and I just had my sump pump and gutter downspout lines buried. The guy wanted to put in a bubbler, but I said no because I felt the water would pool into a mud puddle rather than being absorbed by the lawn. (That is what was happening with the old setup, which routed the water into the garden beds. Instead, I had him dig in a big poly catch basin filled with gravel about 15 feet from the foundation. The water collects in the basin and then drains slowly into the ground. The pipe running underground to the basin is unperforated so the water doesn't drain near the foundation and doesn't fill with dirt. HTH. Rachel

We are in the process of building the Collinwood. We liked the outside (except the gazebo), but we rearranged things to make larger bathrooms, a smaller master suite and large bonus room. We basically eliminated some bathrooms and then made some modifications in the kitchen/office/mud hall areas. We also enlarged the garage and added an upstairs laundry. Frank Betz was great to work with - we were assigned an architect. I sent a list and a drawing of the changes we wanted and they sent us a quote. It was cheaper than hiring an architect, but we didn't have a PE, architect and structural engineers at our disposal, so depending on the extent of your changes, you may not need to pay for the modification. We still ended up making a few changes as it was being framed, which was no problem for our builder. We had a good framer and he said the plans were fine to follow, but some of the measurements went from inside wall to outside wall, some from outside to outside. In one case something didn't add up right, so he was a few inches off which made our foyer 4" narrower. Not a big deal, but we aren't sure if it was his fault or the blueprints. Our modification fee included a full set of working drawings that consisted of the foundation plan, floor plans with schematic electrical layout, elevations, stair/building sections, cornice and miscellaneous details and a roof overview plan. We paid extra for drawings showing the floor and ceiling joist layout and the roof rafter layout at the request of our builder. We made EXTENSIVE changes (basically almost gutted the inside and moved walls all around), keeping the outside elevation the same except removing the gazebo. We also specified brick exterior, which affected the blueprints. We had to pay for the plan itself, a fee to reverse the blueprint (roughly $200) and then a modification fee of roughly $2,600, so overall it was about $4,200. Considering the extent of our changes, we thought it was a reasonable price. Something to note though, the plans are not stamped by an architect so if that is something required by your local permitting office then you will need to get a local architect or engineer to review and stamp the plans for you. It wasn't required it in our area, but we wish we had ours checked by a local architect who knew our soil conditions and we would have done our foundation a little different. Oh, they also need to know where you are building, because some areas require special hurricane accommodations. We love the house and had a great experience with Frank Betz. I don't think you will be disappointed. We even called them a few times into the build for clarifications and we wanted to add a window, but weren't sure of the placement and our architect sent us a revised drawing for no additional fee. After we agreed to the modifications, the architect communicated well with us and sent us a draft for review. We went thru three drafts before the final. We would highly recommend them as we had a great experience. One more thing, due to our extensive changes, the turn around time was 5-8 weeks. Not a problem for us, but worth noting if you are in a hurry.

Thank you again for all of the responses. I am glad this has generated some honest discussion and that people have been willing to share their experiences. Palimpset, thank you for your input. I know I haven't decided how much I want to spend and that's a problem. It would not be totally unreasonable to spend a lot on this kitchen, especially if I went with the 10-20% of home value 'guideline'. I can swing spending that much if I chose. The kitchen is old and ready to be torn out, and I have very specific tastes so I am ready to do it and not unwilling to spend the money. I do not want to 'waste' money on something either, so I struggle with spending the money on cabs, mostly because the countertops and range are the things that I really care about. :) I already chose a yellow berta. How sharp would that be against a lovely misty grey? I have to decide if I think it's worth another __k to get the pale grey that I :really: want or would I be just as happy to have gloss white and roll that money into the divine glass tiles in the bathroom. I am also going to look into getting custom doors for Ikea cabs, although from the sounds of it, a lot of the cost was in the hand painted laquer. I fully appreciate the work involved, and have no problem paying for work where it's deserved.....I guess I just have to decide if I think it's worth it for this project. . Oh, and as an aside, I have been very specific when I have gone to the shops. Exactly how many ft of cabinets, lowers only, all drawers, gloss finish, flat front doors, metal drawer boxes.... I haven't just said I have a kitchen that might be 10ft of cabinets and I'm not sure what type of finish I want. I am going to keep looking for local shops, unfortunately I live in a place that has had a VERY good economy until very recently, so most kitchens around here were 100k plus jobs that no one batted an eye at. I think everyone's a little slow to catch up that things aren't quite what they were. I am encouraged to beat the bushes. Thank you!! It seems like there are plenty of places that will do wood cabs, I wish I wanted those and not gloss!!!

This is a tough one. The Ecovents themselves are pretty good. We’ve had them for six years, and they definitely work. On the other hand, the complaints about customer service and battery replacement are very real. We have 16 Ecovents in our home and have to replace the batteries every few months. About four years ago, we comtacted customer service about this, as that’s obviously a far cry from 3–5 years. Their customer service was awesome: they said they’d look into it and get back to me, and a couple of days later, they informed me that it was a firmware issue. Batteries were being drained much more quickly than expected, and as an apology (and out of gratitude for letting them know), they said they would cover my batteries for the next ten years: anytime I needed more, just let them know. Now, obviously, this was a great deal. Not only were they covering my costs, but it gave them another reason to improve the functionality: the better the battery life, the fewer they’d have to send. It was a win-win! A few months later, the batteries started dying and I contacted them. Obviously, they hadn’t fixed the problem; but true to their word, they sent me enough AA batteries to power all 16 vents. Unfortunately, that’s where it stopped: when the batteries started dying again, a few months later, I called for replacements and was told that free batteries isn’t something they do, that I’d obviously misunderstood. And, you know, that’s possible. I was probably just thrown off by the fact that after they said they’d send me free batteries, they sent me free batteries. It’s an understandable mistake. To be honest, the functionality has improved quite a bit, since then. The batteries still don’t last very long, but we’ve started buying them in bulk from Amazon. The Ecovents don’t seem to last much longer with high-end Energizers or Duracells than they do with Amazon’s own brand, so we save the money that way. I just replaced 40 of them, in the last 24 hours, and everything seems to be working just fine. Furthermore, Ecovent has been acquired by Keen Home, and they seem to have much better customer service than Ecovent’s eventually degenerated to be. (I won’t go into details, but suffice to say there were more issues than the battery one.) So yeah… a mixed bag. Personally, I think they’d probably do a lot better in addition to a traditional zoning system than on their own—which is, after all, an option they support. But since I’ve never had both Ecovents and traditional zoning in the same house, I can’t say for sure.