Bad news. When I looked at the crankcase under the flywheel a little closer today I found a big ol crack. See photo. The best price I can find on the internet for a close match is $1,000. Ouch!!! It is for a Kohler CV730-0039. The tractor has a CV730-0017 in it now. Anybody put a Kawasaki in a GT5000? It is a little more but people seem to like them. I don't know if it would fit exhaust and motor mount wise. Just a thought. I don't want to just put a short block in it because they are $750. Just $250. shy of an entire engine. It may have to sit a few months while I search for a better price for an engine. If I go with the new Kohler engine this tractor will have cost me $1330. which is more than I want to pay for a 2003 Craftsman. If it was a yellow and green garden tractor it would be a no brainer (no offense to Craftsman owners). On the plus side it would have a new engine and the body and deck including the mandrels are in excellent shape. The only unknown is the shape of the transaxle. Since these transaxles are supposedly not serviceable it should not have suffered too much from lack of maintenance. I saw the stickey for changing the oil over on the My Tractor website. Is it worth it to put a new engine in a 2003 GT5000? Here is a link that might be useful:

Been a bit busy with the yard to respond before now. It's now due for another trimming with the Toro self-propelled I ended up with (a 2hr plus task last time that is bound to take a bit longer this time since I skipped one side yard and the front yard the first time round). As for the Craftsman...I've drained the fuel on it (the fuel had stabilizer in it but better safe than sorry) and will be taking the battery out to place it on a trickle charger until I can get it over to the one place that will service it since it doesn't look like they will be picking it up for me after all. Perhaps I was just plain unlucky but the problem I've been having was NOT due to lack of maintenance on my part. I've been very careful to do the recommended maintenance and have had no problems with the engine, etc. A defective safety switch is not a maintenance issue. I just wish the problem hadn't been intermittent for so long or I would have considered coughing up the $50 service charge when it was still under warranty. I was concerned that the problem wouldn't show up and I'd be out the $50 with nothing to show for it (okay and I -was- irked it cost that much when the lawnmower was still under warranty). With just one mower to base this problem on I can't say whether it's a common one or not...just that other people I've talked to seem to have had similar headaches with service and it's something well worth considering when purchasing a new lawnmower. I've also found standard air filters, etc. to be far more expensive than other brands so that's another thing to consider as well. Fortunately the most expensive part, the air filter which runs $25 at Sears, appears to be a standard Briggs and Stratton part that can be obtained elsewhere for less than half that (quite the discount, eh?). Now...to get back to that lawn. I don't suppose anyone has some sheep I can borrow for a bit...say the rest of the summer? Actually now that I think about it...anyone know if replacing a safety switch on one of these things is a DIY project? So far I've heard...it depends... From the way it's acting I've been told it may be the clutch safety. Perhaps I can work on it after fixing the trailer lights...or before since I then wouldn't need it so desperately... Just as an additional point...sometimes the inconvenience of having something like this out of service for so long can more than make up for a couple hundred dollar price difference. Now if one's talking about several hundred dollars...I'd go for the sheep myself...;-)

