Air Conditioner Installation Part I

The next post is a long one, so I've broken it into two parts so to hopefully not bore you to death...

As I mentioned last week, the final installation of the air conditioner was in full swing.  And this past Friday this installation was successfully complete when we switched it on.  It works really well and we're relieved that the geothermal heat pump we bought from Cargo Largo does in fact work correctly (we bought it slightly damaged and haven't been able to test it out).  Our only complaint at this point is that it is a little warm upstairs, but we plan to fix that in the future by breaking the house into zones and having thermostats for each floor.  In the mean time it's awesome and quite refreshing to have cool air flowing throughout the entire house.

The process of getting the air conditioner hooked up has required a lot of construction.  You may remember back in May when we drilled the lines for the geothermal pump.  Well since then we ripped out the downstairs bathroom to make room for the new ducts, hired a contractor to run the ducts and then had the geothermal contractor come back and hook the lines up to the heat pump. 

Part I:  Bathroom Demo

I'll start by explaining the bathroom demo.  A long time ago we determined that the best place in the house to run the ducts from the basement was through the downstairs shower location.  We had always planned to get rid of the shower on the first floor and by doing this we'd leave enough room for the large ducts to run from the basement up to the second floor.  The bathroom also had a very awkward layout and needed to be rearranged so this was a good opportunity for us to do that.  The demo began about two months ago, but we didn't finish it until a few weeks ago.  Here are some photos throughout the demo process.  Dan was in charge of all of the demo.  I would of liked to have helped him, but the room is really only big enough for one person and he's much better at it than I. 

Before: Shower Area

After: Shower Area

Before: Sink

After: Sink

During demo we discovered the subfloor needed to be replaced because it was no longer fully supported by the floor joists.  Here are some photos before and after the new subfloor was put down.

The old subfloor that we replaced.

Before the new subfloor was put down.

Again before the subfloor was installed...that is the basement beyond the floor joists.

And the new subfloor, much more solid.

Stay tuned for Part II...duct installation.