Cooling in Color

We're not quite in the homestretch, but things are starting to feel a lot more finished. To pick up exactly where we left off last time, we do indeed have a new hole in our house and stairs leading into the addition. It's tarped off so the only way the kids can get to their toy closet is to go into the addition and up these stairs.

Utilities have been connected to the sub panel, mounted near the forgotten bathroom in the unfinished part of our basement, and the outside condenser unit to our mini-split. Power is still off, but presumably can be turned on now at any time!

Inside, we have PAINT! And we don't hate it (always a risk, despite our attempts to preview as much as we can):

We went with Benjamin Moore Mulberry Wine, which does indeed match its description of "dusty rose undertones mellow out this medium purple." I really like it--not too bold and bright and not too dark either (for a while, we had been considering much darker shades, but ended up chickening out with something more in the middle, and I think that was the right call. Also telling us that we're at the beginning of the end? Wood flooring! Here it is just waiting to be installed:

There are still a lot of steps to go--more painting of course (both inside and out), assembly of the built-in PAX units in the closet area, and, probably most significantly, a roof (scheduled to arrive next week, we hope). But it does feel like we are getting close.

 

A Pause

The pause in my posts is directly related to the fact that there simply has not been much to share. In late March, we had a slew of specialist contractors come to put in all the infrastructure that we need in the space. Plumbers came through and ran the pipes for our toilet...

...And sinks. Here's the shower room:

And the toilet room (which actually will need to be rerouted, since we failed to tell our contractor that we planned to have medicine cabinets, so the recessed box will have to go where the pipe currently is):

The HVAC team brought in our Mitsubishi Hyper-Heating mini-split (I don't know about you, but that brand makes me think of cars and not HVAC units--but apparently they make quite good systems!) and loaded it into the encapsulated crawl space. Then the next two days consisted of running the ductwork after consulting us about where we'd like everything to go. Since the HVAC unit is under the floors, most of our vents are low to the ground (except the return, which is up high since hot air rises and it usually sucks out hot air, though this is a year round system that also provides heat). In the bedroom, our vents are on the floor. In the bathroom(s), they are on the walls just above the floor. In our closet area, one will be coming out of the bottom of our built-in closets. One vent (into the toilet room):

Floor vents in the bedroom:

Return, in the hallway:

After a long walk-through to confirm where we wanted switches and plugs based on both the blueprint and last minute preferences (like how high we want the ones in the bathroom shelving units, etc.), the electrician ran the wiring to all the things. Here's the wall our bed will be on:

One aspect I hadn't realized as we committed to a heated towel rack, steam shower, AND radiant flooring is how many control units we will need on the wall. Here's the wall of the toilet room, looking through the hallway to a similar set up on the wall of the shower room.

The electrician also started getting things set up for our recessed lighting and a box for mounting a ceiling fan:

And got the wiring set up for our outdoor lighting:

They also installed a subpanel in the basement (picture later when it looks more like a real working electrical box and less like an empty box with some random dangling wires). 

The framers also came back to put the hardware in for our panel doors (the metal bits):

That, all together, took us to the end of March. I'm including a lot of detail now but honestly was planning to just gloss over all that stuff. So why haven't we had any updates in April. Because WINDOWS.

We're at a standstill until our windows arrive and they are supposed to be ready this coming week. I know this is a huge improvement over the multi-month waits during the pandemic, but I'm still impatient to get moving, since construction stopped 3 weeks ago while we just...wait. The next step is dry wall and that can't happen until windows (and an inspection, apparently). There's an additional complication--the patio door and transom windows above it won't be ready until June. Usually that's also required to pass this inspection. Our contractor is keeping his fingers crossed that we can get an "all but the doors" inspection to keep going with the construction. Because otherwise we're on hold until June. So...yeah, that's fun.

An update to our last post on metals - we took the safer route and returned to our preferred brushed nickel. After our contractor scared us away with a comment of "no one is asking for gold anymore" (something we don't think is true but was enough to spook us), we realizing we did not want to play into a fad. We know we like silvers and were struggling to match everything anyway, so brushed nickel it is. At least it will match the rest of the house.

Breezeway 3: electrical, HVAC, and masonry

This week, as we suspected, the big work slowed down so progress looks less dramatic. But some critical infrastructure got put in and we are definitely seeing things come together.

First - the electrician came and wired us up! Nothing is live, but they fed the lines into the basement where they are ready to be linked up to the circuit breaker box. Here are outlets, switches, and (in the next photo) the recessed lighting:

 Here's the wiring to the back patio:

And here's the line to the basement, complete with giant hole in the floor:

You may have noticed in picture one that we also have a fancy new garage door (beat the plywood board from last week. The mason came to remove the brick work and raise the door up the level of the future floors Here's the view from inside the garage:

They made progress on the front wall too, installing the Hardiboard and starting to do some of the decorative work that will make the wall blend into the rest of the house's style. In addition, they pulled up the big slate squares that led to the now defunct entry AND pulled out our mailbox, since the placement doesn't make any sense now without a door there (even if a future owner potentially uses the garage, it still seemed odd to have a post mailbox right there near the house - it would make more sense at the end of the driveway).

Our mailbox is currently hilariously propped up beside our front door (it's on the other side of the door now, but this is a good view of the gigantic post):

We need to decide on a new mailbox. We are leaning towards some kind of wall-mount one right below the entry light on the brick, like this one from Home Depot:

Any opinions, pros, or cons? We could definitely use some suggestions here. No door slots, as we like our front door. Having some security (like this model) is nice, but then we're forced to use a key every time to get the mail out (recall that we don't even use a key to get into the house anymore, thanks to keypad entry).

