Hi Tiger,Ryan and Gary Happy 4th guys. Hope you're out there partying!! The Infinity system is running just great. Its so quiet inside the house that I can barely tell its on. I am so so happy with it. Its a real sweet baby. The temperature in Sacramento has been very nice these past two weeks, just in the 80's. Its kind of weird because last month we hit the 100's. I am confident though that this baby can handle it when we go back up to the 90's and 100's. As for the ducts Ryan, the flexi is attached to metal, but I don't know if its the insulated kind. But it is very quiet. I don't hear noise from the vents. I did take a peak into my attic from the ladder and the flexi is nicely layed out, no spagetti up there. Also all direct from the airhandler and no Ys. Well i've been partying all week Gary. I love this baby. But the real big party will be in the winter when its real cold outside and my living room will actually feel warm. For me that will be the biggest test because I can't handle the cold and like it very warm in the house. My old heat pump always blew in cool air when its below 45 degrees outside. If any of you will be in the Sacramento area in the future, let me know and we'll have an Infinity party or we can party Infinityly!! You guys take care and thanks again for all your help. I'll be travelling quite a bit on the job from mid July until late September, so if you post something and I don't get back to you please know that I'm on the road. Demi

We have not installed cabinets and MUA unit yet, but here is our plan. We have a 720 CFM hood going in over a Blue Star cooktop. MUA is not required in our area but having done research I decided I wanted it anyway. I had an HVAC engineer review our system re a return air duct issue. While he was at the house I asked him about the MUA. He noted that 720 CFM is pulling close to 2 tons of airflow out of the house/system. Definitely want MUA even if not required. Otherwise you are putting a lot of strain on your conditioned (heated or cooled) air. I purchased the Broan MD6-TU system (about $120). We will have it linked to the hood to turn on automatically. Our HVAC guy suggested it would not be wise to connect the MUA vent to the HVAC ducting due to the burden on our slightly undersized furnace. He suggested unconditioned exterior air. We will run the MUA duct out to the side of the house through the crawlspace. Will have a vent with critter screen to the outside. The actual MUA opening in the kitchen was initially going to be in the toe kick under the cooktop cabinetry. I decided to move it over a few feet to be under the wall oven cabinetry. With unconditioned air I did not want it blowing on my feet. :) [We live in Virginia--cold winters, but nothing like when we lived in New England!]. The HVAC guy did calculations and determined that the best efficiency for our set-up was to have the duct come up under the 30" cabinet and be open to that whole space. We will install (2) 12" x 2 1/4" registers in the toe kick to maximize flow in. He thinks that with it being only 3 ft to the left of the center of the hood area that it will draw to the hood very effectively thereby increasing the efficiency of the hood in removing odors. It also should not dump much unconditioned air into the living space because the hood will draw more effectively. Not sure if that is helpful (or even clear!). I really appreciated the HVAC guy's help--and he did it all at no charge as a favor to my awesome contractors. We are blessed... Good luck!

Your builder is supposed to know. Contract the hood to a COMMERCIAL installer and they will make sure system is right. My experience with commercial kitchens has been that make up air is provided intergal to vent-a-hood. There is no reason for tempering air in the comfort system when air can be drawn in ajacent to range. Hopefully that answer's your question,here's mine. Are you acting as your own GC? If you are and haven't started yet you should reconsider because there will be far rougher roads ahead concurning the build. If you have a GC and haven't started,hire a new GC.

There are likely always to be a lot of compromises. A goal of our house was passivehaus or near passivehaus. One issue we ran in to is that with US construction methods (wood vs EU's cement) the difference in standard construction and about 90% passivehaus is somewhat affordable. That last 10% is really expensive and you really can't come close to justifying it from a monetary standpoint with paybacks out 100 years. Exhausting appliances was another issue. Our energy consultant is very big on condensing dryers and recirculating range hoods and similar. We've had condensing dryers in in Europe. My wife hates them. Europeans hate them (though more good natured than my wife). We're to have proper dryers that "dry in less than a day per load". This is a modern convenience that she was not willing to give in on. As for the recirc range hood the solution from energy folks is induction and "just don't cook things that create grease or offensive smells". Neither are appealing options. We've used induction and don't like the way it cooks, how differently pans heat up, don't like being limited in pans, and don't like not being able to use any electronic thermometers like Thermopens. We have induction in Florida and make out OK for a couple of months per year but are always glad to be back to our gas range. We also don't want to be limited in what we cook. If the deal was to give up Wok cooking or something that'd be OK but everything that's greasy or has offensive smells? Not gonna happen. We'll have a good fully exhausting range hood. She also wants for our bathroom and two guest baths that condensation clear, mirrors not fog and hair not do whatever undesired things hair does in high condensation environments. Condensing bath fans are quite expensive to buy and operate. Much cheaper to exhaust the air and bring in replacement air via MUA. BTW, we currently have two MUA's with 10Kw heaters in them. These both feed in to the return duct at the furnace. The MUA's are set to heat the air to 44°f which is what the furnace mfr recommends as minimum. We've not had any comfort problems with this setup in summer or winter.