Starting the Unico Install
Unico components lined up before installation.
The main house hasn’t gotten too much attention as I’ve worked on the cottage. Overall the house is in great shape with mostly the finishes needing to be restored. I had some foundation repairs done last year to fix some beetle damage and the other major change I have lined up is a new HVAC system.
The current set-up is a traditional central air with 3 zones and large ductwork. There is also heat on 2 of the 3 floors, meaning the 3rd floor is unheated. I’ve been staying in the 3rd floor so I’ve had to use a space heater during the winter to sleep up there. Each floor has a large air handler in the closet and there’s 3 AC compressors outside. I can see why that was done if the house is chopped up into apartments, but I don’t want to worry about maintaining 3 AC units and would like to have some heat on the 3rd floor.
With the large metal ducts removed, these are the remaining holes in the plaster.
I decide to go with a Unico system since it offers heating and cooling in 1 and I can get the ducts run through existing soffits. There’s a lot of large holes from the metal ducts that I can also patch up to reclaim some of the walls and instead have a smaller exhaust port of the Unico.
The installation starts with ripping out all of the existing system and planning where the ducts will go. The big advantage is in the living room where originally they had ducts running in soffits and also hidden with a dropped ceiling. We’re now able to just run the ducts in the soffits along the room and rip out the dropped ceiling to reclaim some height.
Closet with old ductwork removed.
For this work I’m using a professional HVAC contractor because this work is way beyond my skill. I investigated insulation for the house before the Unico, but decided against it because I couldn’t find a suitable solution. A lot of places wanted to do spray foam or spray in loose insulation in the walls. From what I’ve read, both approaches have issues. Spray foam is not easily reversible which goes against the philosophy of not doing any irreversible changes to an old house. The loose fill seems to have issues because an old home doesn’t have a proper vapor barrier and the loose fill can easily get damp and stay damp causing mold inside the walls. I don’t fully understand the vapor exchange of old homes, but it seems that you want to maintain breathability compared to a new house which is locked tight. Using modern approaches with a house designed for air flow seems to be asking for problems. So for now, I’ll get the Unico and see if I can manage cold/hot with sealing off rooms, curtains, and shutters on windows - old school approaches the Victorians used for managing weather.
