We have Icynene with a 2 story in the same area. Lots of windows. We went with 1 unit with a damper system and gas furnace (high efficiency with variable speed) with fresh air intake. It is working nicely but haven't gotten our first bill yet. The thermostat shows 76 deg inside temp and it feels much cooler.

Where are you txgal? We are building in Spring. Boy the Icynene is expensive. Quoted $14k vs $4k for batt. How much do you think you were abe to reduce tonnage by, and what didyou do to compensate for the gas in teh attic. So it sounds liek so far you are happy. A friend in Tomball used one of tehse radio personalities in Houston to design a system. He has a two story also and a single system. He can't get his house to go below 82 and there is almost no air coming from some of the farther away vents. This personality has now admitted he sized incorrectly and is putting in an additional 3 ton for free.

Mid-way in building a 3600 sq ft (2500 1 st flr, 1300 2 nd flr) near Charolette, NC with Icyne and a dual fuel furnace for 1st flr and heat pump for 2 nd.

This ended up being only about 7 K more than batts once tonnage was reduced after the J calc. The payback seems obvious (& short) with Duke Power offering an 8% discount on bills.

Energy will never be cheaper & after this hot summer I was easily sold.

But I did not want just a heat pump so the duel fuel (gas) system for the 1 st floor where all the bedrooms are.

The same contractor is doing the insulation and HVAC.

What is the discount basis ffor Duke, the Icynene, high eff ac etc.

I was told it is just 8 % but I am checking with Duke tomarrow. No specific online answers seem available. Call 800-827-5114. More later.

14 or 16 SEER for the A/C? And he never recommends over 16 for that? Did he say what his rationale is?

He said that for an Icynene system, you would never recoup the cost of the higher eff units, He suggested HE if standard insulation (batt) If I read correctly, every jump in SEER yields about 3% total additional savings over the previous one. But the costs start going up exponentially for the higher eff. He also said he has not seen the HE systems perform as well in a high demand situation such as a large dinner party. They are fine under normal ops but apparnetly don't take the extra stress well.

Thanks, Tim. We're doing Icynene also. I was gonna go for the highest eff. available. We don't do large dinner parties. Also we're putting in 4 Mitsubishi Mr. Slim mini-splits, which we've had for 4 years now and LOVE. Very quiet and very efficient, even though ours are only 10 SEER. Even in Atlanta, GA, we can use only the Mr. Slims all except the 3 hottest months, when we use central.

The thing that I really think about is future costs of electricity--near future, not 20 years from now when PERHAPS we have better technologies, and perhaps some savings has been passed on to us. I'm skeptical about that. So, I wonder if we might not best consider the most eff. I will definitely check those prices at each SEER level, though.

Sorry I don't know anything about the heat pump. We don't find them very useful here.

Are you installing a dehumidifier? I think we'll have to and I thought you sure would in Houston.