Contractor's need space

Another lesson learned: clearly communicate and hold contractors to their assigned space in a house. Some trades, like plumbing and HVAC (heating, vacuum and air conditioning) eat up space in a wall and the ceilings. We knew this ahead of their work, but we are constantly running into problems with where our HVAC crew put their ductwork. We told their installation planner where we had planned for their ducts and returns, but this didn't get passed to the installation crew. We have a major conflict in the mechanical room where a 4" drain pipe is blocked by their duct work and the refrigerant line from the geothermal ground loop. Ack!

LESSON LEARNED: Spray paint the limits of a particular trade's working area and make them stick to it.

Getting hot or getting cold

Today's progress was to get a resonable quote for a heating/air conditioning system. This is our second quote and it's almost $5,000 cheaper than the other. So, is that a better bid or a worse system? It's a tough job to figure out what is a resonable quote for work done on a house if you don't know what a fair price is. There is a lot more to hiring someone to do a complex job than just price. If price was the only thing important, we would buy everything on E-bay. But hiring a contractor gets you more than just the work--you are also hiring their time, attention and quality. When I worked in the bike shop before I joined the Air Force, I remember customers saying that they would come to our shop for the prices, but they would go to the small shop for work on their bike. I asked them why they would do this when we had great mechanics and great prices. The answer surprised me; "I go to that other shop because I like the way they do their work and I think they do a better job." I am trying to remember that as I hire sub-contractors to work on our house. The more expensive job isn't always the best. It's the fair price done by the hard worker that I want to hire.