What should I look for to find info on 'heat pump mini split'? Any particular brands of other considerations? My walls are 74" high. I will be hanging ceiling joists on top of the cap rails at 16" oc and covering top with plywood or osb for loft storage. That will probably only be about 4' deep on each side of the building leaving me with 8' of overhead to play with. I don't really want to wack my head on lights, so I can embed them between ceiling joists or recess them or whatever. I don't want to have any question about seeing anything, or safety. So I will not skimp on them. However, I don't want to go overboard cost-wise. So I would like good bang-for-the-buck... Where possible, I will do my best to comply with NEC2011 above and beyond my inspector's requirements. I don't see anything they are requiring that is above what is in NEC so far. Now that once again the idea of home runs to each outlet has been raised, what does that suggest about the size of panel I need? In theory, I could put a box (4 gang?) every 16" with a single 250 outlet above it or perhaps 6 gang and have them all together. So I could have 4 120's plus 1 240 every 16". But wait there's more! Initially I wanted to have knee level outlets as well as counter top level outlets, and what the hell, how about a ceiling one as well. That would come to 12 120 outlets and 3 240 outlets every 16 inches (with the exception of the wall with the double door and where the single door is (and the windows, would not really have a counter top level position. That would add up to a severely ridiculous number of outlets, and if they were all home runs, I thing would require a panel the whole size of one of the walls. That said, 'you can never have too many' is probably incorrect, though idealistically I can agree. Realistically, I need to come up with a reasonable number somewhat less than that. :) It seems reasonable that I can get a panel that has 22 slots. I assume that gives me up to 44 circuits on 120 tandems, or up to 11 240 circuits, or more likely some combination thereof. because I am a cheap b*d, and I had to yank 2 perfectly fine 15 amp cutler hammer breakers to put in a tandem so that I could even fit a 100 amp breaker in the house panel, I will be purchasing a cutler hammer panel, and using those 2 15 amp breakers. I assume they would be fine to run lights and perhaps a smoke/fire alarm. I think I would have to be running a bunch of 500 watt halogen work lights to toss the breakers on that, and I don't really intend on running halogens in there anyway. I will wire the runs with 12/2 or 12/3 anyway, so when those breakers do give up the ghost I will not feel bad replacing them with 20's... just because. That does away with 2 slots leaving me with 20. If I put in 6 240 circuits that would leave me 8 slots and I could tandem them to 16 120 circuits. Obviously, I could have multiple outlets still on such a layout, but I obviously could not use them all simultaneously without going over the 100 amps. But, let's see where I can go with this. If I go to 4 gang plus 1 per placement that would give me 4 circuits per box duplicated above and below and on the ceiling and same for the opposite side of the room. This could be repeated 4 times down the length of the building giving me a plug point every 32" that will give me a choice of 4 different circuits or a 240, with the understanding that so long as nothing else is plugged along that 'longitude' it will not share the same circuit. This also leaves me with 2 additional placements of 240's that perhaps could be reserved for special purpose things, such as a welder, or climate control unit or something of that ilk. That is not counting the GFCI, but that is a detail. So we are talking about 48 split duplex 20 amp outlets, and at least 12 20 amp 240 outlets and perhaps a 30 or 50 for good measure. That is the closest I can get to overkill and still feel like I am describing a somewhat sane layout. Still, it seems almost double what I will more likely do. I assume there is a limit to the number of wires that I can fit through a hole in a 2x4, and again, if I am using 4 gang boxes to put 4 separate circuits in each one, I am not sure I have the confidence that I can fit all the pigtails and wire nuts inside the boxes and still have room for the outlets themselves. Is there a tool for planing the layouts/runs online or on the computer other than just pencil and paper? Am I just getting silly, or would someone actually wire a shop like this?

My online shopping was all good: Kohl's, Best Buy, LL Bean, Land's End, Amazon and Ebay. I have my items sent to work as our neighborhood has sadly had things stolen from porches. There were some things I ordered late and they have not arrived yet - but I knew the dates were post-Christmas when I ordered. Only one is a semi-gift (a jacket for my husband who lost a lot of weight and needs one in a smaller size). The upside of those is that I'm shipping them to Son#1's place of work, as I won't be back to my own job for a couple of weeks. So we're going to meet him for dinner once he has both my orders. Katlan's rude checkout clerk reminded me of my rude clerk story from several years ago. I was buying Christmas ornaments to decorate a metal tree I'd gotten from a specialty store. The sum total was probably more than I'd spent for the tree itself. I was buying a couple of other things too. As the clerk was ringing the things up we realized that there was something wrong with one of the boxes I was buying. The clerk ended up being really rude about it. We finished the purchase with the plan that I would go way back to the seasonal section to get another box - even the cashier manager had come over to help because she heard the rude cashier. However, after starting to walk back to switch the boxes, instead I turned around and went over to customer service and told them I wanted to return everything. Everything?! Yes. I said that the clerk had been really rude and and that made me mentally step back and realize that I was overspending. Customer service wanted to know who the clerk had been, but I said that I understood that it's the stressful Christmas shopping season and I didn't want to point her out, but just wanted my money back. (I ended up getting the tree ornaments from Joanne Fabrics and used some JF Bucks I had to pay!) I guess a thank you to the rude clerk for helping me to spend less?