At Home In The Woods

[brandoro]

CurlyDave, I can cut it with a hacksaw without harming the twine if I'm careful; I've done that before. The problem is the black phone cable. I'm really not supposed to disconnect the phone from the network box. I might even have to jimmy the network box to get access to where the phone cable connects to the network box. Without disconnecting the phone cable from the network box, I would have to cut a slit along the length of the conduit to slip the conduit over the cable.

I would just slide the piece of conduit down the wire to just beside the network box and put a couple of straps on it and leave it there. then no fiddling with connections, it will look neater and protect the wire a little bit.

I have a condensing furnace and have a pump just like the one in tommu56's post. It works well and is quiet enough. My floor drain is too far away and everything else is higher than the furnace drain so the pump was a good solution.

 

[B7510HSD]

CurlyDave, I can cut it with a hacksaw without harming the twine if I'm careful; I've done that before. The problem is the black phone cable. I'm really not supposed to disconnect the phone from the network box. I might even have to jimmy the network box to get access to where the phone cable connects to the network box. Without disconnecting the phone cable from the network box, I would have to cut a slit along the length of the conduit to slip the conduit over the cable.

Couldn't you cut that with a tubing cutter like you use for copper pipe??

 

[eepete]

Tubing cutter works great on conduit, then as tommu and brandoro said don't worry about getting the cut piece off. I'd attach it to the wall close to where the telco wire comes in, and dress the telco wire so that it's got a drip loop on it.

So it will look like "you meant to do that" because the pipe will hold the drip loop in the telco wire :thumbsup:.

I put gravity condensate drains for the heat pumps when we did our house, the little pumps are nice but it's one more thing to maintain and break. Using one as a temporary measure is OK, it's a time and money and priority thing- the exact sort of problem any good engineer would love to obsess about.

Obed, tnx for the pix of the daughter and the cat/door.

couple + kid + cat = Home.

Sometimes the simplest equations are the hardest ones to solve :laughing:.

Pete

 

[srs]

CurlyDave, I can cut it with a hacksaw without harming the twine if I'm careful; I've done that before. The problem is the black phone cable. I'm really not supposed to disconnect the phone from the network box. I might even have to jimmy the network box to get access to where the phone cable connects to the network box. Without disconnecting the phone cable from the network box, I would have to cut a slit along the length of the conduit to slip the conduit over the cable.

OBed, open the side of the network box and mark exactly how the black phone cable is coming in and how it is connected. Disconnect the wires, cut the conduit, shorten the black phone cable if needed, then reconnect. No biggie!

 

[PAGUY]

Obed - for a temporary fix use a couple 5 gallon buckets side by side and drill a hole the size of an old piece of water hose and step down as many connections as you have five gallon buckets. No more worry of 24 hr empty .

PAGuy

 

[Obed]

I'm anticipating a battle with the H&A guy. We have two auxilliary H&A return ducts in the ceiling, one in the master bedroom and one in the hallway. The primary return is at the other end of the hallway in the wall down near the floor. The H&A guy did not think about how to a return filter grill for the returns in the ceiling. His worker just terminated a duct in the ceiling. The framing around the ducts in the ceiling do not accommodate a return filter grill.

When we asked him about putting filters in the ceiling, he said it can't be done now. So he installed some sort of inline filter at the end of the auxilliary return where it meets the primary return. He does not intend on providing us a return filter grill where the far end of the returns terminate through the ceiling.

The picture shows a temporary filter my wife cut to size and stuffed in the duct in the ceiling to prevent construction dust from entering our HVAC ducts. I don't think I'm going to accept not being able to put a filter in the ceiling. You can see the amount of dust that collected in just a few weeks, albeit during construction. I don't want years of dust collecting in the ductwork of the auxilliary return. I'm expecting the H&A guy to refuse to change the ceiling grills. Keep in mind that the framing in the area above the ceiling can be accessed from the attic by unscrewing one or two pieces of OSB.

