Ventilation Ducts

These hot days the house I’m living in gets over 80° so I open windows at night. Which reminded me (during the last night) that I need to make certain the plumbing/heating guy gets all the holes in the wall of the mechanical room before we plaster.There are a lot of holes: fresh air and exhaust for the ERV, combustion air and exhaust for the furnace, combustion air and exhaust for the water heater, and hot air exhaust for when I want to cool the house at night in the summer.

Not being certain that Ray remembered all this, I looked up exhaust louvers on the Internet and sent him a picture. Then I thought about the ducting for exhausting hot air using the furnace fan and realized that we needed a diverter.

At first I thought that we could just open the duct to the outside, but that would pull air from the ceiling diffusers and the air would not pass through the concrete floor slab. the house would be cool in the morning, but the slab would still be hot, so the house would heat up quickly. If I cool the slab, then the constant flow of air through the slab would keep the house cool in summer days.

Ray arrived in the morning to install the ventilation ducts, along with his sons James and Nicolas. In addition we had Randy Cisneros and his father Jim, who run the sheet metal shop and installed ducts, too. Then the plasterers came to make certain they knew what Eli wanted while Eli is on vacation.Ray assured me he was aware of the louvers and suggested that the diverter could have a motor control, which I would like. I won’t want to climb onto the roof every evening to switch over the air flow. Whether this is a manual switch or programmed into the thermostat I haven’t decided yet.

Meanwhile Lalo and Ulisses were on the roof preparing the parapet for plastering.Eli remembered that we need a 42” high door for the mechanical room, and I picked up a standard door at the building supply. When we looked at it the bore holes for the lock would be either at the bottom or the top of the short door. He returned that door and ordered a special door just the right size.

The builder of the kitchen cabinets will be here tomorrow morning to measure the space and make certain the corners are square. (They are.) The kitchen sink and drain arrived today, as did the bathroom wall-hung sink. That means all the plumbing fixtures except the utility sink faucet have arrived.

Eli and I dug up the ‘lime pit’, which is a lined area where surplus concrete and the washings from concrete and painting are dumped. We had partially moved and covered this when we dug the trench for the power lines, so this was a real mess. It meant pick, shovel, and occasional sledge hammer, plus about five wheelbarrow loads to the trash trailer, which now needs to be emptied. I had to take three breaks, but lasted longer than I thought I would.

I have been using more cell phone data than I want. I learned a few tricks today to control this, as every time I run over my planned limit it costs me $20.

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