My husband and I raise birds, we have a wide variety of chickens and a couple of white Pekin Ducks. We raise our birds for the eggs the produce and to keep the bug population to a minimum in our yard. Our birds are given free range access during the day to our 5 acres and put up at night because in the beginning we lost several to predators. We have even caught a fox in our hen house with one of our hens in its mouth. We have used live traps to capture them and working with animal control released those animals back into the wild on the game reserve. So as you can tell we are all about making sure all animals be they ours or wildlife have the highest quality of life possible. We purchased 6 of these birds from our local feed store. Not knowing what they were thinking they were white egg layers. Imagine my surprise when I got home and did a little research to discover that our most recent addition to our flock were Cornish Rock and their health and history. It broke our hearts and of those 6 birds only 2 survived to "adulthood". We named our roo and hen Romeo and Juliet. They became pets and as soon as released with the rest of our chicks for the season began following us around, coming when called (yes you can train chickens to come when called). And I do photography and they would literally climb up in my lap while sitting outside to take photographs of our yard. I love macro photography and would not only take pictures of the native plants but also of the birds doing what birds do best finding bugs and eating things. I became very attached to our little surviving duo. I was overly protective of them partially because I knew they had a very short life span and partially because they found a way to break through my normally gruff exterior and worm their way into my heart. I found Juliet at 15 weeks of age. Lying in our yard. It appeared she had just laid down and died. It wasn't uncommon for them to nap constantly in the yard. They would peck for a while and then lay down. The other birds would often ignore them or not include them in their chicken games of chase and where is the worm. They were a flock unto themselves. As I mentioned earlier we also have Pekin Ducks and poor Romeo began to hang out with them once Juliet was gone. It broke my heart to watch him wandering around the yard searching for his mate but never finding her. Now when visitors come over he will follow them around and beg for attention. He even went so far as to try and get in one visitors car. He is a loving bird who only wants the companionship that was offered by his own kind, but lacking that has learned to get that attention from humans and ducks. I think what they do to these birds is beyond cruel. I have had neighbors who also have purchased these birds not knowing what they were and either found them lying dead in their yard or the poor birds legs literally broke under their own weight when they were kept with growing chicks that are fed constantly. I was outraged when I read about how these birds are treated by Tyson and tasty or not they are a living breathing life force that deserves our respect and care. After learning what I have learned about these types of birds and that the major producer of this breed is Tyson chicken I cannot walk past a freezer unit in our local grocery without wanting to cry. I know I am an old sentimental fool, but when you mess with nature you mess with your own food source. When our other chicks died they were disposed of the same way anything that dies is on our farm. And although my other chicks were often dug up by night predators poor Juliet still lays in peace, because even the wildlife won't eat her. A lesson we might all take notice of. If wildlife won't eat it should we?

We chose the noir hex travertine from The Tile Shop. I had the black porcelains home from several different manufacturers and they all looked cheap to me. Don't know if the quality differed much; look similar generic porcelain. Prices ranged from $5-$12.50 a SF. The price ended up being within a couple dollars a SF. We do not have them installed yet but will seal and seal. We currently have HD's cheapo whit marble 12X12 in our bathroom. unsealed and it's still bullet proof. Even have it in the laundry with a catbox... it's been fine so I guess the black travertine hex's will be fine also.

"@snidely, during the heating months, how many hours is the heater on? I can say that my average usage per day is probably 1.5-2hours. Which leads me to think the usage is excessive." Yes, maybe 1 - 3 hours of actual running per day depending on the weather. Less on weekdays, more on weekends and when entertaining. Most Bay Area houses, other than new and carefully constructed ones. aren't particularly airtight nor well insulated. Older ones can be very wasteful to heat. The good news is that it doesn't get too cold. I've been here a long while and have concluded than other than being sure a good job is done when repair or replacement of equipment is needed, it's a waste of good thinking time to worry about trying to get significantly more efficient. The payback period for any major retrofits is very long. If you have double paned windows and check for big air leaks (like in ductwork), there's little else to do that'll show you any payback besides turning down the temp setting on your thermostat. THAT can make a noticeable difference.

My current dryer is a Fisher & Paykel SmartLoad. It's 11+ years old. They were discontinued a couple years ago but can occasionally be found on the used/resale market. Try higher temp settings. Maybe Samsung runs at slightly lower temperature points for comparable settings, along with more conservative moisture levels nowadays for energy reasons. Check the temperature of the exhaust air as I mentioned previously if you haven't yet done so. Perhaps the temp sensor is bad and it's not heating enough. Low temperature typically is between 115°F and 125°F but electronic controls with fuzzy logic may moderate the temperature points differently from one load to another ... that's the point of "fuzzy" logic. It's not unusual nowadays that service material doesn't reference any specific operational temperatures for testing purposes but instead says, for example, that the temp sensor (thermistor) should read X ohms of resistance at X°F temperature. The sensor resistance changes as the air temp rises/falls, which the control board reads to turn the heating source on/off per whatever logic the design engineers programmed into the cycles.