86. Copper compounds will not be used in your plot more than once s year. Copper builds up from overuse. 87. Herbicide _____________ cannot be used at all. While you ca n buy it don't use it here. You will be prosecuted if caught and charged for site cleanup. 88. Area x of our garden was a _____________. No food crops will be grown in that area. 89. Use the composter. Turn it when you see it. 90. Drop food donations at ___________________. Call ______________. 91. Plots for 2014 are assigned as from direction ___________ as 1_________________, 2__________________… . 92. Use of our phone lists and email addresses for any purpose other than garden business is prohibited. Don't share them out. Don't give business email addresses please. 93. Accept cleanup requests gracefully. Request cleanups even more gracefully. 94. We report suspicious activity. 95. Do not leave personal items in the garden. 96. Don't contaminate the rain garden area. No fertilizer with manure, etc. A rain garden is a reservoir not a garden.

Thanks very much for the reassurance and the suggestions! I know a lot of local gardeners but no one does their starts under lights, so it is good to have a little direction and to hear that simple _has_ worked out for folks. :) I finally found some "lighting for dummies" definitions on wikipedia, if anyone else as newbie as I am passes by this page: "Lamps are typically identified by a code such as F#T#, where F is for fluorescent, the first number indicates the power in watts (or strangely, length in inches in very long lamps), the T indicates that the shape of the bulb is tubular, and the last number is diameter in eighths of an inch. Typical diameters are T12 (1.5" or 38 mm) for residential bulbs with old magnetic ballasts, T8 (1" or 25 mm) for commercial energy-saving lamps with electronic ballasts, and T5 (5/8" or 16 mm) for very small lamps which may even operate from a battery-powered device." Temperature comes after this number. ("CW" is "cool white", "WW" is "warm white".) The higher the K number (or degrees Kelvin), the "cooler" the color temperature. Now I feel silly for freaking out. Thanks again! Jane

When the effluent rises it has some velocity, and hence momentum. When it enters the hood it has a tendency to "reflect" and curl downward and potentially escape. If the hood is deep enough (top to bottom) and the hood fan flow is high enough (cfm) the curling effluent will remain captured and will be exhausted. The barrel design in the picture looks to me (without examining one) like it has adequate depth. W.r.t. ya think's question a few messages up: First I would say that the change from vertical to horizontal should be as large a radius curve as you can fit to minimize pressure loss (as well as noise). The effluent momentum (which is a vector) is being changed in direction. This is akin to stopping it and starting it up again. If it can slide along a curve, the momentum loss is significantly less. There is one commercial ducting source I came across once that uses 90-degree transitions, but embeds a curved shape within the duct to improve the flow. I find it hard to answer the question of what questions to ask. Usually, the answers aren't available. Ideally, one would want to know the fan curve (flow vs. static pressure) and try to estimate all the pressure losses (including the pressure one might pull the house down to with or without make-up air) to see what the real maximum flow rate will be. This can then be compared against estimates of effluent generation rate calculated from the reference below. The power used might be adjusted to represent your cooking style, as rarely would one have all burners on maximum and cooking at the highest pan temperature. One thing is certain, flow rate in the hood has to at least equal the flow rate from all the active burners and pans, and arguably should be higher due to imperfect effluent collection. Implied above is that the hood manufacturer can supply pressure loss of the filters vs. flow rate, as well as that of the hood transitions. Getting that data, even if it were ever measured, would be unlikely, me thinks. I suggest that various hoods be "audited" in showrooms to gain a feel for their noisiness versus their designs. The reference worth reading, even if one doesn't intend to use it for calculations, is "Thermal plumes of kitchen appliances: part 2 cooking mode," by Risto, Hannu, and Pekka. (I've found it on-line whenever I've looked for it. Part 1 is also interesting.) If you do use it for calculations, please note the following apparent errors in their Equation 1: The constant should be 0.05 not 5. The units of phi should be kW, not W. (these corrections make their tables consistent with the equation) You will need a scientific calculator or counterpart software to do the exponents (unless you are very old school and know how to do logarithms). You will also need to convert BTU to kW and cubic meters per second to cubic feet per minute. This is left as an exercise for the student. [insert sociopathic laugh here] kas

mom - what a delightful thing to find when I check in! Here we are a couple of years later and I'm still really happy with it. I don't know if it's too late, and I don't know what remains of the old postings about lessons learned, so here's a recap: If you're buying less expensive slate, make sure and buy 1/4 more than you need. A lot of it will be unusable. But even with that it's still a bargain. It will also let you choose the stones that you really love because they're gorgeous. If you like the multicolor look buy a few boxes of a lighter color. Most of ours were grey/purple/red, and we added some boxes of green/gold. It really makes a difference. Before the installers arrive open all the boxes and sort through them. I did it in our driveway. One pile for unusable (some had these weird sharp extrusions that I didn't want underfoot, or really sharp edges where pieces had flakes off.) If you don't want to walk on it, put it in this pile Another pile for partially usable, to use when they need to cut smaller pieces. Then sort the rest into special pretty, light colored, medium colored, dark colored, and grey/black. And in my case, green/gold. We were doing an entryway, galley kitchen, and open dining area and decided to put all the grey/black in the entryway. Then I picked where the special pretty were going to go - one on each side of the dishwasher, a couple in the traffic area between the dining and kitchen. Put them where you'll see them Then I told the installers to take one from each pile, then from the next pile, and so on. Once they got it they were really good about not putting two that looked the same next to each other. If you look at my floor in the picture up top you'll see it's nicely laid out. I'd also suggest washing the tiles really well before they're installed. I had to wash them well inbetween install and grouting and some of them - the more reddish ones - had a lot of mud on them. You can also get more of a sense of the color. I used a matte sealer; the next time I scrub it I'm going to add a shinier layer (Holloway House, recommended by people here.) I tried it in the entryway and I like the light sheen it adds. You will not be able to use a sponge mop except for light cleanup (like in the winter when there's salt in the snow.) I still use the Hoover Floormate - pour on hot water and some cleaner, scrub a little with a stiff pushbroom, and then suck up all the water. It doesn't show dirt at all. Sort through all the tiles