HVAC
We stopped by the house this morning for a couple of meetings. A lot has happened since last time we were there.
The deck is close to done.
I’m very happy with the way they’ve detailed the edges and hidden the seams & fasteners.
There’s just a little work left to do on the railings.
The kitchen cabinets are starting to go in.
They look really solid. Gerrity Stone is just about ready to start cutting the big slabs of soapstone to fit.
The builders have removed the radiators and added loads of insulation. That work, and the AeroBarrier got our ACH50 down to about 1.5. That’s pretty good for a 75 year old house whose walls used to contain nothing but old copies of the Boston Globe and empty Narragansett beer cans. It was actually pretty warm inside this morning, even though it was only 18° F out, and there are just a couple of space heaters in the house at the moment.
There’s a new radon mitigation system, because that’s always been a bit dicey atop our granite hill , and would probably have gotten worse as the house got tighter. And the plumbing system now includes a second water meter for the drip irrigation system, which doesn’t require a sewer fee.
That picture also shows the new foam insulation on the cellar walls. That goes all the way up around the sill plate.
This morning we decided on the finish for the wood floors on the 1st floor, and the carpet team were in to measure the 2nd floor. We’re also close to choosing paint colors for the walls.
But the big activity at the moment is with the HVAC crew from SumZero. They were in banging away this morning, but they’ve already accomplished a lot.
The first floor will be heated and cooled by a Mitsubishi SVZ-KP18NA that hides under the cellar stairs.
The bedrooms are heated and cooled by a Mitsubishi PEAD-A09AA8 which lives in the newly insulated attic.
That system also includes an ERV to pull in fresh air without losing any of that heat.
The ductwork might look a bit complicated, but they’ve done a nice job of tucking it all out of the way as much as possible. They’ve also run all of the coolant lines through the inside of the house, so they don’t looked tacked on, which I really appreciate.
There’s also going to be a minisplit in the cellar to keep my workshop from getting too chilly. That’s important because there’s going to be a heat pump water heater in there, and they suck up heat from the surrounding space.
Each of these air handlers is connected to its own Mitsubishi external unit hiding under the deck. These are all high-performance inverter units which should give us an HPSF2 of 11 or 12, which should easily keep everything toasty, even on the coldest New England night.
It’s very exciting to see how far things have progressed. We’re really looking forward to moving back in.