Remember, this is the same guy who has been very inflexible and hard to work with. For example, he ran the bathroom shower vent ducts so that condensate drained toward the inside of the house instead of the outside of the house even though I asked him before he started to do otherwise. He didn't forget; he was just obstinate. We had to change the ductwork ourselves after he left. That's just one of many examples of his inflexibility. He is also someone who has been bad about no-showing and not returning calls.

We'll see how the ceiling return filter grill issue turns out. I plan to have him finish all his other work before I re-adress the grills with him.

Yesterday the H&A worker came out and balanced the air flow through the registers in our house to try to get even temperatures around the house. This worker has been doing the most recent work in our house and we like him; we just don't care for his boss who is the owner. The worker was instructed by his boss to get the final check from us when he came out to balance our system. The worker was supposed to bring with him 2 floor registers we are missing but forgot them. We had also talked to him earlier about the ceiling return filter grills. I had told the worker that if he would just provide us the parts that we would do the work ourselves. I don't think he had portrayed this info to his boss; I'm not surprised because his boss can be hard to talk to.

So we didn't give the worker the final payment. In addition, we wanted to test out the system balancing ourselves before paying. The worker asked if he could come back today. We told him no, that today would not be a good day for us but he could come back the following day. Well this morning the boss called my wife and asked her if she was at home. I overheard the conversation and told her to hand me the phone. I told the boss that we weren't available today to see him. He became very rude and asked why not, what were we doing? I didn't answer that question; what we were doing was none of his business in my opinion and he was being rather obstinate. He demanded "Where's my money?" I stayed professional and told him that we wanted to check out the system and if everything met our satisfaction that he could be paid tomorrow. He told me or, more accurately, ordered me to call him.

Tomorrow I will call him and have the discussion about the two return filter grills in the ceiling. I'm expecting it to be a battle. But right now, they haven't put covers over the returns in the ceiling. Thus there can be no question that the work is not finished, even though putting covers over the ceiling returns is a small thing. Personally, I feel that I am going the extra mile to not make them redo the ceiling returns with grills that will accept filters and am offering to do the work myself if the H&A guy will just provide us the parts.

Unfortunately, sometimes these conflicts are part of the building process, especially if you are a homeowner without the experience and clout of a general contractor. I'm sure the subs who take shortcuts and I call them on it think I'm the problem, not them. I'm sure it goes both ways. I suspect that being a homeowner instead of a GC causes some subs to choose to be harder to deal with because they don't expect to get subsequent work from us. That view is short-sighted but nevertheless it exists. It is a minority of the subs that have shown this poor attitude with us. We had several subs that dealt professionally with us and have worked with us as well as they would have given a GC.

Tomorrow won't be fun but it will be good to get this sub out of our life. We have figured that if our H&A system has trouble in the future, this guy would be very slow at fixing it even if we could even get him to come out at all. We probably would just call someone else.

 

[RadarTech]

Obed,
how do you go about balancing the air flow?
we have that problem in our house..

2 bedrooms get down right hot and a third stays rather cool.

I agree with how you have managed this difficult contractor.

J

 

[charliepff]

Obed,

I love your thread. I spent a few days with my wife reading all of the posts. I must say you are a lot calmer then I am. I worked as a supervisor for an electrical company for about ten years. I would have never ever come close to treating a customer like that. There is absolutely no reason for it. There is always way's to compromise and you have definately done that by offering to do the corrections yourself. We just had a similiar issue with the company that installed our wood stove. It is ok though, because they will never get my business ever again.

On a lighter note. The house looks great and glad to see you are finally moved in.

 

[tommu56]

Amazon.com: Return Air Filter Grille: Home Improvement

and

White Return Air Filter Grill

You should have asked the hvac tech if he did side jobs for the "future reference" and cut out the boss


tom

 

[radioman]

Obed,
how do you go about balancing the air flow?
we have that problem in our house..

2 bedrooms get down right hot and a third stays rather cool.

I agree with how you have managed this difficult contractor.

J

zoning is best way to adjust.