true. my spec sheet is for Louisiana,south central La., a hot humid climate. while location isn't in the actual specs location is in the links & of course my user name. lzerarc,you got my gender wrong. LOL. Are you still building Energy Star homes? I've been doing mostly existing homes but have a builder that wants to build to the 50% better standard, for the $3,000 builder credit. do you find this too much to ask of a builder? just wondering if I want to invest time & effort into this..again. glad to see my specs are helping. please no IC recessed lights. ICAT only. recessed lights & duct leakage is so easy to get right and has such a bad effect when it isn't done right. these two things are my pet peeves. best of luck.

To elaborate on thermal bridging since it was brought up again... there are several ways to calculate it, but to keep it as simple as possible, here is how it affects your total wall's insulation. First thing, if you put in r20 rated insulation product, you are certainly not getting an r20 wall for cavity walls. Other products such as ICF and SIPs (some SIPs even have thermal bridges) are nearly thermal bridge free and have what is called continuous insulation. My home is an ICF house from the footings to the roof, and there are no thermal bridges anywhere until the roof line. This gives me an r28 continuous insulation. However with wood frame structures, you have a framing reduction to take into account. Most new homes, studs, heads and plates take up anywhere from 18-25% of the wall area. (lets keep the numbers whole and rounded for easy math) Say you select blown fiberglass in a 2x6 wall, gives you roughly r20. You have 1000sqft of wall surface. That r20 is only for the stud bays, and every 16" roughly you only have an r1 due to the stud (framing factor) So you have 800 sqft of wall at r20 and 200 sqft of wall at r1. . Your "r20" wall is performing at an r16 on average with the studs acting like heat sinks. Add just 1" of XPS foam to the exterior (r5). Your r20 turns into r25, and your r1 turns into r6. Now 200 sqft of your wall is an r6 vs an r1 and reduces the heat sink effect.The materials to add that 1" XPS would be roughly 500-600 for that 1000 sqft wall. The upgrade from blown fiberglass to open cell foam is typically more than that. For adding exterior foam, details are pretty simply up to about 1.5" thick. After that, the details change and become more costly. Luckily for you, in zone 4. 1.5 is about as thick as you need to go. 1" would be a good start, and your details really do not change. I have detailed 1" foam and windows 1 of 2 ways. Either install the sheathing and foam and then the window. Or with 1" foam, most window flanges are 1 1/8"+ wide, so you can install the window and then install the foam. This gives them about 1/8"+ lap for a caulk joint for trim to hide the foam. The trim stands proud of the window with this detail obviously. 1.5" adds another step. I like to detail a frame out around the windows and butt the foam into it. So frame the wall as normal, install sheathing, then rip a 2x4 in half to give them 1.5x1.75 furring to frame out around the window RO. Install the foam, butt into the furring around the window, and then set the window, nailing into the furring. Everything planes out, and quite simple. Obviously this can also be done with 1" foam too, its just not necessary. There are lots of details floating around out there. Check out green building advisor as well. You can also checkout my blog for more details and nerdy building information. Again, a very untechincal explaination, but you get the idea hopefully. Here is a link that might be useful: home building blog

Within budget, energy efficient and functional, doesn’t seem like a lot to ask till you start to put it all together. This design has finished up being 250m2 and it will be sitting on 3000m2 section. We built on the same land some years ago. We then split the land in half and planted lots of fruit trees in and around the existing mature tree’s. It’s flat……almost and has fields on two sides. Other than the house that we built on the front of the section it’s very private. We also planted on the new boundary between the existing house and this new section which is now well established. The front section had no trees and I used to look out my kitchen window and imagine my new future home with all the trees with paths running through them. We never thought that building this new house would take so long to get started and leaving our rental house each week to go mow the section, pick fruit and trim foliage was depressing. Well, we made it but the budget is tight and a lot of thought has gone into making it the best it can be, including all the rooms we need and being as energy efficient as I can get it. It’s only just been sent off for costing so changes are still possible. I can give you the reasons for the design but I am more than happy to hear your thoughts. The outdoor room with slider facing south and the north facing slider gives me Mother Nature’s Air Con and I get to enjoy more of the land that surrounds the house. You will notice that there are no doors on the lounge or the kitchen – it’s just budget and a sit down with DH of what we need over what we want. To the right of the entrance is bed 1 (DH office) and a ‘bath’ room. This was a solution to the future sale of the house in NZ. Let me explain – When I arrived from the UK 12 years ago, I found it strange that ALL NZ homes had a room with shower, bath and sink with a separate loo (which often didn’t have a small sink!?!?) It’s the same today but they do tend to add a baby sink in the loo. This is seen as very old fashioned in the UK and most renovations include knocking the loo through to the bathroom. So, if I had to sell the house in the future maybe a Kiwi could handle a shower room and bathroom – they don’t like change or different and I learnt this on my first build 12 years ago! Halls are to a minimum as much as possible, I saved on a door again between family and hall……..ummm not sure yet, can I live without one? You may notice how straight and lined up the roof is – I wanted a covered BBQ area to the back so that helped to line up the roof and I pulled the roof out over the garage too. It could be seen as a boring house and I would love to go gable crazy but needs, wants and budget played a huge part here. However, input and thoughts on the subject will be helpful. The bedrooms are small but acceptable here. You may question the huge scullery but this is for work needs not an excessive want. A few things you can’t see – we have so many power outages here that we will be looking at solar panels even if it is just to the kitchen. We want to upgrade insulation etc. With a bit of research I have chosen to have the kitchen company build the vanities. I have a choice between cheap, nasty but affordable or $1700 looks OK. Going off the built in we had made in the last house I am thinking the kitchen company will give me the look I want at a cost I can work with. Love to hear what you think

I think you are exactly right jannicone, although I whenever I consider that point, I sort of shake my head. I get that most people don't value energy efficiency like I do, and that's fine, but sometimes experience's like schreibdave's seem a bit irrational to me. Our new, roughly 2600 sq ft home will cost the same or less per month in total utility costs to live in than our current 900 sq ft home. It will also be a lot more comfortable (temperature, air quality, etc. etc.). Yes, it costs a little more up front, but the much maligned-in-this-thread payback period for the difference in cost will be well within the period of time we plan to live in the house. Most of the energy efficiency aspects we chose were not THAT expensive. I guess I just don't understand why most prefer the trade-offs required for lower initial cost, which usually means houses built as cheaply as possible (except for the granite countertops). It seems like finding the lowest possible initial cost is all people consider, regardless of the balance of cost of ownership. With the right choices, it costs much less money overall to have a somewhat higher initial cost and pay for that in the monthly mortgage payment, than have a somewhat lower mortgage payment and pay much higher energy costs every month forever (in a less comfortable house). We knew before we started building that almost no one would be willing the pay the same premium we are willing to for the energy efficiency aspects of our home if we needed to sell it. In my rural area, people regularly accept $300+/month energy bills, even on houses where the cost of sealing some ducts and adding a little insulation would pay itself back in less than a year, and the house would be more comfortable. People around here have $ for everything else in the world besides replacement windows for their leaking, single pane windows, which would start saving them money every month very quickly. I don't get it. (Apologies if I sound smug, I just don't understand "saving" money on less insulation and poor windows so you can buy a much larger HVAC system and nicer countertops.....does not compute).