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I had a walk with M., but no visit because my throat is still sore. It was nice to get a walk; it was 40 or so out there.
I had a good phone conversation with my sister. She’s sick. I think everyone’s sick. Hopefully everyone will get well soon.
We reviewed the control estimate today (builder, architect, R., me, the R. at the builder who is so extremely pleasant to be around). It’s fine. Builder-R. brought up the question of the main stair, which is present in the control estimate as a very round and not small number, and that was a very, very good question to ask! Yikes. Hopefully in the next day or so the architect will have heard back from the fabricator with an estimate. But even if the estimate is great, timing the installation of that is gonna be hellaciously tricky. Crane! Oh boy.
Anyway. I would say not my problem except in the end, isn’t it all.
Monday is a meeting about the electrical service, and honestly, that should have been resolved months ago, but it still hasn’t. R. and I have been going round on this for a while, because we think they (the engineer and electrician, basically) are asking for way too much (of a service from the power provider, and the power provider is being very cagy and avoidant), and so finally after the meeting I sat down and started asking stupid questions, like, where would a hypothetical control system to stage startup loads (so they don’t all happen at once, ever) be positioned and what would it control and how. In the control estimate, in the HVAC (and wow, is the HVAC a huge component of the cost of this project) section there’s a “Building Management System” (BMS) with several lines of explanation and a surprisingly large number next to it. It’s like it’s its own cost plus in the cost plus. Love it. Anyway. I’m like, okay, if all the really big loads are in the HVAC, and there’s a BMS managing all the HVAC and it costs that much, could it _also_ stage startup loads? In a way that could meaningfully lower the service size needed? So I talked it over with R., and then I texted the architect, because I had all these thought after 5:30 pm. He was game so I talked it out with him. I foolishly said something about backup generation in that, there was a meaningful pause on his side, I immediately backed away from that because it was absolutely interesting to me but unnecessary for this issue. He said, how did you hear my heartbeat speeding up over the phone? Ha ha ha. Silence is something I hear really well. Anyway. I had it figured that the correct person to pull into this discussion was the person in charge of HVAC. Also, all the bidders at the stage where we were picking a builder said they would use that HVAC provider (and that man), so if I cannot convince him to take this on, it just is not going to happen.
So. Fingers crossed. The architect sent the email. We’ll see what happens.
Also! The builder is at a point where he’s thinking about getting stuff up and down that driveway during construction and how that is not happening in terms of letting all the workers park at the top. So we have a ton of space at the bottom, and he’s thinking get a 4 seater with a box to run up and down the hill. Way, way, way back when we first were thinking about this, I lost days researching the But What About That Driveway problem. I eventually started lobbying for a funicular / monorail / wtf / hillavator thing, which is NOT in the current specs. But before I did that, I’d found Pickman. So when the builder was talking about a shuttle, I was like, get a neighborhood electric vehicle. I sent him the link, altho it took me about 3 minutes to remember which NEV / LSV provider it was. I had completely failed to notice that you could get it with a front receiver welded to it, so this would _also_ solve our snow clearing problem. I think I’ve almost talked myself into buying one, letting the builder use it, and then continuing to use it after.
I had a good phone conversation with my sister. She’s sick. I think everyone’s sick. Hopefully everyone will get well soon.
We reviewed the control estimate today (builder, architect, R., me, the R. at the builder who is so extremely pleasant to be around). It’s fine. Builder-R. brought up the question of the main stair, which is present in the control estimate as a very round and not small number, and that was a very, very good question to ask! Yikes. Hopefully in the next day or so the architect will have heard back from the fabricator with an estimate. But even if the estimate is great, timing the installation of that is gonna be hellaciously tricky. Crane! Oh boy.
Anyway. I would say not my problem except in the end, isn’t it all.
Monday is a meeting about the electrical service, and honestly, that should have been resolved months ago, but it still hasn’t. R. and I have been going round on this for a while, because we think they (the engineer and electrician, basically) are asking for way too much (of a service from the power provider, and the power provider is being very cagy and avoidant), and so finally after the meeting I sat down and started asking stupid questions, like, where would a hypothetical control system to stage startup loads (so they don’t all happen at once, ever) be positioned and what would it control and how. In the control estimate, in the HVAC (and wow, is the HVAC a huge component of the cost of this project) section there’s a “Building Management System” (BMS) with several lines of explanation and a surprisingly large number next to it. It’s like it’s its own cost plus in the cost plus. Love it. Anyway. I’m like, okay, if all the really big loads are in the HVAC, and there’s a BMS managing all the HVAC and it costs that much, could it _also_ stage startup loads? In a way that could meaningfully lower the service size needed? So I talked it over with R., and then I texted the architect, because I had all these thought after 5:30 pm. He was game so I talked it out with him. I foolishly said something about backup generation in that, there was a meaningful pause on his side, I immediately backed away from that because it was absolutely interesting to me but unnecessary for this issue. He said, how did you hear my heartbeat speeding up over the phone? Ha ha ha. Silence is something I hear really well. Anyway. I had it figured that the correct person to pull into this discussion was the person in charge of HVAC. Also, all the bidders at the stage where we were picking a builder said they would use that HVAC provider (and that man), so if I cannot convince him to take this on, it just is not going to happen.
So. Fingers crossed. The architect sent the email. We’ll see what happens.
Also! The builder is at a point where he’s thinking about getting stuff up and down that driveway during construction and how that is not happening in terms of letting all the workers park at the top. So we have a ton of space at the bottom, and he’s thinking get a 4 seater with a box to run up and down the hill. Way, way, way back when we first were thinking about this, I lost days researching the But What About That Driveway problem. I eventually started lobbying for a funicular / monorail / wtf / hillavator thing, which is NOT in the current specs. But before I did that, I’d found Pickman. So when the builder was talking about a shuttle, I was like, get a neighborhood electric vehicle. I sent him the link, altho it took me about 3 minutes to remember which NEV / LSV provider it was. I had completely failed to notice that you could get it with a front receiver welded to it, so this would _also_ solve our snow clearing problem. I think I’ve almost talked myself into buying one, letting the builder use it, and then continuing to use it after.