Refers to antibacterial soaps and chemicals that supposedly sanitize our hands but in reality kill the good along with the bad, thus leaving us naked without our little familiars or personal good bacteria working for us to combat the bad bacteria. While I appreciate the "Madison Avenue" issues, I'm not quite ready to return to the days when infant/child mortality due to amoebic dysentery, cholera, rheumatic fever, measles, and so on and so on was more than TWENTY TIMES what it is today. In Pennsylvania in 1912, the infant mortality rate (deaths per thousand) was 150. In 2012 it was 8. Both figures - 1912 and 2012 - include ALL deaths, not just those bacteria-borne ones. Nonetheless, "the good ol' days" weren't, and for the most part, are a fantasy no less "fabricated" by a DIFFERENT "Madison Avenue" than the fabrications of the chemo/pharmo shills. Sadly, in a world with such extraordinary access to information, it is harder to find THE TRUTH than it may ever have been in the history of human kind. We must all SEEK, and FIND, our own way in this world full of charlatans and snake-oil salesmen. Precisely why I do not share the infatuation with "all things worm", that some do. The TRUTH I find has been something less than "magic". And while I profoundly appreciate fermented food and drink - with all it's "good" little microbes - I have no illusion that the "good" ones will "win out" over the "bad" ones. They haven't throughout history, I don't know why they should now. What "wins" is a strong immune system, and when that fails, "you" die, regardless of whether you use "anti-microbial" soap or not. Paul

He was here today and took down a couple of pages of notes, plus notes that I had prepared for him about our specific preferences - things like cold nights/warm mornnigs (I was told that heat pumps don't like being set back that far and get expensive you do that unless you use a special programmable thermostat), humidity, top-notch filtration, what rooms we don't use often and which ones we us frequently, what walls might be affected by potential future renovations, etc. I had professional floorplan diagrams (courtesy of previous owner) but even still he verified the size of all the rooms,measured ceiling height and window sizes, asked about isulation, inspected all closets and places where ducts might run, inspectd the partial basement & crawl space, figured out which direction the house faced, noted the location, height and even type of trees nearby the house, bunch of other stuff. He said he'll probably want to come out one more time before he has a final set of options for us to consider. This guy was recommended by the two main HVAC instructors at the community college where I work as "the only person in this county I ever recommend" because they's both been screwed by recommending others to coworkers and friends who didn't work out, but this guy has done top quality work every time. He does the work himself (with a crew), and doesn't just do the load calculations and design then turn it over to an underling. I talked to five different coworkers (out of a list of around 15) who had used him for significant work and they all highly recommended him. He said he was going to try and work out several options but since my attic is mostly finished space and one of the things he learned is how little many of the 2nd & 3rd floor rooms are used, he's probably going to recommend a regular ducted heat pump system for the first floor and ductless mini-split systems for the 2nd & 3rd floors. Comments and suggestions are still appreciated, since I've only had the one meeting with him so far! Thanks for all your sugggestions - it made me realize even more questions I need to ask.

Visit your neighbour ... ask for a coffee. (Don't vacuums push out hot air, in your neck of the woods?) o j

Well, yes, you can rake up every bit of grass. When the leaf rake gets to the point that it's just moving a few strands around, you can either stop or get out the leaf blower. But you still have puh-LENTY of grass to rake up. What kind of grass was that? And what are you planting now? Late for seeding? It hasn't hardly been below 86 yet here in southern NC Don't make this sound like it was his fault for making an assumption. You never mentioned where you lived. For this time of year it would be easy to assume you were seeding north of the transition zone.