Sounds like an interesting project. I wish I had your construction skills! I would love to see pictures of your project when you get it going. I'll just answer some of your questions based on my own experience. 1. Definitely slope the sides, because wet snow, and even high winds, can pile up and easily bend or break metal frames, much less wood. 2. I don't like the idea of permanent vent holes. During periods of cold weather, and definitely at night, those vent holes will mostly cancel out the benefits of having triple wall glazing. And during warm sunny weather, those holes will not be enough. At the very least, I would drape some row cover over the frames at night, or just manually vent during warm or sunny weather. 3. In my experience, an air temperature gain of 15 degrees definitely does not translate to a 15 degree rise in soil temps. more than an inch or so below the surface because the soil is constantly losing heat to soil outside the frame as well as to lower layers. For example, in my greenhouse that I use like a cold frame (with row covers inside), the average daily temp. is about 15 degrees warmer than ambient in the summer (as I ventilate during the day). But the soil at 6" is only 2-3 degrees warmer than outside soil. 4. I would go with reflective fabric on the north wall.

G.M., I always share recipes. It's not like it's going to hurt me if someone else makes the same thing. It is a recipe I found on the internet, but then I had to change it up just a little bit. It gives roast a bit of a different flavor, and we just love it. Here's it is: one 6-lb. roast 4 T. butter or margarine 2 medium onions, chopped 16 oz. sour cream 32 oz. chicken stock or chicken broth 3 T. dill weed 1 and 1/2 t. seasoned salt 1 t. red pepper flakes Pour the chicken stock, sour cream, dill weed, seasoned salt and red pepper flakes into a crock pot, and stir together. Cover the crock pot and turn it on. Let the broth ingredients begin heating up. Melt the butter or margarine in a dutch oven on top of the stove and then brown the roast on all sides. While it is browning, chop up the onions. Remove the roast from the dutch oven and place it in the crockpot. Saute' the onions in the dutch oven until they are lightly browned. Pour the onions/butter mixture into the crockpot and stir well. Set the crockpot on low if you want to cook the roast all day, or on high if you want to cook it for a half-day. Cook, serve, enjoy. The longer it cooks, the more the liquid cooks down and thickens. Sometimes, if I only cook it for 6 hours, the liquid is a little runnier....more like au just when I want it a little thicker like gravy. So, to remedy that, I pour about 80 percent of the liquid into a saucepan and simmer it on the stove for a while to evaporate more moisture. Then I pour it back into the crockpot and stir everything together again. (Usually, while I am doing that I am preparing the side dishes.) If I cook it all day on low, the moisture usually has cooked out and the broth is thickened up the way we like it. A roast this size makes the four of us a couple of big meals, and there is usually some meat left for sandwiches. I like to make open-faced sandwiches like the open-faced roast beef sandwiches at Cracker Barrel. Just chop up some of the leftover roast beef and heat it and the sauce. Serve over thick slices of sourdough bread. Yummy! And the tomato plants.....well, the ones I have more or less match what I thought I was raising. I have to finish the comparison tomorrow, as I got distracted by a movie DH was watching and sort of stopped in the middle. There are a few tomato plants that weren't on the original list, which isn't unusual. Often, after starting my seeds in late January, I come across a variety that sounds delicious and decide to start "a few more tomatoes". LOL And, of course, sometimes a few seeds don't sprout, or sprout and die, or sprout and get eaten by the deer or rabbits when I leave the flats sitting outside at night. (sign) Tomorrow, I'll let you know how much the list changed. I know I did add Ramapo F-1, which is back on the commercial market for the first time in quite a while. I ordered seeds from the New Jersey Agriculture Extension Service at Rutgers University (in January, I think) and they didn't arrive until March 10. I started them right away, and they are now about 3" tall and have 2 to 4 true leaves, so they'll have to grow a little before they go into the ground. Still, with the very warm weather we're having, I think they'll reach planting size pretty quickly. Sometimes I think back to how easy it used to be before I started raising my own from seed, and think that life was so much simpler then. (smile) But, I do love the huge variety of colors and flavors, so I don't really mind. I want to plant a lot Monday, so I'm free to run down to Ft. Worth the rest of the week to see Mom in the hospital, especially if they start the tests Monday. I think the oncologist is going to try to diagnose the probable cancer without extracting bone marrow (due to her age and lower bone density), so it may take a few extra days to get a definite idea of what is going on. We also have the annual Fire Dept. awards dinner Saturday, and have to do some running around one day this week to pick up plaques and other awards and stuff and get ready for that. I hope for a rain-free Monday so I can plant, plant, plant, since the weather seems good in the extended forecast, and it may be the only day I have "free" this week. (At least the recent rainfall has kept down the number of grass fires, so I'm not having to drop everything and go!) Dawn

@ kimmsr... Not sure how recycled tires got into this discussion? @ OP... Just called the landscape company that supplies the mulch. It is called "Playmat" mulch. There is no dye in it and it is NOT put through a shredder, rather it is put through a chipper. They claim that it provides more cushion when it's not shredded. The mulch is also NOT heat treated. That's good stuff to know, although shredder vs. chipper is just a matter of particle size in the finished product. The ASTM standards for which play mat mulch is certified are in regard to moisture retention and erosion control. Here's a description of play mat mulch that I found: Play mat exceeds all ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) requirements and is superior in quality. Our virgin hardwood chips are processed to create mulch that is clean and free from twigs and leaves. Our playground surfacing compacts in layers to give incredible impact resistance, therefore, receiving one of the highest government safety ratings. He suggested to fluff the existing mulch with a rake and put another 4 inches of Playmat on top of it. This seems like an instruction that is in direct opposition to the results you want. Stirring up the mulch will allow more weed seeds to get to the soil. You could probably have a load of wood chips delivered for free via tree trimming service. The last sentence of the description I pasted above mentions compaction as a factor in impact resistance. If the person you called knew that, that should be more reason for them to not give you the "fluffing" instruction because the reason you have the mulched area is that it's under a play structure. I also asked for a herbicide recommendation and he mentioned that a number of his guests use a product called "Crossbow". I need to do some research on this product. Great idea, putting poison in a children's play area definitely warrants research. If you could go into the future and ask your grown children if they would rather have pulled weeds or played in poisoned wood chips, I think you will have done as much research as necessary, though.

Just three years ago, where my house and yard is now was just a field of weeds. On my half acre lot, I've mulched with between 500 and 600 bags of leaves from neighbors, ground up, and applied thickly to growing beds, spread regularly and thinly on the lawn. In some of the areas where I wasn't going to pay much attention to for a few years, I put down a thick layer of newspaper before piling on the leaf mulch. In areas where I am actively gardening, I just pile on the leaves each fall and winter(already started collecting leaves this year). I already have absolutely no weed "problem" in my garden areas. Yes, the mulch keeps down almost all of the weeds. Also, some weeds sprout and come through the mulch. The advantage of the mulch is that the soil underneath never is hard, dry, and impossible to remove weeds from. I walked through my garden often that first year in particular, to remove weeds when small and well BEFORE they can ever go to seed. Anything that can grow from any small piece of the subject weed or that included seeds(along borders, etc., I put in a trash can for removal from my property. More benign things go in the compost pile. But they are very easy to pull from well mulched soil, and there just aren't many of them. The casual way I deal with weeding is an indication that just the organic mulch is all I need. I have seen, heard, and experienced horrible things with landscape fabric, and I won't subject myself to that.