Climate & Envelope

The West End

◆ decided the office · 120V · third time honest

• The circuit: a dedicated 20A circuit on 12 AWG lands at the condenser (MCA 19A, MOP 20A) — and at 120V it runs off any portable inverter generator's household outlet in an outage, no 240V inlet required (Resilience).
• Supplemental, not primary: the unit's rated heating floor is −13°F — plenty, because the furnace holds the whole house's floor and this only has to hold the room.
• The mudroom gets a fan, not a head: a door fan pushes air to the mudroom, so its awkward supply/return pair stops mattering.

The ecobee

already owned · install, then pair twice

• Run both integrations at once — they coexist: HomeKit Controller for local, cloud-free control plus the SmartSensor's per-room temperature and occupancy (pairing code from the ecobee app, not the sticker), and the stock cloud integration (no developer key needed since HA 2026.3 — just the account login) for the extras HomeKit omits.
• The nursery SmartSensor feeds Noctling through the local path — Walter's room temperature on the dashboard without ecobee's cloud in the loop.
• Quirk to remember: the thermostat's "current temperature" over HomeKit is ecobee's blended average, not the wall unit's own reading. Individual sensors come through clean.
• Zoning with the mini-split: no native coordination exists across brands — Home Assistant plays conductor, two climate entities sharing home/away triggers.

The Attic

contract the misery · own the middle · let the rebate blow it back in

The middle window, itemized

• Electrical: every splice into a covered, accessible box (NEC 314.29), each one staked taller than the final insulation depth and photographed. Non-IC can lights get clearance dams. ◆ decided A Type 2 surge device drops into the panel while it's open — see Resilience/Power.
• Air-seal: foam-gun the top plates and every penetration, seal bath-fan collars, weatherstrip + foam-board the hatch. The highest-ROI hours of the whole project.
• Baffles — rigid only: thin foam crushes flat under R-49. ADO ProVent (~$5/bay, Home Depot) or an Owens Corning Raft-R-Mate 70-pack (~$130). Roughly 63–70 eave bays here → $130–350. Staple to the deck at every eave bay, after sealing, before the blow.
• The homelab clause: Cat6 to the ceiling-AP spot and toward kara, a smurf-tube stub for the future, neutrals fished down to the exterior-light switch boxes (Rooms), an attic temp/humidity sensor, and a hard look at the hot landing's ceiling.

All-in: removal ~$1.7–3.8k contracted, the middle ~$700–900 DIY (seal + baffles + boxes), the blow ~$1.9–2.4k contracted less the rebate — or DIY the blow free-with-bags if Spire says no.

The Windows

original aluminum single-pane · verdict: guilty · deep dive published

The worst window assembly ever mass-installed, feelable from feet away — replacement justified on merit. The short version: order block-frame (flangeless) replacements for the brick-inset openings (a factory option — no fin-snapping), fiberglass or Fibrex over vinyl in a masonry pocket, double low-E + argon as the house glass standard, sash-replace the bay if its box is sound, and order the picture trio factory-mulled with the tempered-glass check done up front.

The Whole-House Fan

a keeper — with three upgrades from the attic project

• The lid: the ceiling shutter is the biggest hole in the new air-seal plane (~R-1, leaky louvers). A DIY gasketed 2" foil-faced polyiso box over it in the attic — ~$35, R-10+, lifts off for fan season — beats every commercial cover on R-value.
• The math check: old belt-drives this size move 3,400–5,100 CFM and want ~1 sqft of net-free exhaust area per 750 CFM (5–7 sqft). Read the fan's plate, sum the stamped NFA on the freshly baffled vents before running it hard.
• The control: a $12 Zigbee relay (Sonoff ZBMINI-R2) switches the coil of a $22 motor-rated contactor — the ⅓–½HP inductive load never touches smart-home silicon. Two-speed stays on its existing HI/LO switch; the relay gates the master.
• The interlock is the house rule, hard-coded: windows first, fan second — already policy, learned the loud way. A $15 window contact sensor gates the relay in HA, so a closed house physically can't start the fan, whoever flips the switch. (With sealed-combustion appliances throughout, this is about airflow, wall-cavity dust, and not fighting the radon system — not CO.) The evening automation runs off the Tempest: cooler out than in, dew point tolerable, window open → flush the house.
• Keep vs replace: a modern quiet unit costs $1.8–4.2k and buys silence plus a motorized damper. The old fan plus ~$70 of parts does the same job louder. Keep it.