For our remodel, initial plumbing is wrapping up today with inspection Monday. HVAC work set for Monday and we have run into an issue that feels wrong. Need advice!

The new space is 120 sq ft rectangle that will be entry from garage Into a mud room, with laundry and powder room. Pocket doors for laundry and powder room, will most always be open. This portion of the house is on Concrete foundation. The changes in plumbing to bring laundry up from basement and move a toilet from one end to the other cut off the original 2 ducts for what had been 2 rooms. We thought we were still getting a duct into each room (now is the 3 rooms mentioned above). Now we are being told 1 duct is fine. These 3 areas are 120sq ft.

Separately my husband and I talked about having baseboard heat in the powder room as a back up in case we were to have our heating system go out in winter as a way to help protect the laundry/bath pipes since this portion of the house is not over a basement.

Heres my concern, the texts below are from my husband about his Conversations with the HVAC guy, and it doesn’t seem that one was all we ever needed, it seems one is all the effort they want to do. Will we regret this later? Should we go with their recommendation and still plan on adding baseboard heat but end up with it possibly being used more than expected? Or push back and force the work for 2 vents? Or derail the project to find another HVAC company? I know my husband likes saving the $$ that was suggested this morning as well he will not want to stop work as it would mean a 3 week delay. I really appreciate feedback.

here are the texts:

Hello. I talk to the HVAC contractor this morning. He said we can save $1000 if we only have one vent in the utility/powder room. So it would be in the utility room. In the floor between the washer and dryer and the potential closet. I think we should go this way.This further necessitates electric heat back in that area.

(I pushed back and got this response:)

Principally it’s the labor because he hast to dig out a channel between the main line in the powder room. He also hast to get a special kind of pipe that will carry that load. And third he just doesn’t really want to do it.

HVAC Said the total amount of hot air will be the same coming out of one vent as it would be coming out of two vents. It will come out faster.

My husband pushed back and then sent me this text:

Here’s the push back from HVAC:

“Won’t matter, should be frost barriers in place , having another supply won’t matter underground! I really don’t want the hassle it will cause.”