Let there be Heat! The absence of Heat shall be called Cold!

It took a week and a day but it is finished. We now have 2 zones of electronically cleaned, humidity controlled hot and cold air coursing through the veins of our house. Fairly good timing too since we have had a few chilly evenings where the Wee One woke up looking a little ice blockish. It was only when I had to chisel him out of the bed that I began to worry.

Bask in the glory of this 100,000 BTU behemoth

What a week it was. My favorite part was when they started ripping out all the old ducting. None of the pictures really convey the message of how poorly designed this duct work was. Firstly it was low, because in a 6 foot high basement we don't need to worry about conserving head space. The second part was that is ran everywhere. Every. Where. All the wheres had pipes. The best part is that the pipes ran directly through the walking corridor instead of against the wall, so you always had to hunch over to get anywhere. 

Artists rendition of whomever installed this originally

Once the crew had fully removed everything I had a brief moment where my basement wasn't horrible. It had space and was brightly lit. The air smelled cleaner and even the massive amounts of termite damage that was uncovered couldn't detract from the glory. This moment ended quickly however as they did have to put in new ducts. There was a slight difference though. They hung them out of the way.... They ran ducts near the edge of the basement or up between floor joists. They had an intelligence to it almost as if they looked at the entire basement, made a plan to effectively utilize space, and executed it. Clearly planning a project is an invention of the past few years otherwise I'm sure the people who installed this monstrosity would have tried it.

One full sized trunk dedicated to one vent..... Efficiency.

Shiny veins and arteries carrying the lifeair of the house

My motto is, if it is worth doing it is worth doing correctly. It is also worth getting overly frustrated with yourself as you try to do things correctly but constantly battle a very distracted mind that would rather play video games and drink beer than do work. Honestly I'm amazed I ever can get out of my own way enough to be productive. Imagine this scenario. You are trying to do a puzzle but each time you pick up a piece there is a random checklist of 5 things that you need to look at and think about before you can place the piece. Also each of the items in the checklist have 10 sub-items that are remotely related to be investigated. And you are thirsty. That is what its like being trapped inside this brain.

And all the while this is going on in there too

I mentioned cold in the title of this post and was intending on talking about 'doing it right and adding air conditioning' in the last paragraph but it kinda got away from me. Also the cat is out of the bag. We have central cooling now too. Why go through all the hassle of adding multiple zones and air cleaning and whatnot if you aren't going to put in cooling as well. I'm also sick of hauling the window units out every year and risking dropping them out the window onto someone walking no the sidewalk Looney Toons style. There are stories of bats nesting in them during the summer too and causing quite the scare when you go to move their new house. I have enough pests to deal with.

Luckily it only looks like a rocket but sounds like the soft whir of air passing over exchange coils

This was my first time working with a contractor too. I was definitely worried too, unknown guys in my house while I'm not there, cutting holes in the house, critiquing the huge collection of left over scrap wood in the basement. They were amazing though! Incredibly polite, hard working and honest. They busted a few things, I'm not going to lie. They broke the valve for the water line to the fridge, they broke a mirror that the wife got 5 years ago and has made me drag around forever claiming she would frame it and hang it up someday. One of them even put a hole in the ceiling in the babies room. Right in the ceiling. They patched it all up though. Except the mirror. They get the bad luck, not me. Although I carted that thing around for 5 years.... so maybe I already have the bad luck.

It was a good thing the guy had square shaped arms or the hole might have been harder to patch

So there it is. We now have a 100% brand new, fully insulated, properly balanced and efficiently installed HVAC system in the house. Something I could never have done myself. They even came back and fixed the water line to the fridge so that it works better than it did before. If you need cooling or heating work done I would recommend giving Cooling Unlimited a call. I would tell you to speak to my guy but he left half way through. Pretty sure I caused him to leave with my thousands of emails back and forth. On top of this all, since it is done correctly, I didn't have to resort to my backup plan for heating the house this winter!

Plan B.

- The Porter -