VirutalElectrician
Senior Member
- Location
- Mpls, MN
- Occupation
- Sparky - Trying to be retired
(Said in Wayne's voice from Letterkenny, if you're familiar....)
Wife and I plan on building a new house in a couple years, so thought we'd get a few ideas and dropped into a few Parade of Homes units that had floor plans we liked.
Keep in mind, these are $700K to $850K houses in tract developments...
I was surprised to see the second house we walked into had a Generac ATS hanging on the outside. No generator yet. Wonder how the neighbors in a housing development are going to like the roar of standby generator running at night when they have to have their windows open because they have no AC?
So I head into each house, looking forward to seeing the mechanical rooms.
What a disappointment. These houses have generous sized mechanical rooms, but poorly laid out inside.
One area had the furnace and panel.
One area had two hot water heaters (two hot water heaters seems to be the norm now?).
One area had the sump pit.
One area had a heat recovery unit.
So you had this generous size room, totally wasted by having a different appliance scattered around haphazzardly so you couldn't use the space for anything else. And then each appliance had their drain tube snaked across the floor to the floor drain in the center. Well, that's what it was supposed to be anyways. With all the people walking through, the cheap clips holding the tubes over the floor drain had been destroyed so the tubes were now scattered about.
Each house had a generous half dozen or so un terminated CAT-5E (not even 6) hanging down behind the furnace. No panel either.
They used main lug only 200amp Homeline panels. Main lug only. Thanks 2020 NEC. So they skimped out on a $100 breaker so now you have to go outside in -20 weather through 3 feet of snow to turn off your power if you need to. I wonder how long it will be now before the NEC mandates an internal disconnecting means as well?
No Smurf tubing behind TV areas so you could run cables or update cabling in the future.
Absolutely no pre-wiring for AV or future smart home features.
Suppose I'm being nit picky, but seemed like some stupid corners were cut.
Wife and I plan on building a new house in a couple years, so thought we'd get a few ideas and dropped into a few Parade of Homes units that had floor plans we liked.
Keep in mind, these are $700K to $850K houses in tract developments...
I was surprised to see the second house we walked into had a Generac ATS hanging on the outside. No generator yet. Wonder how the neighbors in a housing development are going to like the roar of standby generator running at night when they have to have their windows open because they have no AC?
So I head into each house, looking forward to seeing the mechanical rooms.
What a disappointment. These houses have generous sized mechanical rooms, but poorly laid out inside.
One area had the furnace and panel.
One area had two hot water heaters (two hot water heaters seems to be the norm now?).
One area had the sump pit.
One area had a heat recovery unit.
So you had this generous size room, totally wasted by having a different appliance scattered around haphazzardly so you couldn't use the space for anything else. And then each appliance had their drain tube snaked across the floor to the floor drain in the center. Well, that's what it was supposed to be anyways. With all the people walking through, the cheap clips holding the tubes over the floor drain had been destroyed so the tubes were now scattered about.
Each house had a generous half dozen or so un terminated CAT-5E (not even 6) hanging down behind the furnace. No panel either.
They used main lug only 200amp Homeline panels. Main lug only. Thanks 2020 NEC. So they skimped out on a $100 breaker so now you have to go outside in -20 weather through 3 feet of snow to turn off your power if you need to. I wonder how long it will be now before the NEC mandates an internal disconnecting means as well?
No Smurf tubing behind TV areas so you could run cables or update cabling in the future.
Absolutely no pre-wiring for AV or future smart home features.
Suppose I'm being nit picky, but seemed like some stupid corners were cut.
) water heaters is the norm if you have a huge soaker or Jaccuzzi tub.
