Singing In The Rain

Yep, it finally happened, the weatherman was right. It rained last night and into this morning. Right now, it is sunny and the standing water isn't too bad. It is enough however to cancel any thoughts of working on the foundations today.

According to the current forecast, the rain is over until later today. However, between 5:00 pm this afternoon and 7:00 am tomorrow morning (Friday), the hourly rain probability ranges between 50% and 100%. By noon tomorrow, the chance of rain is back to zero and stays low (<20%) for the next week (slight increase to 40% next Monday). This morning, Mike said he would plan to bring out his pump tomorrow to pump the water out of the trenches and let them dry out this weekend. Hopefully, we will try to pour the foundation footings on Monday (weather permitting).

Frank and John (HVAC) met with Mike and I early this morning to go over Frank's latest proposal for heating, cooling and water heating. It was a two hour meeting, but we got to the point of my signing the proposal and Frank ordering the equipment. A lot of our discussion centered on where to place the inside heat pump element and how we are going to generate hot water. I went over all of our deliberations with T on the phone later in the morning (she is still in Texas). She had enough concern about the specifics that we got Frank on the phone with both of us and we discuss everything again.

The final answer for the water heater was with a dedicated 60 kBTU/hr on-demand unit for the sunroom radiant floor, circulating a water-glycol mixture, and a separate 200 kBTU/hr on-demand unit to supply domestic hot water for the whole house. Frank told me he sized the unit for the radiant floor to be sufficient to heat the sunroom without assistance from either the heat pump, the fireplace or the heat from the hot tub. We should have plenty of heat in the sunroom on the coldest of winter days. This proposal eliminates the originally envisioned twin 50-gallon conventional hot water heaters. Previously, Frank had proposed one 150 kBTU/hr on-demand unit to perform both the radiant heating and the domestic water heating tasks. This changed after our last thorough discussion of our hot water demands. He has a lot of confidence that the current proposal will deliver everything we require. T is still not as confident, but we have an option to supplement the heating capacity later if necessary.

For the sunroom HVAC, we are going with a 2.5 ton heat pump. Frank had previously proposed a 3.0 ton unit, but now believes a lower capacity unit will do a better job on humidity control. The exterior condensing unit will be located on the east side of the house with the other two existing condensing units. The interior unit will be mounted on the west gable above the hot tub glass roof. The location of this interior unit is a late change from the previous, long-held, plan to place it in the wall cavity on the east gable. John came up with this alternative placement after we had concluded that, in order to place the interior unit in the east gable wall cavity, we would need to modify the roof trusses, build a mounting bracket in the wall cavity and find an aesthetically correct wall grating to hide it. It would also be asymmetrical, with the camouflaging grate on just one side of the chimney. T did not believe this would be a big deal, but it bothered me. The interior unit can be painted to blend in to its surroundings. The interior unit is not trivial in size, measuring 47" in length, 14" in height and 10" depth. Frank believes we will get better performance if located on the west gable. I also like it there as it will be easier to monitor as opposed to be hidden away in a wall cavity, not that anything could go wrong.

Interior Wall Mounted Heat Pump Unit

Exterior Heat Pump Condensing Unit

Mark (indoor plumbing) stopped by for a few moments this morning to drop off the bill for September and to say that "Pipefitter" Greg may be here tomorrow to finish in the basement.