More HVAC prep. Good bye dumpster

  The Bank process is still on going, as is the initial quotes from Mike and his crew.  Both should be resolved very soon.  Mike is still sending an army of subcontractors to bid the build and I have good confidence that he's really working with our best interests in mind. We had one stone installer price the job, which Mike declined since he felt the bid was way over priced.  He's since found another installer to perform the work at a better price.  

We got a chance to go out there Monday after our meeting with Margaret.  Just enough time to hang out a bit and clean up the inside of the house.  While we were there, the water and sewer installer was walking the driveway to measure how long the trench will be.  The dumpster was also removed from the lot.  Even though the HVAC installers piled it high with removed floor foam, the dumpster transporter secured everything with a mesh tarp and hauled it away.

The HVAC installers, Porter and Heckman, were there during the week, prepping the basement ceiling for the supply runs.  Lots of foam was removed so the ducts could be installed up above the eventual drywall layer.  The basement is full of ducts and foam, but at least Porter and Heckman have the decency to put it in garbage bags rather than just dropping it where they cut it.

As mentioned, we had a long meeting with our interior designer Margaret for matters of doors, trim, and lighting.  If there's any questions to if you should hire an interior designer, let me dispel them.  Margaret has been the most useful member of our build team hands down.  Not only does she quickly distill design choices to the architecture of the house and our personal tastes.  I couldn't imagine having to wade through the millions of choices out there on every aesthetic design element.  She listens to our suggestions and either works them into the design or tells us why it would be a bad idea.  Not only has she helped us with the design elements, she introduced us to Mike.  So she acted as a vetting service since she has worked extensively with him in the past.

Our meeting with Margaret took place at Bolyard Lumber.  Mike showed up in the beginning of the meeting to give us samples of the Azek bead board we're using for the porch ceiling, and give us some pamphlets for columns.  Since he knew we were choosing doors, he gave us an opinion on what to look for.  We spent a couple hours looking at interior doors, molding and trim, ceiling treatments, and the lighting plan.

For interior doors, we looked at the difference between an all MDF door and a MDF skinned door that uses laminated veneer lumber (lvl) for all the striking surfaces.  Obviously the later is more expensive at about $150 more per door but Mike said he prefers these, from an installation perspective.  He said the MDF gets damaged easier on the edges and are a little more difficult to patch.  From our perspective, I think once the door is hung, the changes of damage are minimized, but if we're looking for something longer lasting, the lvl door would be the way to go.  Since we're painting all the interior doors, there's no need to consider a wood door.  We're going with a simpler shaker style, two panel door, which ties in the design choices with the kitchen cabinets.  

We looked at baseboard molding and door trim casings and decided to go with a similar transitional clean lined look.  We'll use crown molding in the dining room, master bedroom, rotunda, and maybe the turret room.  The rooms that have curved walls will need a rubber molding, which looks like wood (we're going to paint it) but is flexible.  It feels like a very heavy rubber and you wouldn't be able to tell that it's not wood unless you can touch it.  Pretty awesome stuff.

We wrapped up the meeting by going though room by room and looking at the lighting plan Margaret devised.  I'll post more on the subject when I have pictures to show, but suffice to say, it's exhausting and complete.  When we bought our current house, there was minimal COP lighting installed in each room.  Basically one flush dome light in each room, two eyeball recessed cans in the great room, and a ceiling fan/light combo in the master bedroom.  Considering we moved from an apartment that didn't have any ceiling installed lights, save in the kitchen and bathroom, it was luxurious.  Eventually, I installed more lighting in every room, but to design a house and consider the lighting requirements of each room, and have them installed before move in is going to be great.

   Here's the dumpster after some of the HVAC work in the basement.  Large sections of the ICF foam is cut out to make chases for the supply and return ducts. They stacked as much as they could in the dumpster and bagged up the rest in the basement.  It looks like all the chases are cut in so there shouldn't be much more to come out.  

   Here's what one of the return chases look like.  In a wooden house construction, the returns run through the walls like ours does, but the space between the floor joists is hollow, so an HVAC installer will just use the empty space and screw sheet aluminum to the underside of the floor joists, closing in a box.  This will run to the return duct, which supplies air back to the furnace. Since our floors are ICF, we can remove some of the foam, which can then be used as the return chase.  I'm not sure how they'll close this off, but I imagine it will be something similar since both 2x6 nailers are still in place.  My only concern is how the drywall will be laid over the return chase aluminum.

