Chapter 5: The Mechanical Nightmare

On June 12th, 2023 we met with our builder for the first actual walk-through to inspect framing and discuss mechanical. We met with his HVAC guy to map out units, vents and discuss the overall plan. We met with electrical to plan out what lights we wanted where, outlets etc... Why wasn’t this planned out in the design phase? Because the design time only lasted a couple weeks!

This should have been a meeting to review the mechanical plan and make any adjustments needed based on the current framing or anything else that came up previously, not when decisions were being made from scratch.  

At the time, we thought maybe this was normal, even though it seemed odd to be making up the mechanical plan on the spot.

During this walk-through the HVAC guy decided there wasn’t enough space for the HVAC units in the framed mechanical room in the basement so we needed to build a second mechanical room, eating up space in our storage room. The first mechanical room was then going to just be used for the sump pump, water heater, and internet/media center. The second one would be for the HVAC.

When we asked our builder during the design phase if a mechanical plan was needed, he said “no need, our guys like to map that out on site after framing. Mechanical plans are usually just for commercial projects.”  

The units could have been sized and planned out ahead of time, which would have prevented us having to frame a second mechanical room.

This is the first mechanical room that was supposed to house everything:

The next fun discovery was that there would have to be a dropdown in the basement for the return air. We specifically instructed our architect to include trusses with square openings down the middle so all the HVAC could be hidden in the ceiling. But, little did we know that the trunkline ductwork needed to be built into the trusses as the framers were laying them down in order to use those square openings. So the plumber ended up using those openings for his pipes.

Our builder didn’t know that because he’s used to building HVAC systems in attics, not in 2 story floors. We didn’t know that because we’ve never built a house before.

Here’s what the trusses looked like:

And here’s how those square openings ended up being used for plumbing instead:

What a waste of the extra money to have those floor trusses designed the way they were to accommodate HVAC that never ended up going in it anyways.

So anyways, the meeting concluded and afterwards, my wife I were like, “Are they going to remember everything? Nobody took any notes.

They didn’t remember.

We were supposed to also meet with the plumber but he never showed. And then him not showing for the meeting showed in his initial work. When we randomly inspected the house, holes were cut in the wrong places for toilets and tubs, the rogue plumber showed up without any notice and just started cutting, without any design meeting or mechanical plans. We did post a picture of where we wanted everything in the bathrooms but he ignored it. So, he had to make new cuts. At least we caught it before the pipe was laid.

But in the end, that didn’t even matter. He ended up switching the tub direction because the floor trusses were in the way, yet another thing that could have been avoided if there was a mechanical plan. We specifically wanted the tub faucets on the opposite side of the toilet to make it easier for bathing kids and getting in and out of the tub.

The HVAC Disaster Begins

On June 16th, the HVAC guy began (even though our roof wasn’t finished and it was still leaking every time it rained).

You can see the water on the basement floor, so flex duct (which has insulation in it that isn’t supposed to get wet) was being exposed to water:

By the way, we have extensive records of the whole build because we installed a camera to track all the movement in and out of the house during construction and film a timelapse of the process. So, it timestamped who was on site and when. And we knew our builder wasn’t keeping much of a record and so we stepped in to protect ourselves.

It’s also through the cameras that we discovered our builder was rarely on the jobsite managing. He trusted his subs to work unsupervised and without much direction.

So on the night of June 16th we popped over to the house to just make sure the HVAC guy was following the plan we came up with during that meeting. Of course, he wasn’t because nobody took any notes.

We saw a giant hole in the pantry and realized he was only planning on installing one return vent for the main floor even though we discussed two:

So we met with the HVAC guy on June 20th (without the builder because he was on vacation) to hash out an actual plan in writing and literally get on the same page.

Emotional and Relationship Turmoil Erupts

We were already frustrated with the issues that came up during framing but mechanical really pushed us to the edge. This is when my wife’s “pretending to hold it together” started to break down. Building a house is deeply personal and greatly stressful if not managed well. By this point she already told me twice that we should just fire our builder but I was scared that if we did, the whole project would never have been able to get finished. And that’s likely true and would have been a better, much cheaper path than the one we took. But at the time, we were hyper-focused on achieving our dream.

I wanted to provide the perfect house for my wife. I wanted to be hero. And looking back, knowing when to quit can also be heroic when you’re on the wrong path. I didn’t see it that way then.

I’ve been working hard for years trying to give my wife what she wanted. And in the end, we both realized we didn’t actually want what we thought we wanted.

But in June of 2023, we were convinced this house is what we wanted and needed.

So I wouldn’t entertain the thought of firing the builder because we had already agreed to take over as owner builders once it was time for drywall, so in my mind I thought, “We just need to survive with this builder a little longer before he’s out of it. If we fire him now, we could lose any chance in finishing this project.”

Why? Because the bank would make us get another builder. Another builder would have charged 20%, maybe more coming into a project halfway through.

The build would have been paused for potentially 1-3 months while we secured another builder, racking up interest.

And that builder would not have let us owner build anything. Most builders don’t for good reason.

The bank would have only allowed us to take over as owner builders fully, if we put more money down, which we didn’t have.

