Celluoise or Baton?

[Crash13]

Hey guys I'm new to the forum. I've been learning a lot of good stuff on here lately, and now I have a question or two for you all. Ok, first off, I'm going to be building a new house this summer. It'll be a 2500 sqft Cape Cod, however, only about 1900-2000 sqft will be finished for awhile. There will be a good chunk upstairs that will remain unfinished until I can put some money together to take care of it. Anyhow, my builder has presented me with many options, and one thing that I've been racking my brain over lately is insulation and HVAC. I've decided this much, I'm going to keep my exterior walls at 4" (nominal) thick. Also, I'm going to be setting up my own geothermal system. The two things I can't figure out are: what insulation to go with and what size geothermal unit to use? I'll have an air-to-air exchanger installed and my basement walls will be encased in 2" thick foam insulation. So my question is, is celluoise insulation worth the upgrade? My builder is telling me it'll be about $6,000 extra to upgrade to celluoise over baton. My other question, which is probably in the wrong forum, but follows along with the same topic...... how big of a geothermal unit should I be looking at? 3, 3.5, or 4 tons? Ohh, I live in southeastern michigan. I understand that going overboard on the cooling side of things is bad because the unit will never run long enough to pull out humidity, but what if there is a variable speed fan option where I could run the fan very slowly during cooling? There is also an electric heater option that basically turns on only when absolutely needed during the coldest of nights. However, someday I plan to install a wood stove in the living room, probably about the same time that I finish the upstairs. I dont' want ro ramble much more, so if you need anymore info please ask. Thanks.

[danh]

This is an easy one, so I'm amazed that no one has handled it yet.

Um, all insulation manufacturers will tell you that their insulation works best (read: only works) when combined with a quality air sealing package. However, your builder probably isn't giving you one of those.

In that case, cellulose does a much better job of dealing with assembly anomalies that circumvent the insulative abilities of the insulation. Namely air leakage. It's not perfect, but it helps, and it's cheaper & more reliable than detailing the poly...

$6k seems like a lot to go to cellulose. Is your building resizing studs in that estimate? Why?

Variable speed systems really aren't optimized, for whatever speed they end up running on, meaning they burn energy quite quickly. If you have cellulose in the attic too, expect better protection from incident radiant heat (the roof), so you may find that even on the hottest days, the upper floors stay cool enough without the increased peak capacity.

Another dirty little trade secret is the fact that in terms of energy use quality, ceiling fans are light-years ahead of all other technologies... with the increase in energy scarcity (or as we typically say "rising energy prices"), it's probably a good idea to ween ourselves of low-efficiency systems.

[ODDJOB]

As far as the mechanical equipment, a load calculation would provide you with a heat loss/gain to properly size your equipment. It sounds like you are building a very tight house therefore, I would hope the builder or a mechanical outfit could provide the calculation.