goodkamra, have you planted anything yet? It really depends on the specific annuals you buy. My petunias, for example, are pretty much jammed together with just a couple of inches in between at best. My fancy coleus, with the "fountain" shape and lanced leaves, needs room to show off. But I think your ten inches apart will look like a really spotty planting with many annuals. In fact, when you're planting a container you typically want to go a bit closer than what the little tag says on the plant. Linda's idea of the graph paper is a good one. Draw a circle to scale on the grid, and then take it to the garden center with you. When you find a plant you like, look at its recommended spacing and plot it to the circle. Different plants, different plots. Then throw in a few extra to allow for the scootching together you'll probably find you need to do, and you're set! I wish I'd thought to do this graph paper when I planted my 10' planter this year. Instead, I bought the plants in three trips. Bought a bunch, set them out on the soil and eyeballed how far they'd go. Bought a second bunch and planted everything. Bought the third bunch to fill in where things needed it. I enjoy shopping, but it certainly wasn't very efficient!

Much thanks to you both! I'm almost a little disappointed - I think I wanted an excuse to get another one. Yes, I get full sun on that balcony, it just wasn't sunny that day. Darn Oregon weather. I already have larger pots to put the 3 palettes in (I think they're 18 inch ones), I just haven't gotten around to doing it yet. Overwintering... I haven't figured out what to do about that yet. I suppose I'll be nagging buyorsell to tell me what she does when the time comes. It stays fairly mild here, but we do have a couple nights here and there when it gets down to freezing.

Well, given a 2010 thread, start a new one. Also, reread your sentences before publishing to assure that they are as clear as possible. Since 2010 much information has been published here to answer such questions. In your particular case, HU-, an efficient response needs to be based on whether you want to make a modest corrective change, or redo whatever you have in place. First, to answer how much air is needed the following may help, given a conventional pseudo pro hood with baffles and large entry aperture: If your hood aperture is 4 ft x 2 ft for 8 square feet of area, then you need for most high heat residential cooking 90 CFM/sq. ft or 720 ACTUAL CFM. This flow rate can nominally be achieved using a blower rated at 1.5X that CFM or 1080 CFM at zero static pressure. This assumes a fully functional make-up air system providing 720 actual CFM, which itself may need a similar blower rating around 1000 CFM, or open windows (not usually code compliant), or living in Pago Pago where windows don't apply. Capturing oven smoke upon door opening is very difficult in any scenario other than where commercial large hoods overlapping are used with commensurately larger blowers and large entry aperture volumes. (See recent opaone thread.) In any case, given an actual flow rate of 720 CFM, then the duct should be sized for a flow velocity in the range of 1000 to 2000 feet per minute. Divide CFM by duct sectional area (in square feet) to evaluate a candidate duct diameter. (Area = pi times diameter-squared divided by 4).

Startup programs vary by manufacturer and platform. All very subjective at times also. I can run a Hijack This and chop all manner of "seemingly" unnecessary startups out of a system and have it perform really well, only to have a callback about "such-and-such" that isn't there any more. Laptops especially can have a lot of things running that may not appear on a desktop simply due to the nature of the hardware. Of course those very same machines can have a boatload of trialware included in the image, as say, the Sony Vaios did. It is a matter of first understanding the scan from a utility like Hijack This and then actioning according to YOUR expectations. I guess that's why there are forums such as this!