We had another Wednesday morning design meeting with our architect. Much of the meeting was a review of the mechanical design, both the heating and cooling ducts and the other duct work for the bathroom fans, dryer vent and stove hood.

Most of it is unlikely to be interesting to the internet audience. But I will point out a few decisions we made. First of all, we were unable to find a ventless dryer that did not have built-in WiFi so we will need a dryer vent. Dryer vents require frequent cleaning to avoid being a fire hazard and the original duct design had the exterior of the dryer vent positioned on the second floor. Having lived in a house with a second floor dryer vent exhaust, I knew that such a location would make cleaning the vent a rare activity.

Instead, we played around with the design and decided to route the dryer vent through the front hall closet (shrinking that closet by a few inches) so that the exterior of the dryer vent comes out near the ground on the first floor, hidden behind the foundation plantings, but easily reached for occasionally cleaning.

Similarly, we redid the routing of the duct work for the bathroom fans to make the ducts shorter to avoid too much inefficiency. The current plan is to route the first floor bathroom fans up to the second floor and vent them through the dormer behind the second floor kitchenette. We may lose a thin cabinet that was planned for storing a broom, but it means that the bathroom fans do not have to push air half the length of the house to vent out the south wall by the game room.

The architect has done a rendering of the front of the house, showing the siding and all the selected colors.

There will be a seam between the first and second floor at the top of the windows that cannot be helped. We also can not add any space between the top of the second floor windows and the siding accent for the same reason — we are already using the maximum length of siding boards.

The rendering does include the breezeway that we are now allowed to have (as long as we leave an inch between the breezeway and the garage, which will be hidden by the overhang). It also shows the old location of the dryer vent — which now will be moved down much closer to the ground. (Can you see it in the rendering?)

We have been picking appliances. We really, really want are appliances without WiFi or at least appliances where the WiFi can be completely turned off. This has limited our choices significantly.

During this process, I had an interesting conversation with an LG chat agent. I was asking whether the WiFi of their washer and dryer could be completely turned off. He replied that it could be turned off through the control panel, but to be really sure it was disabled you needed to use an advanced setting. How do I use that advanced setting, I asked. Well, he answered, you get to the advanced setting through the LG ThinQ app. So, as I pointed out, this means that in order to completely disable the WiFi for a washer or dryer, I first have to install WiFi in the house, download an app to my phone and use that app on my temporary WiFi network to tell the appliances to disable their WiFi. I guess you have to be Korean to understand the logic.

As it happens, we have found a well rated washer and dryer with no WiFi. We also found a dishwasher with no WiFi although it is not as well rated as one that has WiFi, which the manufacturer insists can be disabled. The question is whether to trust them.

Looking ahead, here are the next steps for the site:

  • Stumps get removed Thursday.
  • The existing house gets removed on Friday.
  • The civil engineers come by next Wednesday to mark where the foundation will go.
  • As soon as that is done, site excavation will happen. They will excavate four feet beyond the foundation in all directions.
  • Then the civil engineers come back to mark the foundation location again.
  • Then the foundation can get poured.

I do not have the exact dates of the later steps, but I will keep my construction camera running every weekday.

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