HVAC

Things are starting to move pretty fast on the project now and it takes a lot of time to find, download, and then upload photos, so you may have to sit tight and bear with a few posts not having any photos in the interest of completion in a timely manner.

Last week Scott set up a meeting for me to attend with the HVAC guy.  It makes sense for me to be to take the meetings because I can go when little one is at Mother's Day Out and then Scott doesn't have to miss any work.  The downside is that I'm pretty much an idiot when it comes to technical things.  However, I was the good wifey and let the HVAC guy in.  We had a long discussion about what was going to go where and spent a lot of time brainstorming how the supply could get to the opposite side of the garage, how we were going to run ducts to the bedroom and where the lovely return grate was going to go.  Essentially, he wanted to run the ducts straight across the middle of the space to get the supply to the external wall, where it would best circulate air.  He then wanted to T out to get them to the corners.  I told him there was no world in which I could think of a way to make that look good.  We talked about how to run it across the wall of built-ins and hide it over there.  We talked about the possibility of a mini-split system that would require no ducts at all.  We talked about a lot of things and when we got the estimate, it was large.  Why are we scheduling with HVAC guys when we have a builder, you may be asking yourself.  That is an excellent question and one that I asked, too.  Scott wants to be sure that we're getting the most reasonable prices we can get.  I saw the builder last week at the garage and asked him about the HVAC.  He set up an appointment today with his guys.

When Scott debriefed me on last week's appointment and I said things like, 'I had no idea what size unit we needed,' or 'I think that the water heater has to go in a certain place because there's something about condensation,' or 'I think there's going to be a big soffit in our bedroom that may impact how we place furniture.' Scott decided that he needed to be present for the next meeting.  The meeting last week let me/us know enough to get us started thinking about some things- namely, we may have to actually tear up the drywall on the ceiling, which we were trying to avoid.  During the meeting today Scott talked his technical talk with the guys while I toddler-wrangled.  At a few points in injected my thoughts like, 'I can't imagine a world in which it would look good to have T shaped ductwork running across my ceiling.'  It was decided that we would for sure be ripping up the drywall once the electricians (who happened to be there) chimed in that they would also need to rip some out to get the zoning right for the existing lights.  Decisions were made quickly, we were able to get back to our day, and the estimate will arrive tonight.  Here's hoping that it's a bit lower.

One thing that we've constantly had to do during this project is redefine our expectations with respect to pricing.  Living in a hot market with construction everywhere we turn is creating the perfect storm for getting quality work at decent prices- we're learning we can get one or the other.  Either way, we think we know what we need to do and Scott ordered all the radiant heating stuff today which should be in by the end of the week.  Hopefully the contractor can get going on that early next week and things will really start moving for us.