Insulation

I had to insulate the attic ceiling above my son's 2 room suite with a Jack and Jill center bathroom because his rooms don't cool in the summer and in the winter, don't heat properly. 

This whole experience began because our 2nd floor AC runs all night long and never cools the rooms.  His rooms are particularly hot because the registers are too far from the unit and his room is western facing.  

We began with simply wanting to add insulation to the entire attic shell (walls and roof line) because we are going to build out the attic to an all purpose room.  Once the new walls were up, we wanted to also insulate the new walls for sound.  Turns out in order to insulate the exterior walls and roof line, you have to fur down all roof rafters to 13" in depth to install the now code R38 insulation (up from R30 when this house was built).  They used 2" x 10" rafters.  That option is very cost prohibited.  

We defaulted to plan B which is to add insulation on top of the existing insulation over the ceilings of his rooms because it wasn't installed correctlly and in every place the sheet rock was penetrated, nothing was sealed.  They used short 4' batting and every seam was lined up creating hot spot lines on the under side aka, his ceiling.  The reasoning for addressing his rooms is that when we build the attic room, his ceilings are not included in the footprint.  

Today was install day of a blown-in material to bring his room up to what I thought was a poorly installed R30 to R38.  The attic floor is almost entirely covered in a 3/4" plywood and I got into a conversation with the insulation installer where the floor decking ends and I I measured 2" x 10" floor joists.  But the installed pointed out a paper ruler he uses for installing the blown in product shows my son's ceilings were built using 2" x 8".  So what this means is, when R30 was code, this builder took the time to save a few dollars and install 2" x 10" boards under the attic floor decking but over my son's rooms there is a 2" drop down.  So he put this product in and then there were electrical wires cris-crossed all over the insulation crushing it to a depth of 8" (which is really 7") which means the builder only installed R19!  No wonder it's so hot!!  It's as if he made it appear the be one thing but it clearly isnt'  To make matters worse, I was going to use some of the un-dencked floor above my son's bedroom for a closet and now I can't because it has a 2" drop down.

I am just mystified as to why inspectors would pass work that doesn't meet code.  I would like to continue the ceiling that was started with the same joists he used and add R38 but when I deck an area for the AC unit, I would have to build a platform running a new ceiling in the opposite direction in order that the R38 can be installed.   

I am less than impressed that inspectors pass work knowing it's not right because they are the homeowner's front line of defense.   When I have called the builder about any issue he dismisses it all and blames me for claiming he's not a good builder.  He blames everything on his subs.

This room was sold as roughed in and it clearly isn't.  The copper for the AC isn't there and when I asked the builder about it, he told me, "Yeah, sometimes they put it in and sometimes they don't."  Meanwhile, I'm thinking, "they?", it's his house - he built it.  They didn't even put the plumbing and the drain on what would be the same wall.  They didn't account for the fact that someone building out a 450SF all purpose space would have an ice maker and at least an undermount refrigerator and sink, none of that was roughed in.