Thanks. Im having RB and extra insulation installed on Wednesday. Hopefully itll knock the temp in the attic down so the AC can take a much needed rest in this heat.

Anything I need to be watchful of?

With just upgraded insulation in half the house and roof ventilation (added continuous soffit vent, closed up gable vents, added turbines), I've been maxing out my cooling bill at $120 this summer, setting it to 80 during the day and 72 at night. (summer defined as 100 degree+ days in any part of the month)... that's down about $50 from last year. I'll upgrade the insulation on the other half of the house late this year after I gut the master suite.

What FireintheHole said is 100% accurate. I'm not comfortable with the effect I've seen of radiant barrier below roofs down here in south Texas. I think it's a foolhardy move to install it as a retrofit, and there are both a) better ways of doing it (roofing material choice), and b) lower hanging fruit in the sense that insulation should be R-60 and ventilation should be thoroughly addressed by examining how fast the air exchanges out of your attic ... BEFORE you take the tinfoil hat approach.

I call it "snake oil" not because I'm against people making their homes better -- hang out with me on the home improvement board and you'll see I'm all about that, up to and including helping other board members out on their own projects -- but because I think it's the wrong way to go about solving the attic temperature problem and I'm very against the installers and sunshine pumpers (heh) that say it's something that anyone can and should do in their attic. I strongly disagree and say that it's necessary or even desirable.

Do you have any experience/education in construction or engineering?

A new roof isn't a practical solution for an existing home unless the old roof needs to be replaced as it is. Your logic isn't logicking for me.

That is because his logic, or at least a good chunk of it, is not sound logic powerbiscuit.

powerbiscut: Hobbyist renovator. Grew up with it... first memory is pulling nails out of a wall where we pulled down paneling when I was 3. As a family we built 2 houses and did minor or major renos to 5 others. Since I went out on my own, helping friends I've done 2 full houses, bunch of smaller projects. I read a lot (JLC and Fine Homebuilding), help out on friends' projects wherever I can, and basically study the science of construction, architecture, and engineering on my own. My girlfriend's dad is a master plumber and she's a civil engineer, my Dad's best friend is a master builder, and all four of us talk about building science and techniques constantly. (Usually in a "Hey, know what I saw last week? HA!" sense, but... you learn a lot from other people's mistakes. Also, I shamelessly stole that "suntanned my taint" line from the master builder, although he and I had the same experience.)

Professionally, I'm a computer nerd in the linux systems field, and I integrate developer software and public facing systems in a fault tolerant way. That requires a lot of analysis time working back to root causes and complicated systems interaction logic.

I don't claim to be all that smart on my own, but I enjoy the hell out of building systems and figuring out how they work. My own tests, experimenting as I build and renovate things on my own house and others', and sitting down with 30 years of Fine Homebuilding and looking at how they say to use the various materials makes up the source of any advice I give in here. I'm not trying to sell you something, I don't accept money from people I help, and I have actually used the materials I'm talking about or looked deeply at houses that have them installed.

Any Recs for BCS installation ?

NM

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closed up gable vents

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I assume you meant opening up gable vents that have been closed, correct?