Yes - that is the other reason I bought the Broan. I only had to make one 6 inch penetration through the house which has a stone veneer on it. It wasn't easy, but I made a perfect 6 inch hole through 1 large piece of stone - got lucky. Doing two of those perfectly would have been too much to expect. The Broan vent is very interesting. It is an areodynamic design that pushes stale air upward and takes fresh air from below. Seems to work just fine. My Honeywell Vision Pro IAQ stat has a dry contact relay on the interface module for the Ventilator (it also has relays for a De-humidifier and Humidifier). When you program the stat for the Vent, it turns on the HVAC fan and closes the Vent dry contact. I programmed my 2 IAQ stats for the Vent, but they don't know that the ERV is not attached. I just use the HVAC fans to circulate the fresh air coming into the basement from the ERV to the rest of the house. To connect the ERV to my HVAC system, I would use a RIB 110V Relay with dry contact activation. I would connect the dry contact inputs on the RIB to the IAQ interface module Vent contacts. When the IAQ Vent dry contact closes, it would thgen activate the RIB relay which would and power up the ERV. The only problem with this approach is that it would probably mess with the Broan controller timing while in Auto mode. When you put the unit into Auto, it has a 20 minute ON, 40 minute OFF or Recirculate cycle. It also has the tempreture limit settings - the unit runs for a few minutes and sense the external temperature. I fthe limits you set are exceeded, the unit either shuts off or recirculates. When you remove power to the controller (which would happen if I used a RIB relay to periodically provide power to the ERV), I am not sure what would happen to the Broan contoller internal timers - probably a reset. I was told by the Broan engineers that the unit was designed to run constantly and they recommended the standalone mode. I guess they added the Auto mode becuase there probably are some instances when you don't want the ERV on. For exmple, when it is zero degrees outside, I want all holes into my house plugged up!

EDIT: Wow, everyone is making A LOT of assumptions here. As I said, I didn't see you mention a quit claim, deed. Also, everyone seems to be seeing this through the lens of "Dad helping his poor helpless wife support their kid". For all we know he's the one caring for the kid and the financial settlement is leaving the kid destitute. More importantly, a financial settlement that is unrealistic is the gift that keeps on giving. It can lead to bitterness or a gaping financial wound that you bleed from forever because you can never quite catch up. Nowadays lots of people seem to want to bypass the lawyers, but I find this tends not to turn out well. Someone ends up getting screwed. It's really best to focus on the numbers on these things and treat them as financial decisions.

And once you layout a patio perimeter on graph paper, you can also draw out some to-scale lounge furniture, grill, dining table, etc. -- whatever you want -- on a separate piece of graph paper, and cut the furniture out with scissors. Then, you can move it around in seconds and examine it without having to draw out each configuration separately. In fact, in a reverse engineering kind of way, you could explore various furniture arrangements adjacent to your house without the patio in place. When you get an arrangement that is satisfying, explore ways in which it could be surrounded by an outline that could be the patio perimeter. If you get into this process and share your work progress here, I'm sure you could elicit constructive feedback.

it's nice to get the furniture off the wall but you don't need a walkway behind the longest sofa. you DO need it behind the new location of the love seat around the back and the kitchen side to the back door. moving the 3 seater back up against the wall and shifting the love seat with it will open up more space on the kitchen side opening up the room even more. or just move the sofa to the wall and leave the loveseat so you still have a path to the doors across the seating area. the cabinet you have angled in the corner now can act as a sofa table behind the love seat just to give you and idea or it can go under the opening to your kitchen or along the wall under your mirror. love your mirror by the way, I wouldn't paint it. the white chair looks great in the room. first picture to show that with a sofa table you don't look at the back of a couch and leaves a walkway thru the seating. imagine the left sofa in the 2nd picture against a wall the loveseat forming and L with an end table between. the 3rd an alternate location for the chair just make sure you still have comfortable access to the door .