I've tried almost everything ever mentioned about SVB deterrence. What I haven't tried yet is "Surround" which is a clay that you mix up with water & spray. Not cheap, but supposedly effective. I have tried a half joint compound half latex paint mix- worked ok, but since it doesn't flex much, it made shallow splits in the stems as the plant grew... I also shredded and soaked egg cartons and glopped blobs at the base of the stems- not bad, but you have to keep checking to make sure that you have good contact/coverage. The best & most effective method for me here in CT is to use row covers until the plants start blooming, & then to spray BT once a week. And to plant moschatas as much as possible...! And search & destroy eggs...they're fairly easy to spot once you know what they look like. For my pumpkins, I till in strips, lay plastic in just the strips, and let the pumpkin vines run into the weeds-they send down lateral roots easier in areas that have some sort of thick cover. Maybe it's because the grass traps the dew & keeps the soil soft, I dunno, but when I have clear, hard soil it's tough for the lateral roots to dig in. The main stems will get trashed by SVB, but the pumpkins make it, thanks to the extra roots. It is not the "eggs" in the soil, but the "pupa". SVB are moth larva- the moth flies in, lays one egg at a time, and when the egg hatches a tiny worm bores into the stem and eats the inside of the stem. If it makes it to maturity, it blows a hole out the side of the stem & burrows into the soil where it metamorphs into the hard shelled pupa. It overwinters in the pupa stage, and wriggles to the top to break out of the shell & fly away as a moth in late spring. I have dug around where the vines have been trashed at season's end- never found one pupa. Beneficial nematodes are good for killing the pupas in the soil, but they need to be bought & shipped & applied fairly early. Or in the fall. Not cheap, but they also will kill grubs & other underground pests. I discovered quite by accident that they are super for the hated & feared Red Lily Beetle. Knocked those Bad Boys right out of my lily patch. Some people have had decent success with injecting either BT or BNs into the vine, but that has never worked well for me. I'll perform surgery if need be, and grab the worm with tweezers, but I prefer to try to prevent the worm from boring in in the first place. Google "melittia curcubitae" that's the latin name for the SVB. Ya get better info w/latin names~

Hi. Stan here. All right, let's put this puppy to rest. First, if you want to keep one of the "resurrection plants" alive, you need to figure out which resurrection plant you have. Here, I'm going to address ONLY the resurrection plant from the Chihuahua Desert, spanning several states in the southwestern USA and adjacent parts of Mexico. (If you have one of the other kinds of resurrection plants, you're on your own.) Botanically, these plants are part of a much larger group called the club mosses. They fall somewhere between the mosses and the true ferns. They are a very old group of plants dating from the Coal Ages. Their scientific name is Selaginella lepidophylla. If you want to get it right, the "S" and only the "S" in Selaginella is ALWAYS capitalized, all other letters are lower case. And both words are italicized. (No italics on your typewriter? Then you can underline them instead.) Almost all other Selaginella in the world are moist habitat plants, living in deep forests, swamps, in or near streams and creeks, or among other plants for protection from direct, scorching sunlight and desiccating dryness. You would grow them the way you grow most of the true mosses. S. lepidophylla is a distinct exception, apparently surviving if not thriving in a desert, and a pretty severe one at that. I am trying to include several photos I took of them growing in their native habitat in western Texas. Note that they most commonly grow on the northern sides of hills and protected in the shadows of rocks or other plants. If they receive any direct sun at all, it's only for a few hours in early morning and very late afternoon. They tend to grow where they're in dense shade throughout most of the day. Note also that the soil in which they grow is comprised mostly of disintegrated, calcareous rock (i.e., limestone soil) with a little organic detritus (mostly naturally composted leaves, grasses, mosses, and other dead plants) mixed in. The limestone base is strongly alkaline, and the organic stuff tends to act as a hydrophilic buffer, holding water for a few precious hours or days after a dew or rain. The climate in which they grow is fierce. In Summer the daytime temperatures often reach 100̊ F. They may receive a few drops of rain from time to time, BUT while the Chihuahua Desert does not receive a lot of moisture in the form of rain, it is often blessed with dense fogs and heavy dews. And these are the resurrection plants' saving grace. Winters are a little less hostile. Nighttime temperatures often drop slightly below freezing, and light, freezing rain and sleet are not uncommon. For S. lepidophylla, life is a lot easier. S. lepidophylla, much like other Selaginella, uses a collection of tine hairlike roots to hold itself in place in the desert, and to absorb what little liquid water might be available, but it probably gets most of its