Jennifer, I am a licensed HVAC technician in MA and an engineer for over 30 years. In stumbling upon your post I joined to urge you to please stop and reconsider what you are doing Monday. There are many ways to provide A/C for a house and the best way to start is to do a heat load for your house. If that has not been done you are being ripped off. The question of vents and dust and moulding can easily be answered with a unit from http://www.unicosystem.com/ These people and a couple of similar companies units are made for this condition and will answer all your questions. Delay the work and call the company directly. Simply put they made for historic restoration jobs, the move less air so smaller vents or different types usually hidden, less air means less dust blown around. Yes they are just as quiet or more when installed correctly and you will be happier! Cost is comparable and if you have not been given this option you need to question if the contractor is the right one for you, he should have offered this to address your particular concerns.

I looked at your three quotes. I am not sure I would want to work with any of these companies. You must have a Manual J load calculation performed in order to properly size the equipment. Any contractor who does not do this is guessing at the sizes. There is no excuse for not doing the calculation. Find a contractor who is willing to do a proper calculation for Manual J and Manual D (duct sizing) calculation. Do you really need two 60 gallon electric hot water heaters? Apart from the massive sizes, why electric and not gas?

Ionized, Thanks for the suggestion. I thought about calling Fujitsu to see if internally blocking one of the vents would void the warranty. Just haven't gotten around to doing it yet. I also feel bad for one of my dogs who sleeps on the floor across from the foot of the bed. She would then be getting even more air. As it is she often creeps off to sleep at the doorway out of the draft. Our other dog sleeps on the bed. Usually he likes to stay down by our feet but with the AC going he will keep moving up till he is even with our heads. We don't keep it very cold. It is set at 76 at night to keep it from coming on too much. But at any temperature when it blows it blows cold and creates a draft. Your right in that maybe an installer who could have installed the unit in the attic and run the ducts would have avoided this situation. But no one in our area had any experience with that particular unit nor were they interested in doing it. As it was I was struggling to find anyone who had experience with these at all. And yes we are very happy with the units. Cooling power is unbelievable and the cost is very low to run them. Zoning is amazing. Every area can be set differently and turned on and off as needed. No issue cooling an area down immediately. Plus virtually no noise outside. I can hear the neighbors units and not ours at all. Were on 1 acre lots so the neighbors aren't that close but their ACs are noisy compared to ours. We also have the redundancy with the heating system due to the heat pump functionality in the AC. Could be very valuable if on a cold day our heat system goes out for some reason. This would keep the radiant heating piping from freezing. I think the main issue with this type of system is the initial cost vs. central air when you already have ducting. With no ducts we didn't have a choice. Eventually we will work through the bedroom draft issue even if we have to buy a canopy bed. Some folks with central air can't cool their bedroom at all so I think most systems have their pros and cons. Ionized, since you have had both can you compare the operating costs for mini-split vs. central air? I'm curious to know if it is cheaper with mini-split. I think we expected the worst so have been pleased that there is very little cost to operating the system but were coming from using a swamp cooler so don't don't have a point of comparison with what it would have been vs. central AC. In terms of the point about the aesthetics. With a new build you could completely hide the system. We looked at several options that hide the units in the attic or the wall and you get just traditional looking vents. The only thing that prevented us from doing this was a lack of an installer to take it on. It is called the Slim Duct. Here is a link. Here is a link that might be useful: Fujitsu Halycon System

We used Florida Bonded Pools. There have been a few hiccups, but husband thinks I expect too much. :) Overall, we have been satisfied. Their construction foreman has been wonderful to work with and always available when we had questions or concerns. Their deck subcontractor is the best! We are almost finished with our pool. The decking company has to come back and repair where the screen company chipped/dented the deck. We also still have to go thru pool school and have our salt system fully installed.