The only reason we could owner build with our first builder is because he agreed to remain the builder on the project until the end and still manage inspections, reporting, invoices and payments while we found subs, ordered material and supervised the subs on the job site to save him time. That arrangement was savings us $60k.

All of this was a big fat sign that we couldn’t actually afford to do this house build properly.

But I didn’t listen. I didn’t listen to my wife’s declarations. She tends to speak in frustration when she knows something is right but it’s difficult to do. I was trying to manage my relationship with her and my relationship with the builder and I was the only one communicating with the builder. So I expressed all our grievances with him. He didn’t care.

The manly thing to do at the time would have been to have courage to fire the builder and be okay with losing the house. Turning around then, still in 2023, would have been a lot better than what we experienced later trying to sell the house in 2026 and selling the house at a huge loss, along with 3 years of interest payments ($150k worth of interest sunk into this house).

My wife, like me, didn’t want to lose the house in 2023 when we were building it. She just wanted to look for another way to finish it but I only saw one way, which was to keep our current builder so we could “owner build” the second half.

In the end we survived the test on our marriage and are stronger now then even before, but what we went through could have torn many couples apart.

Men, it’s okay to tell your wife, “Honey, we can’t have that right now. We can’t afford it. But let’s make a goal to work towards it or discuss and refine what we want.” I thought telling her “No” would have meant I was failing as a husband and provider. But if I told her the financial risks of trying to get that house at that time as the reason why we couldn’t do it, she would have been fine to set aside those wants. She’s reasonable when it comes to being patient with wants if it means staying out of debt and trouble. At the time though, I did even realize how stupid the pursuit was, I honestly thought we could afford it. But we both let impatience settle in because of being sick of moving often and sick of renting. And ironically, that led us to move many more times then we would if we had just sat on it longer.

The Plumber and Electrician Storm In

It’s best practice to allow the HVAC guy to install first, then plumbing, then electrical. HVAC takes up the most space and needs priority on where ductwork goes.

Since everything was backwards in our house build, the plumber showed up during the first 2 days the HVAC guy was there and got all the pipes installed and he took up some crucial spaces that HVAC needed.

The electrician also showed up and basically finished their rough-in when HVAC was only 20% into their job.

Our builder did nothing to protect our cast iron tubs, so we put foam around the sides and OSB board on top:

Back to HVAC – The Worse Part is NOT Behind Us

On July 19th, HVAC finished their rough-in work. They were only on site for a total of 8 days but it took 1 month to complete the job because of how disorganized their schedule was and having to work around the plumber and electrical that shouldn’t have been there yet.

On July 24th we inspected the HVAC ourselves and oh boy…

You can watch the process of our before and after video of our HVAC nightmare here:

Insulation was scheduled to start on the 25th. Our builder already supposedly inspected our HVAC but was in a rush to get insulation in before we saw it, I wonder why.

HVAC was a disaster. So, we called the builder and told him that insulation needed to be paused until we got the HVAC issues fixed. I showed him videos of all the problems and he just shrugged it off.  So we got permission from our builder to halt the build for a couple weeks so that we could bring in our own HVAC guy, a true decades experience craftsman and redo what was messed up because it was clear that our builder’s sub didn’t even have the skills to do what we wanted done and didn’t like working with metal duct. Full account of the redo is in the above video.

Awkwardly, the builder didn’t communicate with his HVAC guy that we would be taking over, so one day he showed up to find his work half ripped out, and of course stormed off peeved and confused.

One of the biggest problems with the HVAC:

• There was an extra 200 feet of flex duct in the basement ceiling winding all over the place, in knots and so poorly laid out, that we would have been lucky to have any airflow on the main floor. So pulled it all out.

Here’s the pile of the waste:

We redid the flex logically and installed a metal square trunkline (which he was supposed to do but didn’t) and we literally threw away 200 feet of unnecessary flex duct run that would have collapses our air flow.

Here are pictures of the original flex duct. See how all the runs are connected into the unit? They’re supposed to feed into a main line so only one is going into the unit instead of producing this snake pit:

Other problems throughout were some vents weren’t installed to code and straps and connections missing.

The upstairs unit had a similar mess of knotted flex coming into the unit as you can see here:

There was a massive return dropdown in the pantry, taking up the top 2 feet of the ceiling. There was never supposed to be a dropdown in our pantry. Again, we ordered the more expensive deep floor trusses with square openings to avoid drop-downs.

There was a massive 2x2 foot dropdown in the basement too even though it only needed to be 8 inches, if they would just use square metal duct. Again, there shouldn’t have been any dropdown if they added the ductwork during framing like they were supposed to:

Some runs were folded in half around bends which would have cut off airflow to those supply vents.

We Need To Be Closer!

During framing when problems started arising, we decided we needed to move down to Cedar City before the house was finished because we couldn’t keep driving 3 hours every weekend and sometimes during the week to manage the build and we had agreed to manage the second half of the build anyways. My business income was already starting to suffer because of it.

On July 15th we had moved in with my wife’s sister who lived in Cedar City and stayed there during the final 5 months of the build. Then in August we redid the HVAC rough-in.

In the next chapter, we’ll move out of mechanical and discuss the next nightmare, which was our really expensive roof…that kept leaking…