water from the aforementioned fogs, dews, and occasional rains as the water is absorbed directly through the surfaces of its leaves and stems. It almost never sits in liquid water for more than a few hours. No, they are not immortal, and cannot survive forever in a dried state. In fact, if your S. lepidophylla isn't obviously fresh and alive when you get it, it probably never will be, regardless of what you do for it. All reports of them recovering after 50 years rolled into a brown ball are either circus hawkers' sales pitches, or statements by people who can't recognize a dead plant when they see one, and were fooled by the unfurling corpse. (At this point perhaps you should review the Monty Python "Dead Parrot" Sketch on YouTube.) How long can they survive in such a dried, dormant state? I don't know. Apparently no one has ever performed any sort of controlled experiments to determine this, and there is so much hogwash flying around about the matter that it's impossible to even make an educated guess. So, how might you try keeping one alive? I confess I've never been successful, and I've only seen one botanical conservatory with living S. lepidophylla on display. And, I know of a veritable garden of them growing wild in the Chihuahua Desert of west Texas. Here are some suggestions based on general plant care, plant physiology, Botany, and what I've seen in the wild: 1) Almost all plants in nature experience an annual growing cycle based on the change of seasons. This helps all members of a given species flower at the same time to promote cross pollination. It also prevents them from flowering in deepest Winter and trying to go dormant when they should be actively growing. If you try to get one of these to grow as Winter approaches, you're almost certainly wasting your time. Early Spring would be a much better time to try this endeavor. 2) Don't waste your time on a dead plant. If it isn't obviously alive, move on to the next hobby. 3) Soak your newly acquired S. lepidophylla in room temperature tap water for 2 or 3 hours, no longer. This is intended to just "top off the tank" of its water reserves. Soaking it any longer might likely afford harmful molds or bacteria a foothold. 4) Plant it by laying it, right side up, on a layer of barely damp soil. The soil should be composed mostly of a mix or limestone sand or finely crushed oyster shell mixed perhaps half and half with compost or garden loam. Do not use commercial potting soils because they are composed of either peat or composted lumber byproducts. All these things are acid by nature, and these plants have evolved to survive in an alkaline environment, the exact opposite. Commercial cactus soils might work. Maybe, maybe not. 5) Do not use a tall or deep container. A "bulb pan" would be much better than a standard 6" terra cotta pot. The entire soil must be kept only slightly damp, and large masses of soil are sure to develop pockets of wetness in their centers. If the plant or its roots are allowed to set in water or are too damp, they'll rot and the plant will die. 6) For the first week, keep it loosely covered with plastic to maintain a high humidity. Remove the plastic after a week, or as soon as the plant appears to be alive and growing, or begins to develop mold. Mold is a bad thing. Generally, a molding plant is a dead plant. Maybe you need to try a newer, fresher resurrection plant. 7) Give the plant the brightest light available that isn't direct sunlight, except that it can receive a little direct, early morning sunlight for 30 minutes, no more. 8) Do not water the plant like you do your geraniums! Instead, mimic a dew once a week by misting it. The plant itself should end up quite wet, but the soil should be only a little damp. 9) S. lepidophylla should be allowed to dry out a little more in Winter, and moved to a brightly lit but much cooler place for several months beginning in early Winter (November in the Northern Hemisphere). Remember that they routinely survive light freezing weather during many Winters. They may be taken out of their Winter rest period in early Spring (early March perhaps in the Northern Hemisphere) by moving them to a warmer room and beginning their weekly misting. Go easy on the misting at first, but resume normal misting after two or three weeks or as you can see new leaves and branches forming. 10) *USE DISTILLED WATER.* Not spring water, not softened water, not demineralized water, not baby's sanitized water, not holy water, not expensive French bottled water. Reverse osmosis (RO) water might be acceptable, but is a lot more expensive than simple, old fashioned, distilled water. All such water contains some level of dissolved minerals, important ones being lime and/or salt. As you water your houseplants with the wrong water, the water evaporates, but these contaminants merely accumulate. If you don't believe me, look at the mineral crust that's developing around the edge of the soil in your half dead geranium's pot! And before long your gorgeous plant begins to look tired and droops as it tries to fight off the doses of lime and salt that you've been dumping on its roots for months. Soon, it can no longer grow effective roots and it begins a slow, inch a day, march towards the waste bin. I hope this helps you when you try your hand at growing these most fascinating plants. Best of luck.

