Some Guy wrote:


The first owner of a new home, if given the opportunity, is more
likely to pay attention to ANYTHING going into the house's
construction vs any future owner of the house.

I generally get the opposite impression, both from my experience
remodeling, and from people who have built homes.

You get overwhelmed with details and choices that have to be made, often in
abstract ways over 2D drawings or worse, over long lists of material
choices. The builders want quick, up-front decisions since there's a
supply chain delay as the materials are ordered and they want to be able to
schedule projects as efficiently as possible without having to stop and
wait for stuff to come in.

HVAC is way outside of nearly everyone's area of expertise and the sources
for consumer education are few and far between. Among the zillion other
choices being made by people building a home, HVAC is the last thing they
want to make decisions about and chances are the builder isn't giving them
the choice and often has just told the HVAC sub to get whatever is
absolutely cheapest, meets new-home code and will last just long enough
that the builder can avoid having to warranty it.

I like to think I'm much better informed than most, but HVAC I find deeply
frustrating -- there's no good information and when I chat up commercial
HVAC guys when I do work in a large data center, they usually laugh at my
problems and tell me how bad I'm being raped by the residential contractors
-- which I suspect all along, but I love air conditioning too much, and
thanks to Minnesota's winters, I *need* heat too much to complain, so I
just pay. And pay.