I got my start writing about design and construction for a roofing industry trade publication nearly 24 years ago. During the interviews I conducted with commercial and residential roofing contractors, it came up time and again how architects would design beautiful buildings with intricate roofs that just didn’t work in the real world. The roofing contractor would then go back to the literal drawing board with the architect to come up with a way the roof design could be close to the architect’s vision while being constructable and, most importantly, functional for the building owner.
Based on that experience, I assumed the experts in each trade come forward to point out problems with designs all the time. Well, you know what they say about assumptions!
The past year in our new house in Omaha, Neb., has been incredibly educational for me. A glaring issue in our home—a spec home built in 2022—has been the HVAC. Our house is hot in summer, cold in winter. We complained to the builder, who sent—several times—the HVAC sub who installed our system. Each time, the HVAC team member shook his head and walked away with no solutions. Out of frustration, my husband called the HVAC professional who installed the heat pump in our previous home, which we remodeled from top to bottom (read about the remodel in a 17-part series). According to him, we don’t have enough cold-air returns. Essentially, our HVAC unit can’t get enough air to blow out the correct amount of conditioned air. Meanwhile, our HVAC unit is right-sized but our ductwork, which happens to be flexible and installed in our finished basement’s ceiling, is under-sized, so the ductwork is acting like a blocked artery. We’d have to rip out the ceiling to replace the ductwork and we can’t be sure we would be able to install new duct, preferably sheet metal, because plumbing and electrical may be in the way.
During the International Builders’ Show in Las Vegas in February (check out the new products our team saw at the show), I met Corbett Lunsford, co-creator of the Home Diagnosis TV series on PBS. Lunsford connected me with an HVAC company from Omaha for a second opinion. This company confirmed what our trusted HVAC installer had already said: Our HVAC system was built to fail.
I’m not a big fan of social media but I immediately got on my subdivision’s Facebook page and created a post about our house and quickly learned hot/cold homes is the norm among the homes in our neighborhood constructed by our same builder. After conversations with our trusted HVAC installer and our second-opinion HVAC company, I was told today’s new homes are built faster and cheaper than ever before. Meanwhile, the expert subcontractors should not question what they see on the spec because the builder will just find someone else to install it. And, of course, everyone wants to stay in business and keep their crews employed. All of this is happening to the detriment of homeowners, who trust the builders and subs to ensure a certain level of care in everything they do.
I’d love to say this Catch-22 is only happening in Omaha but I’m not making assumptions anymore.
