrier. This barrier can either be an aluminum/Mylar film draped over the trusses before the decking is applied or applied on bottom of trusses in existing structures or plywood decking with pre-applied barrier. The radiant barrier will keep the attic much cooler. Plywood makes a much stronger deck material than OSB at a minimal premium in price. Use a roof design with 6/12 pitch. This gives sufficient attic height to maximize convection cooling. Also 6/12 is the 'sweet spot' for wind resistance. As roof pitch gets lower, the tendency of the roof to act as an 'airplane wing' in a windstorm increases raising the chance of roof lifting off. A greater pitch begins to act as a direct barrier to high winds increasing chance of 'push over' failure. A 6/12 allows wind to slide up and over but also creates turbulence on the lee side minimizing lift as well as down force on the upwind side. Try to keep square footage as small as comfortable for you. A 4000 sq. ft. home requires far more energy use than a 1500 sq. ft one. In Florida, build concrete block on a slab. We have hurricanes AND termites here...Code requires ground pre-treatment. Continuing the termite contract is cheap insurance. An extra benefit of on-slab construction is being able to take advantage of the cooling effect of a slab floor. The earth under a house stays fairly cool and especially with some hard surface flooring the small difference in temperature between the earth and the floor surface means very little heat gain from below. Its helpful to think of heat as a fluidÂjust as water flows more forcefully as height of fall increases, heat moves quicker across a greater temperature gap. Use several solar powered attic roof ventilators along with numerous passive vents. In Florida you can't have too much attic venting. We don't get enough cold winter weather to be an issue if you're well insulated. Use R-30 or better in the attic. Insulated cells in concrete block walls are probably not worth the expense. Florida requires so many cells to be poured concrete now for windstorm resistance thereÂs little empty cells left to insulate. Check the Florida Solar Energy Center website and youÂll see that less than 17% of heat gain occurs through the walls (not entirely accurate for two story construction). Also keep in mind that there are many windows and doors that deduct from the wall area and upgrading them will have far greater effect than some fluff in the block cells. A better solution is a foam Âunderlayment beneath the stucco on the west side of the house. Be wary of spray-on underside roof insulation. This may prove to be a time bomb as the roof ages and begins to leak. The decking and trusses may be seriously compromised before you become aware of any leak problem. The 'sealed' nature of the insulation envelope may well lead to extreme damage in the long run. Use fluorescent lighting wherever possible in place of incandescent. LED lighting will be preferable when it becomes more cost efficient Refrigerators are a substantial user of power. Since about 2000, efficiency has been greatly increased in the new units. If yours is old, consider replacing it. Check the energy labels and youÂll see that top or bottom freezer models have consistently lower power usage than side-by-sides. Small access doors to get drinks out are handy and keep all the cold from getting frequently dumped out if you have children opening the fridge frequently. As in house sizes, get the smallest refrigerator you can be comfortable with. Note that external ice and water dispensers take up a lot of interior room and tend to make people buy a larger unit to compensate. Unless you are really tied to using a separate freezer, todayÂs high energy prices far outweigh any savings youÂll get by buying food in bulk and stockpiling it at home. The possibility of increased power failures from more frequent storms and the accompaning food loss also makes freezer use less attractive than it used to be. Point of use hot water heaters can't prove measurable savings. Tank type heaters have such good insulation now that standing heat loss is minimal. Point of use systems will quite likely lead to surcharges from the power companies in the future as the high instant current draw becomes more of a problem during peak power use time. Only tankless gas units can lay claim to significant energy savings due to the elimination of the central flue in a conventional gas tank type heater. There seems to be a lot of misinformation being pushed about AC efficiency. Code requires a minimum of 13 SEER rated Heat Pump equipment. 14, 15, 16, and higher are available at much greater costs. Research will show the only difference between the very expensive high efficiency units and a higher quality 13 SEER is the amount of condenser coil and the controller PC board (also a fancier cabinet). They all use the same brand and model compressor (Copeland Scroll), the same fans, reversing valves, driers, etc. Most companies trumpet the boards as being the key to their high efficiency, this is mostly smoke. When the 'rubber hits the road', what counts for amount of electricity used is how efficiently the compressor can transfer the heat from one place to another. The compressor is what's putting that 12 to 20 amp load on the line. The more you can reduce that value, the lower the electric bill will be. The compressor is moving the refrigerant gas from an area to low pressure to high. That's the work it's doing that runs up your electric bill. As the gas enters the high pressure area, the condensing coil's job is to cool it and cause it to shrink. This shrinking lowers the high pressure and puts less back pressure on the compressor. This has the effect of reducing the work the compressor must do and therefore lowers it's amperage draw. An amp meter is a handy tool for the energy conscious homeowner as it will let him see in real-time what effect his efforts to conserve energy have. You can put it on your heat pump as it runs and perform a simple experiment. First hold a couple of sheets of cardboard against your condensing unit's grill as it runs. You'll see the amperage begin to increase as the compressor's workload goes up since the coils can't shed as much heat and shrink the