Brady... It was a very late spring here this year. The ice wasn't off our lake, and the frost wasn't out of the ground until about May 15th. Everything in the fruit patch is about 10 to 15 days behind normal this year. Add to that, I have about 3" of pine needles on all of the soil around the plants to retain moisture. However, it is also a very good insulator. I could stick my finger through the pine needles into the soil in mid June and it was very cold still. Conrad... Our soil is typically slightly acidic but it doesn't have enough organic matter to hold moisture well for blueberries. The area where my fruit patch is was forest at one time. I spent a couple of weeks removing stumps and tree roots. The topsoil was only fair and about 9" deep. Then it went to almost pure sand. I dug trenches 36" wide the full length of the rows. I set aside and saved the top 9" of sandy loam and removed the next 9" of pure sand The property had some big piles of 20 year old coarse sawdust from when it was logged off. I mixed this 50% - 50% with peat moss to replace the 9" of removed sand. This was all mixed well with the 9" of topsoil. I added a small amount of garden sulfur at this time as well. I know that this sounds like a lot of work, but I only water with rain water collected off of a 44 ft by 68 ft pole barn roof. I needed better water retention than the native soil could provide. They appear to be very happy plants.. It's still hard to say which varieties are better. The mystery plants and Northsky have small berries, but they are perfect for muffins and pancakes. These plants also crank out a LOT of these smaller, very tasty, berries as well. The other varieties all have bigger, but not necessarily better berries. The only one that I'm disappointed with at this time is the Bluecrop. They are taller and our winters just beat them up too much. It will take more global warming to save them here. I'll try to do an updated review at the end of the picking season.

We moved an 1800 sq.ft. 1950's home and built an 1800 sq.ft. downstairs with 3 block walls and 1 framed wall with lots of glass facing a lake. One corner is 5' below grade dropping down to ground level within 25'. We're in South Carolina, so heat & humidity is a bigger factor than cold, but we're on a large lake with a cold wind. The upstairs is going to remain a weekend house for family members, and the thermostat will be set at 50 in the winter & 85 in the summer most of the time. The downstairs will be a permanent home for my nephew and his son, so that system will have normal usage. For reasons that too complicated to get into, we don't have a general contractor, so I'm learning as I go. We've had at least 8 HVAC contractors look at it over the last several months. The first few said that even with zoning, we'd be unhappy with trying to use one system, since when the upstairs temp was cut back it'd be way oversized for the downstairs. It made sense so we didn't even ask most of the contractors about 1 vs 2. After reading some of the forums, we went with most reputable installer instead of best price. The most highly recommended was going to put in a 4T & a 3T Evertemp 16 SEER dual fuel Heat pumps with 2 complete duct systems for $25,000. The other contractor was $21,000 using Goodman. Then, my nephew met the service manger for a certified Carrier dealer who came out and gave us another bid of $18,500 for two 3T units. He is very enthusiastic about the Infinity and explained convincingly why 3T was better than 4 for the upstairs. He also said that Carrier is the only manufacturer using an older technology that allows their unit at low speed to run on only one piston. The newer scroll compressors supposedly can't cut back to a true half power like the Carrier. This saves power and drops the humidity. I make intuitive leaps sometimes, but it seemed like if it can run at true half power, maybe we could use one unit. When I told him why we'd only asked about 2 units, he agreed to look into it. He came back with a bid of $15,000 for a 5T Infinity 16 Seer dual fuel unit with 6 zones. So my questions - Is the Carrier system really that different from the other systems, & can we go with one system if we use it? Were we wrong to go with two systems to begin with? Should I go back and ask the other 2 contractors to quote on one system? Also, another issue revisited - geothermal. We are already pulling from the lake for our drinking water - no well and solid rock. Our only option was an open loop system with water that can't be discharged back into the lake. Also we'd have to go out about 120' to get a depth of 20' year round. We were told that even filtered the lake water would degrade the system too fast to be worth it. However, we just found out about the no cap 30% tax credit now available, so we're taking a second look. Any thoughts?

I don't like two-line oil systems since they're constantly circulating oil through the filter(s), pump strainer and the oil is cold. In situations where the return line is out of plain view like outdoor tanks, underground storage tanks or under mobile homes, the pressurized return line could leak and the system would still run so the homeowners wouldn't be alerted of an issue. In the field many filters really are really undersized considering the amount of oil they're circulating with two line oil systems. We generally convert most two line oil systems to single line systems or install a TigerLoop and remove compression fittings, check valves bad fittings, bad flares or any other sources of vacuum leaks and potential future problems.

Stacie, I don't know how you are keeping your sanity through all these trying times. You have my deepest sympathy...I know about kidney and gallbladder stones, but I was only dealing with 2 children at the time. Best wishes for all this to be behind you in a flash and you wake up in a bed of roses by Monday! Big hugs to all of the family.