On May 23 we took some friends to see the progress. It’s always good to get other opinions and input. We talked about landscaping among other things.
The prior week we primarily spent time finalizing plans with low voltage contractor, Dominion Design and Integration. His prices have gone up since the original quote from December 2021. A price increase was not surprising, but the amount of the increase was mind blowing. Some prices had increased more than 35%. We scaled back on some items and questioned pricing on many items. The result was still more than the original bid, but overall, less than 10% increase.
GarageDominium site work continues. As it stands now, the house looks like it is in a hole, the one created to make the front and back elevations less severe. Now rock is being removed to soften the grade in the front of the house. They are doing more air hammer work and removing loads more rock. I’ve included more excavator pictures. Our 2 year old grandson is fascinated with “diggers” so these are for him.
I met the project manager at the house on May 24. We decided to meet at the house weekly for a project update. Electricians are installing wiring. The insulation contractor walked the house to finalize those plans. Temporary construction doors have been installed on the workshop and the front doorway. The permanent door was installed at the breakfast room. Plumbers also showed up while we were there. They installed the tub in the spare bath and worked on other plumbing items.
We did another electrical walk through on May 27. W revised a few more items and clarified other requirements. For example, we included a 30-amp RV electrical outlet near the RV sewer connection. The electrician was not familiar with that type of connection, so we worked through that. The electricians wired the smoke and CO detector locations for 110 volts, but we are installing smoke/CO combination detectors that are low voltage and powered by the security system. The nice thing about the detectors we specified is that there is one backup battery that will be in a very accessible location rather than a 9-volt battery in every detector.
Airtron installed the Aprilaire E100V dehumidifier, but they did not install the ventilator kit. I have a lot of concerns about how the they ducted the dehumidifier. They ducted the outlet into the supply side of the A/C unit. The manufacturer shows the ducting connected to the A/C return. Many emails went back and forth with the HVAC contractor about this. He agrees that we need the ventilator kit.
I’m also concerned about the control scheme. I talked to Aprilaire support who confirmed the ducting arrangement should be per the manual. They recommended setting the dehumidifier such that it does not run when the thermostat calls for cooling. The HVAC contractor thinks this will cause the dehumidifier to short cycle a lot. The HVAC contractor offer to meet with us and the Aprilaire representative on site to work it all out.
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