   Here's the future work out room, which sits under the great room.  If you look closely, you'll see the chases for the supply ducts that run to the back of the house.  There's a beam here that the ducts will have to dip under, but there's no getting around that.  We'll just have to figure out a creative way to box those in, which shouldn't be too difficult.  There are four supply vents in the great room but there are more than four chases here, so I'm not sure what the other chases are being used for.  The returns for this room aren't that far back on the wall so I know it's not that.  There will be some speaker wire run to this wall, but I doubt they carved chases for them.  Maybe they're carving out for electrical since there will most likely be wall sockets on this wall.  I'm hoping that after the ducts are installed, we'll get the chance to spray foam around them and seal the chase back up.

   Here's some of the duct work that will be installed.  There will be two supplies and two returns that will hook up to the furnace.  Each pair of supply and returns will run across the house, under the level of the ICF floor, one in the front of the house and one in the back.  We arranged it this way to minimize the number of ducts that need to pass under the main beams that go down the middle of the house.  You can also see some boxes of smaller diameter ducts and some of the garbage bags full of ICF foam.  I didn't peak in the boxes to see if it was rigid duct or soft, but I imagine it's going to be rigid.

   Here's the bonus space behind our master closet.  The soft duct you see is from the mudroom bathroom and it comes through this space to the soffit roof overhang in the back of the house, or at least it will when it's all connected together.

   Here's a better look at what's going on with the mudroom bathroom vent.  It runs in the ICF chase, through the garage wall and through the ICF floor in in the master closet.  Usually it can't pass over a beam since the concrete slab and pour usually ties into the beam, but in this case, the ICF sits on top of the beam, so I don't think there's an issue with it passing through here.  It's probably the best solution to running this vent.

   Here's where the bathroom vent duct exist the bonus storage space.  It sits in the attic space and it will exit through the roof soffit overhang.  We'll have to make sure to either spray foam or hard foam these walls before the ceiling is closed up.  Even though we don't have HVAC running to this space, it wouldn't hurt to insulate it, especially since it's outside the envelope of the house.  I think if we insulate this wall, then insulate the interior closet wall, it will provide enough air tightness and energy sealing.

Porter and Heckman revisited the HVAC supply and return ducts to seal up the cracks.  They applied a gray mastic paste to all the seams and joints.  The nice thing about mastic is that it stays flexible so  years from now, it won't become brittle and crack.  Because of the cold and warm air that flows through these ducts, they're subject to a lot of expansion and contraction.  The mastic provides flexible sealing so we're not losing air through these joints.  Another method of air sealing is to use a foil tape.  The mastic is good enough, but personally, I would love to see joint tape, as well as getting the ducts spray foamed.  All good engineering is over engineering.

   Here's a close up of the mastic on a section joint.  Although the mastic isn't as thick as I would like, it's not too bad.  Maybe I'll just come back and apply some foil tape to it to ensure air tightness.  The general rule of thumb for mastic application is "a nickel thick".  I think it's thick enough in the spaces that need it and we're just looking at tin areas in the spaces that don't need it.

   Yet another angle of the mastic application.  The corners of the duct snap together and there's often a soft neoprene gasket in the channel where the two surfaces meet.  Even still, exterior sealing is very prudent.  Although it doesn't look like there's a lot of mastic in the joint, it's sufficient. I'll probably tape it up myself.

   The end of an era, well two years at least.  The dumpster that I ordered and filled with the garbage Matt and his crew left in the front of the house is being taken away.  You can see the mesh cover they used to ensure that nothing blows out during transport.  When they tipped it up like there, a ton of water poured out, which is good since they charge for over weight dumpsters.  A few of the pieces of foam fell out when they were installing the tarp, but they'll have to wait for the next dumpster.  Amazing concept; having a dumpster on site so garbage doesn't get blown all over the place.

   Bye bye dumpster!  The front of the house is the cleanest it has ever been, ever.  Even during the beginning of the build, there was a site built "dumpster" but now that that's all gone, we could get the geothermal well diggers in, we could get landscaping to come in and grade.  Water and sewer is going in the side of the house so they're no longer reliant upon this area being clear.  Maybe if I can get all the nails out of the area, I could even drive my car up there.  What a difference.

   So there it stands this week.  We'll probably be getting in numbers soon and I'm pressing to get the business with the bank finished up before the end of the month.  Once the financials settle down, we could start to look at getting the copper roof installed on the turret, provided that the rough carpenter doesn't need to perform any fixes.  Mike is going to meet with Jonathon of the Soundvision on Friday so they can get on the same page.  Now that we have a lighting plan, he can start to create lighting schemes, which will be vital in multi purpose areas like the kitchen.  So much back end planning.