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Originally Posted by Bonanza
Unfortunately, the houses here in TV are only of average construction. They have the minimum insulation in the walls and ceiling and you will not find any batting in any of the walls or ceiling with the exception of the garage/house wall. Ideally, we should have R-30 batting in the ceiling. All of the homes have blown-in insulation which eventually settles over time and is displaced because of winds. They blow it in because it is cheap and fast.
In the CBS houses (concrete block & stucco) since we have no exterior walls with studs (except the garage interior wall), the insulation they provide is is bare bones -- R-3 with a minimal air space between the block and foil covered insulation. In a decently built house in Florida, we should have at least R-11. I think the vinyl siding houses may have better insulation in the walls, but I am not sure.
Another thing they skimp on is the roof overhang. It is much too narrow for Florida houses and offers almost no protection from the sun. I guess you can tell from the tone of the above paragraphs that our windows are just okay. Nothing to write home about there either.
We are currently having granite countertops installed in our kitchen. After the existing countertops were removed we were shocked to see that the wallboard behind the cabinets was never taped! You have to wonder what other short cuts they take during construction.
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Bonanza: You make a lot of good points, and not all that surprising for large development, non-custom built homes. And that's true pretty much anywhere in the country you want to compare. Also, just as another data point, in our recently purchased CBS Designer Home, the construction specs we received at closing indicate that R-30 Batt & Blown insulation was used in all Living Area ceilings, and a combo of R-5/R-11 was used in the walls. R-5 rigid foam in exterior walls, and R-11 Batt in the Garage/Home common walls. Not moved down yet, so no actual experience over this winter. Will be interesting to see how next winter turns out. With my luck, it'll end up being a "100 Year" warm winter, and we'll have the AC on the whole time!! LoL Happy 2015!!