yungman, Your statement about a lean condition from a partially blocked carb causing problems is true and quite common. Usually a lean condition on a governed engine like a mower is apparent from loss of power. Slightly lean conditions may not be so apparent and can cause problems.Your assumption that it is detrimental only to 2 cycle engines is not quite true. Both 2 and 4 cycle engines are affected by lean conditions. An lean carb causes the mixture to burn much hotter just like a cutting torch burns hotter when the oxygen is increased. This heat can damage either 2 or 4 cycle engines in different ways. 2 cycle engines that are too lean can burn a hole in the piston or piston siezure can occur among other things. Four cycle engines that are too lean can burn exhaust valves and seats and possibly overheat and cause the rings to lose their tension. Your statement that people may be "out to lunch" or "doped up" is sad but true. Most of the failures that I see are caused by user neglect or abuse. Other failures that are common are what I call planned failures like ignition coils, soft metal cutting blades that wear too quickly, etc. etc. Manufacturers design acceptable failure rates into certain parts that nobody else makes. CD ignition coils are a good example. They are propritary parts that usually fail a few years out of warranty and cost about triple the money that they should. What manufacturer wouldn't want to sell a $50 ignition coil for every mower they have sold at some point in the future? Sell a million mowers and sell that many coils. What a windfall!! Motorcycle manufacturers are notorious for doing that with all kinds of cd packs, voltage regulators, pulser coils, switches, and relays. Sorry I got a little off track....

Judy, Yes and no. I sat for hours and stared at the disaster it was before I started, not knowing where to start. My wife wanted a pond and I needed to stabilize the hillside. Once I got an idea of how to attack the structural elements, I went in and drew it up. Although I later decided to re-do the pond itself and have tweaked the plantings some, the 80,000 lbs of rock garden and all the other structural elements remain unchanged. I had the rock all dumped in a pile and a friend sat on an excavator and picked each rock I pointed out and placed it where I asked him to. There is only one thing my wife is not pleased with and that is the neighbors ugly fence. I've got a number of trumpet vines planted on it but if they don't get going pretty soon, I'll have to come up with another solution :-) It's kind of hard to see from the pic but there are actually 5 waterfalls. The top one is up where the irises are in the upper right. It falls into a small reservoir which has two more that feed the streams on either side of that big rock behind the 'Viridis' JM and then two that fall into the main pond. Here's a pic of the top two waterfalls right after I did them before the plantings were all done. Here is a link that might be useful:

Wow, I don't even know what happened tothe first two photos! Justgot..Good luck, it'slow going. Can't wait to have it finished and the house back to normal. Susan, Thanks, we painted our bedroom Sherwin Williams Svelte sage. Megsy.. Yes, we basically did the stairs ourselves. The hardware company quoted us around 3,500., but we ended up doing it ourselves for about 900.00. That even included someone laying the treads. We just sanded,painted and stained. It only took 2 days. We were happy to do th work and save the money.

What does that matter - unless you are going to be selling in 2 years. What you need to know is - what is the actual market value of the home TODAY. I suggest you pay $300 or so and get a professional appraisal. Then you won't be second guessing whether a realtor is correct. I sold recently in FL and got an appraisal early on. It only took a few days total. I wasn't happy with the appraised value (I thought the home really was worth about $10k more ). But I dropped the priced accordingly and sold. Selling price was $1500 above the appraised price. But I sold - and the vast, vast majority of homes in same neighborhood are still For Sale (some just recently dropped their prices again.). So you have to decide...do I really want to sell? Then get an appraisal and sell. If you price it too high, you will not sell it. Put it this way, a few hundred dollars toward an appraiser is nothing compared to your monthly carrying costs for an empty home. BTW - a fireplace isn't really considered an asset in FL. If you are looking or a discount MLS firm - try listwithfreedom dot com. I used them just to get the home in MLS. But using them you still do all the work. They handle all of FL. If you sell on your own, you don't pay a commission. I sold on my own so only had to pay the MLS listing fee of $395, I think. Best of luck. You have to price well if you want any activity and if you want to sell. Remodeled and lake front will help it sell faster. But don't expect much of a price increase over the non-remodeled homes of same size/age.