Monday, June 20, 2005
	3:38:57 PM   problem solved Update 2: The previous problem that prevented completion today has been resolved. New problems that prevent completion today have taken its place. A piece of rectangular duct was made to work and the problem from Update 1 has been resolved without customer fabrication. Real progress today but not quite finished.
	12:31:47 PM   problematic vent hood Update 1: Yack, there is already a problem that will prevent completion of the darkroom ventilation system by this afternoon. Because the ceiling is low and because the ductwork for the main household hvac is near the ceiling, the 130" vent hood has to go in horizontally. A 10" duct has to be tapped out of the top of the horizontal vent hood, but the 10" duct must fit underneath the main household ductwork. The intention was to use a 10" elbow but as demonstrated in the picture, the elbow will not fit underneath the main ductwork for the house. Cooper Mechanical will have to build a simple custom rectangular duct to come out of the top of the hood and then attach round 10" duct to that. The added 90-degree angle is not beneficial to air flow. The custom part cannot be fabricated today. Between fabrication and scheduling the installation, I expect to lose a minimum of another week. Who knows, maybe I'll be wrong. Even if I am correct, the enormous part of the task is well on its way toward completion. No more months and months of hassles (I hope :)!
	10:47:53 AM   hvac ductwork in a holding pattern on my 'lawn' Darkroom ventilation is being installed today! The ductwork pictured here will work its way into my basement and will form the exhaust ventilation for the darkroom. There will be two hoods (the small one is pictured in the foreground) covering about 16 feet of sink. Each hood will go into a 10" duct. The 10 inch ducts will merge into a 12 inch duct which traverses the width of the house. A 900 cfm fan will be placed close to the exhaust point. A 12" make-up air duct without a blower will be brought in underneath the exhaust ductwork. Make-up air will open near the sinks. It has taken almost three years of modifications to the house and almost two years of hvac-related hassles to reach this point. After three years of anticipation, the darkroom will be significantly closer to operating condition this afternoon. There will still be plenty of contruction left, but it is somehow easier to locate people who can do the remaining part -- mostly plumbing, sheetrock and building a specialized enlarger table. There will be a little bit of electrical work to do also. The hvac stuff was far and away the hardest work to do. I spoke to literally 8 or 10 different companies about it. I ened up using a commercial firm which does a bit of residential work when time allows. Because the residential work is low on the priority list, it has literally taken *many* months of calling and begging this company to do the work. Part of that time is due to the fact that I cannot afford to pay enormous amounts of money for the job (it will be about two thousand dollars as is). It is a case of "quality price or service, pick any two". I chose quality and price. The upside of using this particular commercial firm is that they can do anything the task requires. They can model then form the ductwork, weld, jackhammer and otherwise not flinch at any mechanical requirement of the job. In addition, they have the engineering ability to handle to the technical issues. None of the other hvac companies that I talked to had the combination of skills needed to do the job. Most of the other companies shot themselves in the foot within 30 minutes by insisting that they understood the problem when I could tell that they did not. other companies shot themselves in the foot by only recommending very expensive (let's say $10,000-ish) solutions. The $10,000 approach might be more perfect in terms of hvac theory, but it was simply beyond my budget. I internally estimated that I should be able to vent the darkroom for around $1,000. By sticking to that conviction, I eventually got the job done and done correctly at a considerable savings relative to the upper end quotes. I made a few concessions to keep the cost down: Galvanized metal for the ductwork instead of stainless or ideally pvc. A 5 sone exhaust fan is louder than I wanted. I will have to engineer some way to dampen the sound. The make-up air ductwork is not ideally located or engineered. That compromise was dictated by more than the cost -- the room itself limits the location and design of the make-up air.