Addy, just for fun, I looked at "your page" to see where you are located. Just says 6/7. Hmmmm? Mountains of the Carolinas perhaps? Just trying to get a bead on where/what you're dealing with. When in doubt, get the invasives out I always say. That is, we-meaning any one of us-may not know exactly where we're trying to get a certain piece of land to get to, but we do at least know we don't want the whole shebang covered in invasive vining plants and shrubs, or what have you. And then again, for me, forest succession is really what it's all about. By looking at things through that paradigm, it helps get one away from the more typical "landscaping" frames of reference, even though those may still come into play. Then again, for my magnum opus, I chose wooded land in an area not particularly given over to invasive plant species (With the one exception being reed canary grass-and that only in pockets). so what I'm saying is, up in my woods, pretty much every plant species is welcome there. Sure, I am working to diminish a patch or two of sandbar willow, but that's kind of a separate thing. It's not as if this willow is invading into the shade......it could never do that. So I've got an area where I'd prefer meadow plants and very tiny volunteers of Thuja occidentalis, rather than the willow. But most of my property is great just the way it is. Then too, one of my primary goals is to increase the size of the woods I happen to own now. Therefore, it was essential that I buy land with some open area present, some farm acreage that I could convert back into forest. Hence, our planting of something like 8000 seedlings thusfar. You see-I'm not exactly fighting the same kind of battle you are. Then there's my job, wherein I do indeed get my share of battling invasive stuff. But that's a slightly different scenario. Some of the "invasives" that we fight are herbaceous, or grasses, or even aquatic. For example, up here at least, cattails will completely dominate a wetland if you let them. So even though some of the cattails we see are the native latifolia types, we do battle with them, just so that we can enjoy the benefits of a more diverse emergent-zone plant community, complete with bulrushes, irises, bur reeds, arrowheads, etc. So where ya at? I'll be spending a good chunk of Dec. down in the Fort Myers area of Florida again. So what do I tend to do down there? What else-visit nature preserves, botanical gardens, etc! In fact, some amount of volunteering is certainly in the offing. It's interesting to see somewhat similar issues in a part of the country which ostensibly would be very different from where one lives. In fact, I see a great many parallels between that state and my own-tons of water, tons of damaged wetlands and abuse of the landscape, yet still much to offer. I don't think I answered your question though! +oM

I am not an 18 year veteran of the solar attic however I had a PCS3 from 2002 till last year. I have owned a Solar Attic system. I purchased it from solar Attic directly around 2002 I owned rental property so I had the advantage of having the maintenance people to assist me in the Installation. I talked directly with the engineer/owner/designer of the system. He was and has been very helpful over the years. As a matter of fact I emailed with him just a few day ago. OUR INSTALLATION We build a pan 4 inches deep and 6 inches larger than the PCS3 system all the way around. We equipped it with a 2 inch drain which we eventually put a cut off on in that we had a float switch system cutoff that was in parallel with the emergency cut off in side the PCS3. The reason we put a cut off and an additional emergency float switch was that the longer I thought about it having the system pump 25000 gallons of water into the catch pan with a two inch drain would not be able to remove water fast enough than it would be better to just have the system shut down so the issue could be corrected. We mounted the unit about 5 feet off of the attic decking to get it as high and in the hottest area as possible. That installation we did with rigid 2" pvc We had 2 90 degree elbows and a total of 5 joints that got the water out of the attic. In the beginning I had some of the same concerns that have been brought up here about a possible leak however considering the fact that almost all of the water pipes in this house are PVC as are 99% of all of the water pipes in all of the houses built in america are PVC and the fact that the water pressure in the solar attic system is as I understand it less than the pressure that your home water system has a leak is not very likely. OK, so here we go. We had to pump the water up 2 stories. In that this was a close loop system with strategic check valves our concern for the 1.5 HP (up rated) pump being able to move the water was quickly retired as soon as we started the system. No problem. Great flow. The quality of the product was good. The unit was well designed, thought out and put together. The only moving part on the system was a GE electric motor that could be manually adjusted from low to medium to high speed. This would change the flow of the air over the heat exchanger. I came set on medium an after 5 years of messing with the speed it is now set on medium. We used their electronic control system which consisted to a electric control valve and an electronic controller that detected the temperature in the attic and the temperature of the pool water. If the attic got to be 5 to 10 degrees warmer than the pool water the unit would come on and stay on till the water got warmer than the set point. We had system on a time and regardless of how the system was set we turned the pool pump off at 11PM and on at 9AM In 2015 we sold that house and the solar attic system went along with it. Our new home has a slightly smaller pool and an electric heat pump from heat siphon(325Kbtu) system. We are thinking of installing a solar attic PCS3 in conjunction with the electric heat pump. The cost to run the PCS3 is about $10 per month for the GE Fan motor. My electric bill for the Heat Siphon is $300 plus per month. As I am writing this the time is 2:36P EST in Atlanta Georiga. The outside temperature is 73F Degrees and the attic Temperature is 105F. At this rate we would have in our house that had the Solar attic system have turned the system on at this point. This would have started the heating process. Unlike electric or gas systems where the heat will start immediately the solar attic system will raise the temperature however this is over a period of time. If you installed a solar attic system in July and started it up on July 4th you probably would not see the water temperature rise quickly. I would say it would talk a week or more to bring the temperature to its set point. My current pool is a free form pebble tec with about 15,000 gals of water. With a solar attic system if it operates as my last system did I will have the largest hottub in the north Atlanta are. It can and will bring the water temperature to 95 degrees. My wife likes warm water. As I see it the biggest draw back is the price. If the system were priced in the $2000 range, for the basic system and $2500 range for the full electronic system this would be a product everyone would have like a salt system or LED lighting. A $2000 adder to you Aquilink system is small dollars with a great reward.