I was just looking in to Connor Homes and found these comments helpful. I have been disappointed that after several attempts to reach them I have not received any return phone calls or emails. I'm in New Hampshire and kept trying to find out more information when I stumbled on only TWO local articles stating that Connor Homes just laid off their entire workforce. One article was published by a local Vermont newspaper on January 3, 2017 and the other on January 4,2017. Connor Homes Lays off workforce - Jan 4, 2017 the other article is longer and states the entire workforce is furloughed for the entire month while they re-group; Connor Homes furloughs entire workforce to "regroup financially" - For me I plan to stay away. I was wondering why their process timeline was 11-12 months which is as long or longer than stick built. Now I know why and for anyone looking at them note that I had to really dig to find these local Vermont articles about the layoff of the entire company, not a good sign.

flowers, we don't have gophers here, so I don't know if it would work for them. I used mine for about four months. I had a LOT of possums here. So many, that the outside stairs would be covered in fresh possum poo every morning. I don't mind having a few possums, though. I had to stop using mine, as my daughter moved home, and she gets very upset about any harm to animals (she even put a deadly poisonous brown snake that was in her flat - the bottom level of my house - back in the garden!). A couple of years later she was raising orphaned baby possums in my garage. One escaped, sadly, but I think it lived, as from then on I noticed that plants along the fence were nibbled.

Elmer - I meant "in the high performance house world" - net zero energy is the most common goal. Certainly not the most common in other worlds. When you start talking passive house, I took that to mean vs other high performance houses. An assumption for sure. My house is net zero energy with a roughly 15 year payback which is pretty reasonable in the world of super low interest rates. And I haven't mentioned it to any of my friends or neighbors. In CA, you certainly have solar as a financial decision. Very different world than other places. As far as "cool factor" - I am pretty sure that no one knows my ACH or my above code insulation. Even in CA - do you really thing most people do solar for "cool factor"? I mean maybe - but that seems a stretch. I could certainly seem some element of cool factor mixed in with personal philosophies along with financial self interest. Nothing really wrong with that I think. Bry - you are right - the bicycle is better. But that is really hard to work into most cities and climates and jobs. And how many solar panels are in landfills? Since there are 40 year old examples out there still working and a tiny amount of 40 year old panels, we can't really be talking about a lot. It is a pretty stubborn and short sighted person to remove perfectly functioning panels ... like Reagan did. Solar was also moved to China just like every other manufacturing. Unlike iphones, there are solar panels made in the US and Germany. And the manufacturing byproducts aren't exactly tossed into landfills either (ok don't know what happens in China). Nuclear is just so darned expensive. That isn't my fault. And there isn't anything we can do about it. All energy harvesting creates a problem. Complaining about the problems of renewable sources is often a distraction and I think you know that. Windmills cause cancer and all that....

The talk about snacks and recipes reminds me that the big takeaway for me from Noom, which has made it sustainable for me, is the concept of calorie density, which Noom takes from the Volumetrics and Dr. Barbara Rolls, which I think I mentioned in my original post above. This article is a good explanation of Volumetrics, https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/advice/2021/01/05/volumetrics-is-the-best-diet-youve-never-heard-of-and-you-can-eat-cake.html (If that link doesn’t work for you, try this, https://archive.ph/7MN9u ) A few excerpts from the article: So, what are some low-calorie density foods? Anything that has a lot of water—soup, fresh green vegetables, berries and other fresh fruits and sugar-free yogurt. Rolls says these can be considered “free foods” and you can eat pretty much all you want of them. … “I think one of the worst messages that we have out there is ‘just eat less’,” says Rolls. “When people have a half-empty plate, they look at it and, before they even start eating, they compute and think, ‘I’m going to be hungry’. “The thing about Volumetrics is that it shows you how to have satisfying amounts of food while still managing your caloric intake,” she adds. Rolls says that diets based around deprivation fail (at least in the long-term), because we like to feel full. Low-calorie density foods can make us feel full, both while we eat it and after. Studies have shown that we don’t feel hungry an hour later, as some critics have suggested. The next category up on the pyramid includes starchy vegetables, lean fish and meat, rice, beans and pasta — the latter being food you can’t eat on practically any faddish diet these days. Granted, on Volumetrics, you’re not supposed to eat as much pasta as you would, say, kale. Jeha says, if you’re still thinking about it in terms of how it would look on a plate, the pasta might take up roughly a quarter of the space. “One thing I like about Volumetrics is that it’s not telling you to eliminate anything completely,” [Toronto registered dietician Laura] Jeha says. “Inevitably, you’re going to be in a situation where you have a piece of cake — and that’s okay. I tell people to think more in terms of an average over weeks or months and that, if you’re getting fruits and vegetables and eating well most of the time, that’s more important than one day when you had some fast food or something.” I bought a copy of “The Ultimate Volumetrics Diet” Rolls for more in-depth info on the method and also more recipes in keeping with the low calorie density approach.