The kitchen and the melting pods:

I have a very important, critical question; do you think this is something that needs to be addressed?

It should be addressed. As you can see you will not be able to store anything in these cabinets that has a low melting point. Long term the cabinet will suffer some damage. Kitchen and bathroom cabinets are not designed to handle this amount of heat.

The is a construction defect and the responsibility of the builder to fix in my opinion. Did you inform the builder about this at the time of the inspection? Does the home come with a one year warranty? If so inform the builder this defect needs to be corrected.

This is a terrible practice even if the building code allows it. What is frustrating is this could have been done properly at a very low cost at the time the cabinets were installed. Neither the HVAC contractor or the cabinet installer took the responsibility to do a proper installation in your new home.

I’m in the states. It used to be legal here but now a continuous boot must extend to the grill. I think it would be worth it to have a handyman cut out the floor of the three cabinets, install the duct, and drop in a new cabinet floor. The rooms will be warmer and the cabinets won’t be cooked.

My warranty deadline was back in May (for one year) BUT I put this in as a concern on the deadline. We had a discussion about it and the builders said nothing could be done about it, at least in the kitchen one, and there was no further discussion. I feel the same way in that the floors of the cabinets can be cut open to do the work. Bloody shame, though. I think they were just rushed. I will be phoning the gentleman from the warranty office that was in charge of overseeing the house issues. There have been several.

The bathroom is pretty hot, as is, and I wanted to put an adjustable grille on the front, but was pretty concerned about how much hotter that would make it in that small area under the vanity. I had a digital thermometer I use for my acoustic guitars in there ( just inside the opening but beside the vent opening). It must have a cap on it because it just said 'hi'. When I brought the thermometer out, it finally showed a reading (which was several minutes later). I thought it said 112F.

Maybe reach out to your town inspections department to see what code is there. Could be a learning opportunity for the builder.

My interpretation is that they shouldn't have left it the way that they did.

It's going to be a learning opportunity for the builder, one way or another.

I agree, Mike. Unfortunately I have been down this road before. There was no air return in the basement. When I stated that it was code, it was then installed, no questions asked.

If you believe it's deficient with respect to code requirements, I suggest you reach out to your local building code official for clarification. If it is a code violation, your builder should be obligated to remedy it. A portion of the cabinet bottom can be cut out in order to perform the repair and replaced with a new (false) bottom installed on top of it.