Indoor Climate Control

The work of adapting your heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems begins at this stage. When the walls are open, running new pipes, ducts, tubes, or wires is relatively easy. Ironically, deciding what to do can actually seem like the hardest part of the process.

If the system in place requires no modification, then the decision is easy. That also means there'll be fewer bills to pay and the overall cost of the renovation will be less. If you already decided no changes are necessary, you may want to skip to the next section of this chapter.

On the other hand, the systems in place may be insufficient to service the ren­ovated spaces. Or you may decide that while the workers are on site that you want to update, perhaps by installing air-conditioning, adding radiant heating, or otherwise changing the systems in place.

When it comes to HVAC work, you will need to decide upon what the source of energy is to be (gas, oil, and electric are the traditional ones) and then the nature of the system (hot air, hot water, and so on). So we'll look at the choices: first, we'll talk about the energy, then we'll talk about the technology required to put it to use.