gas. Second, remove the cardboard and spray a fine mist from your garden hose on the coils and you'll see the amps go down as the coils become more efficient from the evaporative cooling of the water and shrink the gas quicker. Keeping the coils wet all the time would lower your cooling bill but would also corrode the coils so is not a good idea. The way to accomplish this safely is to add a unit called a 'heat recovery unit'. An AC professional can install this by cutting the discharge line from the compressor and sending the hot gas through the recovery unit then back to the condensing unit. The heat recovery unit is a 'heat exchanger' that has two pieces of copper tubing wound tightly together and enclosed in an insulated box. One piece of tubing is the loop carrying the hot, high pressure gas from your condensing unit. The other makes a loop to your hot water heater. Whenever the AC is running, the small water circulator pump in the heat recovery unit turns on and in effect does the same thing squirting water on the condenser coils did as it circulates water through your water heater.The heat from the hot gas transfers through the walls of the tubing into the water causing the gas to shrink and cut the compressor workload. In addition, the unit now provides free hot water for your house, allowing you to shut off your water heater in the summer. These two savings together can easily total $50 a month (!!!!) on your electric bill. Remember, in addition to lowering the workload on the compressor and saving electricity there, your water heater is no longer online. An interesting side benefit is that the more you use your hot water, the lower your electricity bill goes. This doesn't mean using more water (longer showers, etc) but you can set your washing machine to use hot water rather than cold or warm and get cleaner clothes AND save energy. You are using that water anyway and by using it hot, you are 'shedding' heat from the system and increasing it's efficiency. Heat recovery systems are typically less that $1000 and FAR more practical than solar water heaters that have much more complicated control systems, are far higher maintenance items and cost much more. Pushing solar hot water in Florida is doing the consumer a great injustice. Heat recovery units are said to not be practical on high efficiency systems (15 +SEER ratings) but the addition of a heat recovery unit to a 13 SEER system probably raises the entire system's efficiency to the 15 or 16 SEER range if you bring the savings of the water heater into the equation. Water heaters are typically resistance element heaters...the most inefficient way to heat. The industry is cashing in on energy fears by adding more coils to their units and charging a premium for the 15 and 16 SEER units that's much higher than the cost of adding a recovery unit to a SEER 13 system. The higher efficiency unit may save cooling cost but then 'wastes' the perfectly good heat that could be put to use for your hot water by just Âblowing it away outside..

Now that you have discovered you have natural gas, are you going to investigate who much it will cost to bring a pipe into your house? I don't see in the load calculation the R values for the walls and attic? Do you know what values were used for spray foam and batt insulation? Do you know how the spray insulation will be installed in the attic? Will it be open or closed cell? The firs quote is for a 4 ton single stage heat pump (XR15) while the second is for a 5 ton variable speed heat pump (XV20i) which is Trane's top of the line product. It is not a fair apples to apples comparison, but the price gap is big. You need to ask about the size for the second quote.

Table 402.1.2 from IECC 2015 to current is best prescriptive guideline for cost effective energy efficiency. I doubt using weaker local amendments is good strategy. Some energy efficiency experts feel that R49 is good minimum for ceilings in ALL climates and would agree, if the ceiling is traditional vented attic where thick layers of insulation are easy to apply and affordable (loose fill). Some high performance projects in cold climates approach R100 for ceiling. These are international code minimum prescriptive numbers and it's easy to use other compliance paths to demonstrate equal total performance through other balancing improvements. Renovations of vaulted ceilings and insulative sheathing above the roof deck can make sense to go with weaker values. Spray foam applied to bottom of roof decks usually have substantial thermal bridging through rafters or truss chords, often more than the vented attics that prescriptions are based on so I don't think they deserve much leeway. Martin Holladay has the classic article on this common code violation. Efficient homes heating with mini-splits don't need heads in every room, but will need their doors open during hot or cold weather, a deal breaker for many. Then there is David's point about resale but I think good implementation could help tamp down this possible sentiment. Haven't built ductless yet but open to it if owners are. The efficiency one gets with Mitsubishi's smallest unit is unbelievable. One head replaced a whole house furnace in my personal small home, granted winter design temps are stretching it. Energy Star is for all homes. Homeowners or owner builders are eligible but may have a steeper learning curve to get the right details. Always involve a rater early, preferably with feedback during the design stage. Cpartist, sorry for your trouble. With everything you have had to put up with, it's not surprising they flubbed an important technical detail of your build. I think people who value efficiency have to do extra research to ensure they are getting the right feedback on their design and selections. The architect or builder should have the right knowledge and experience in your goals and I think the best projects are collaborative from the beginning. Most build teams valuing efficiency still include HERS raters (Energy Star) and mechanical engineers specializing in HVAC for services like Manual J, D, and S. Third party diagnostics, commissioning, and verification usually help ensure a good investment in home performance certifications like Energy Star.