Finally, onto HVAC. Today the AC people came and hooked up our vents. We have an intake/return (this one here) and two vents - one at each end of the room. This room, while not fully insulated, is now officially "conditioned."

Earlier this week, our heating guy came and put in hot water pipes from our heating unit up to where the baseboard will be installed once the drywall is in.

Stay tuned for the next exciting installment. In the meantime, tell me your mailbox ideas!

Still a Few Surprises

Most time when a house surprises you, it's not good. Bad wiring, a busted pipe, etc. And after living here 6 years now, there are not too many surprises left. But recently, we found one.

For all this time, going up and down the basement stairs several times a week at least - to clean the kitty litter, do laundry, run on the treadmill, etc. - we blindly assumed that this was an AC vent. It looks like an AC vent, and was not in a completely illogical spot, given that our upstairs intake is on the wall on the stairwell.

But when we worked with the HVAC company this summer to optimize our new AC, we realized that it was not hooked up to the house's ventilation at all.

We finally popped off the vent. And found a lightbulb socket! Pop in a new bulb and...

Ta-dah! Operated on the same switch that turns on the overhead light in the stairwell:

Minor, true. But still a fun little surprise. The toddler now claims it is "sunny" when she climbs up and down the stairs.

Ducting

One of the advantages of the Carrier Infinity system is that it can calculate duct static pressure. Briefly, this has to do with the pressure of the air as it blows through the ducts. Like blood pressure, lower is better. The newer AC systems expect a reading of around 0.5 inches per water column. Our ducts are delivering a reading of nearly 0.9.

Why should we try to fix this? Well, the air blower is going to be working harder than it should, which is wasting energy and shortening its life span. Our installer told us for under $1000 they could add more returns to increase the amount of air entering the system, which should reduce the pressure. They also wanted to add some supplies to each room of the upstairs to help equalize the temperature in the house.

Before we had any energy improvements done the house, the temperature difference between the top and main floors was around 8 degrees. Afterwards it dropped to about 5 degrees. So doubling the AC vent numbers on the top floor should help!

Closet without the shelves, before any vent work

Where a return is going

Before the new supply was added

Cutting a hole in the closet to run the new ducts, which will connect with the existing duct, outside the wall

New return hole

Supply hole in the baby room

The return in the linen closet is the biggest problem. The air is being pulled from the hallway between the walls into the ducting. Only a couple of inches to fit a lot of air. So the plan is the put some proper ducts in. But we'll be losing quite a bit of closet space. Which is probably why the previous install ran INSIDE the wall. They are also adding a return next to the Chinese painting in our room. .

Results of the finished work:

New supply on the right

Much tighter closest. We lose a lot of shelving on the right

So, did we hit 0.50? Drum roll........

No we did not

Not even close. A bummer, really. From reading around the internet it seems that getting below 0.7 is just fine. So 0.73 is pretty close? Our AC guy says this is fine, but what would you expect him to say?  We are pretty disappointed but we have dropped way too much money on this project to do anything more now. It's not even clear what can be done - we are running out of space to install returns.

The system should be fine. I just need to stay on top of the filter cleanings to make sure the pressure doesn't build up too high. The doubling of the vents upstairs has also reduced the temperature difference between the top floor and main floor from around 5 degrees to 2-3 degrees. A noticeable difference.

AC Install

At 8:30 am three guys (from Company 2) showed up to install our new AC, the 2-stage 17 Seer 2-stage Carrier Infinity. A little before 6 pm the job was done. I'd estimate up to 20 man hours were used to get it installed. And there's still more to do! But that's for a later post.

Air handler ducts and parts

Mummified air handler

3 tons of cooling

The old one

The new one is a few inches taller and wider

The new air conditioner was dropped into place within an hour. After about another hour of hooking stuff up outside the guys disappeared into our crawl space for most of the day. During their lunch break I took a few pictures of our old air handler, which is located in the crawl space behind the headboard of our bed.

Old air handler

Ripping out the old air handler and some of the ducts

The AC guy wanted to keep the old copper pipes, which worried me that he was trying to cut some corners, but he said that since we had some fairly extensive insulation done in the attic, it would be disruptive to remove and install the new copper if the old ones were still intact. He promised they would pressure-test the old pipes and re-use them only if they were still OK. They were and were flushed out with some cleaning solution and nitrogen gas.

Cleaning out and checking the old copper refrigerant pipes

Old ducts

Testing testing

Air handler gone. The drip tray was removed later

Like an artist signing his canvas, the company owner signed the drip tray.

Our fancy, new AC thermostat is wi-fi enabled and can run lots of diagnostics to let us know how the system is functioning (it's also smaller, therefore we are stuck with some annoying screw holes to fill).

One problem? Being able to see how the system is functioning. It's an issue of too much knowledge. It turns out that new systems are designed to be run with less static pressure, so that the air comes out gradually and cools the house without the noisy gusts of cold air from the vent that were apparently the norm (and preference?) in the 90s. Our system was running at almost 1 inch static pressure and it should be running at 0.5. Which means our ducts aren't optimal for the new system. Which means a lot more work...The good news is that our AC company agrees this isn't optimal. Some complaints on the web are that a company will install a new AC unit, learn that it's running at 0.9 or higher, and just say "oh it's fine." Our company agrees we need to try to improve airflow, at least.

We can still run the AC as is it now, but it's not really working as it should. Back to the drawing board - duct work in progress. More to come.