More HVAC Preparations

One of the mini-splits is going in the basement, so to give the installers free reign to do that, we packed up and went to a rental house overnight and did our remote work and school there. Unfortunately, not everything went to plan in our absence, and the result was more extra projects to do, just when I thought I could get back to the remaining low voltage wiring and sound insulation.

First I got the call that the joist bay in the basement that we had measured and would fit the unit actually didn’t fit the unit. It was close, but not enough. They thought it could be planed or sanded to fit, but didn’t have any tools to hand to do so and my tools were in storage, so I asked them to finish running the lines and that I would take care of it. That way, while they’d still need to be in the basement again, at least it wouldn’t be very long.

Then I got a call later in the day that the room in the attic for the air handler that has access to the knee wall for the ducts isn’t big enough. The air handler will fit, but not with all the ducts. The wall that separates the air handler room from the adjacent closet needs to move a foot or so. Fortunately, it’s just a storage closet, so shrinking it isn’t that big a deal, and there isn’t any electrical conduit or other utilities running through the wall that would complicate things, but I really thought we were done with framing at this point.

We got home, I ran to storage and got my power planer, and got to work. I made a huge mess all over the family room, with wood shavings raining down on me, the floor, the table, and the couch. I forgot that it doesn’t just gently fall, it blows everywhere. I cut a piece of foam to the correct width and used that as a template to confirm the space was finally big enough and after going back over the same spot about eighteen times, it fit. Afterward I brought down the shop vac, and despite a solid twenty minutes of cleaning, areas that I thought were already clean continue to have bits of sawdust on them, most likely due to it still settling out of the air.

That seemed like enough for one evening, so the next day after work while Sarah continued work on sound insulation, I got ready to tackle the attic closet wall. That’s when I noticed that the drain line from the unit in the back of the first floor, which runs along the beam, plus the linesets from the basement that run over the beam will both require me to further pad out said beam in order for drywall to lay flat. So first I ran to the store and picked up twelve more 8′ 2x4s.

Back in the attic, I carefully disassembled the wall separating the storage closet from the HVAC closet, prying out the nails so I could try to re-use the lumber and have to re-frame as little as possible. It took long enough that I had only finished demo by the kids’ bedtime, and it occurred to me that it may be a good idea to wait to put the wall back until after they’re done and we’re sure it all fits, since I really don’t want to do this again.

The next evening I did the beam re-pad, simply screwing the 2x4s to the existing 1x4s I put up last year (sorry, I didn’t bother posting about that, it was in September). It went fairly quickly, maybe a couple hours to get everything screwed up. I had to chisel out a couple spots to avoid the bracket nuts, as well as cut and chisel out part of the top plate on the wall under the beam to allow the lineset to lay flat against the beam.

With this all done, and since I’m waiting for the air handler and duct install to be done before I put the attic wall back together, I think I can go back to working on the low voltage wiring, the insulation, and the master bath shower base. We’re under the gun to get this all done by the time the HVAC install is finished so that we’re not holding up drywall.