What the heck did the home builders do to my room?! (part 2 of 2)

Part 15 — Designing and building a DIY home recording studio.

The whole story — part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, part 14, part 15, part 16, part 17, part 18, part 19, part 20, part 21

I’m having to first undo and then redo a bunch of things the builders should have done right the first time.

Starting with cutting out and relocating the air conditioning line and figuring out how to get rid of that big obnoxious elbow duct protruding 2 extra feet into the room beyond the supply and return trunks.

What a mess…

Here to save the day!

OUCH!

After some phone calls and a couple house calls from HVAC professionals, I learned that moving the pressurized refrigerant line was something that I couldn’t legally do on my own.

I apparently have to be certified to mess around with freon — Because if any of it happens to leak into the atmosphere, apparently the universe will explode.(or something like that). If I’m caught messing with it by someone who cares, it’s a $30,000 fine. And that’s actually a real thing.

Anyway, in my situation, the freon must be evacuated from the existing lines into a temporary storage tank and a new copper line needs to be installed. Then the captured freon will be transferred back into the new lines and represurized etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

By the way, each “etc” represents $100 I had to pay to have this corrective work done, including the cost of 50 feet of new copper line set and labor and materials and labor for a flex duct also being installed — to replace the awkwardly placed elbow that would have really chewed up some prime ceiling space if it had to be covered with a soffit (the framing around the duct work).

What were the original installers thinking?

I would be more understanding of the messy lines if the line was running right next to the supply/return trunks — because that would make sense — but the refrigerant line was installed about 2 feet away from the trunks and then to make things worse, it curves at the end as it makes a wide 90° before going up into the joist and then out the side of the house. As it stands, I would have to extend the soffit an additional 6 feet into the room BEYOND the two trunks already protruding into the room to cover things up.

The furnace flue PVC conduit lines are gone now (as you saw in my last post). So, now it’s the refrigerant line that needs to be moved. By the time the 90" wide sweep makes its way up into the joists and then out the wall, I lose another 3' of ceiling that a soffit would have to cover up if I left it as is. I really have no choice but to pay to have the refrigerant line set moved.

If I had to cover up all the messy pipe/duct work, I would have to drop 80% of the ceiling down 10 inches. That undoes the entire point of having the taller basement ceilings and changes the acoustics (modes and nodes), in the room.

I’m SO frustrated about this. I did actually call the builder a few times once I realized my predicament. No reply (of course). If it passed inspection I guess they are off the hook and don’t care.

So, I called the HVAC pros back who seemed the most interested in looking for ways to solve my dilemma. The day has finally come and they are here to make things better.

When I showed the techs where I was hoping they could run the refrigerant lines (the green lines in the picture above), they said the line set should have been run there in the first place. (what?!)

When I gave them my idea of how to eliminate the super huge elbow bump protruding into the room, they said the installer should have done it the way I was suggesting the first time as well. Apparently it would have taken NO additional effort to do either of those correctly the first time. Possibly just a little more careful thinking through how it would affect the room being finished later on.

So, now I get to pay $700 to make up for the original installer’s shortsightedness

(sigh!)

Prepping connectors to connect and patch in the new copper lines.

Starting to make the corner bend

Finishing the corner bends

connecting newly installed copper lines to the existing line set that runs out the wall to the air conditioner condenser.

Soldering the two line sets together

Putting the freon back into the line set

The tech found a set screw that wasn’t quite locked down properly and was very slowly leaking freon. It was a nice thing to find and have fixed while we had the techs here already.

Pressure testing the system. Everything checked out great.

Tucking the line set up and out of the way so the inner wall I’m going to frame won’t touch it.

Now, to do something about this lumpy, protruding duct and elbow.

How in the world did the initial installers figure the ceiling would be finished with this elbow sticking out like it is?

I had a suggestion that could completely solve the problem, but they had to run some air flow calculations first to make sure the drag caused by flex duct didn’t compromise the air feeding into the master bedroom — which this line feeds. After getting two thumbs up, they proceeded.

Eliminated the elbow issue and tucked the line set in the corner. Whew! What a sense of relief.

Ah…..all better now. Even the green ground wire. It took me 10 minutes to run it through the joists rather than underneath. This totally could have been done like this originally. Now I’m starting to sound like a broken record. For anyone who doesn’t understand the term “broken record”, the old-timey records were made out of vinyl and if they got a bad enough scratch (which was easy to do), when the stylus (needle) got to that part of the record, the scratch could cause the needle to skip back a few grooves and replay something it had just played. Often it would just loop and loop and loop…..like a broken record. — — You’re welcome!

Clean! …except for the white electrical wire hanging down below the joists under the air return. Can you see it on the left side of the picture?

The techs are done and off the clock. Now it’s my turn to address the random electrical wires that run below the joists here and there. I’m going to start with this one. This is going to be more tricky to correct than the green ground wire I just took care of.

Done! Line set and wires and conduits are MOVED.

The whole story — part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, part 14, part 15, part 16, part 17, part 18, part 19, part 20, part 21