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Community and Q&A

HVAC unit in attic

casadia | Posted in Energy Efficiency and Durability on

The contractor installed an HVAC air handler in our attic space. The round flexible ducts, hot/cool air supply, lay on the insulation or on the 2″x4″ roof joists.. Our local building code requires R40 in the attic space.
The ducts are not well insulated and I believe they have taken away from the R40 requirement. By how much, I could not guess.
The Air Handler has minimal insulation on the interior, 11/2″ at best. Where the electrical heating coils are located, there appears to be zero insulation.

My question; is there a correct way to insulate the Air Handler with the assumption the heat loss through the metal skin of the Air Handler could be reduced? Likewise for the supply ducts.

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Replies

  1. GBA Editor
    Martin Holladay | | #1

    Bob,
    Here is an article that explains what you have to do: Creating a Conditioned Attic.

  2. casadia | | #2

    Thank you for your reply, however I am not interested in conditioning my attic space. The cost is prohibitive.
    I was more interested in insulating the furnace unit itself and methods to do so.

    Bob Nickason

  3. GBA Editor
    Martin Holladay | | #3

    Bob,
    If you try to wrap your furnace with insulation, you will probably void the unit's warranty.

    Some builders and homeowners have built partitions around furnaces in attics to create an insulated room up there. This probably won't work for atmospherically vented furnaces, however, since these furnaces need access to adequate volumes of combustion air.

    I'm sorry to tell you that furnaces, air handlers, and ductwork should never be located in a vented, unconditioned attic. Once a contractor has made the mistake of putting equipment up there, solutions tend to be expensive.

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