roger, I am also in agreement with you ... in thinking that they would
throw a fit. I already know my wife would not approve either.

Thats part of the problem with a father from the old "do it yourself" /
"no nonsense" school -- is that he doesn't understand the restrictions
these new builders place on us, even if we did a quality job which
didn't cause any subs any harm -- they would still throw a fit, unless
nobody every saw it.

For that reason, I am leaning towards NOT putting in the fan till AFTER
I own the home.

I do have the builder wiring a dedicated circuit and switch up there
already and the fan mount is really non-existant, since I am going to
be using a "no cut" fan shutter mount, which just straddles a joist in
the middle and mounts flush to the drywall within the two adjacent 24"
joist openings. See the following link for the details on the fan and
the no-cut shutters:
http://www.trianglefans.com/pdf/Owne...l%20manual.pdf

So all I'm looking at doing after we move in is cut out the drywall for
the no cut shutter (which will span most of the 2 24" spans) and then
adding a couple of blocking 2x4s on the insides of the outer two joists
.... and then try to slip the fan up through the hole. I think my
fathers main concern is damaging the drywall when putting the fan up
through the hole, esp. considering the large size of the fan and small
~1" gap that we'll have to work with.

Maybe I could just temporarily pad the edges of the drywall for a
little dent proofing?

Right now I leaning more towards dealing with my Dad whining then
risking a fit from the building and the wife. Seems like the easier of
the two battles.