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Re: my earlier toot.
Honest question - is a "utility room" some sort of Midwestern thing?
Talking about how to avoid running ducts through attics, it occurred to me that it might be.
Here, if you don't have a basement, there's usually a room with your furnace/air handler, water heater, and washer/dryer. Plumbing often routes there, too.
Sometimes it's less of a room and more of a closet, but we can't just stick the washer and water heater in the garage 'cause they'll freeze.
Just thinking about how norms feel normal and stepping outside of them feels weird.
When I hear people say "where else would the furnace go?" or whatever, it's super puzzling to me because... in the furnace room! We literally called it that in the house I grew up in.
But if it's normal to shove it up in the attic where you live, planning a room for that stuff might feel wasteful.
@TechConnectify It is quite strange, sometimes I'll see some construction/building videos featuring southern construction and I don't understand some of it.
I also don't get aggressive vapor barriers, but in my region they are somewhat discouraged since everything is just always so wet, they trap moisture and cause mold and decay.
@Denton That's basically what brough this on.
Not really a video, but visiting my brother in San Diego and remembering just how batshit that house seems as a Midwesterner.
It's... fine, mostly, but his energy bills would be quite a lot lower if somebody from the Midwest built that house.
I lived in San Diego years ago, and while the water heater and washer/dryer were in the garage, the furnace was in a tiny closet on the main floor. The duct work ran through the floor between the upper and lower levels, which seemed quite reasonable to me, basically no heating or cooling would be wasted to the outside.
Of course the single pane aluminum windows and the almost complete lack of useful insulation made a sane design kind of pointless...