Dave needs to be careful what he says about LEDs because he sells them on his website, and it would contravene Gardenweb policies to promote them too explicity ;) Light is Light is Light If this was true then LEDs would be useless. They produce less light per watt of electricity than fluorescents or HID lights. In the future, they show the promise of being more efficient than the fluorescents, and this has been demonstrated in labs, but they aren't available to you and me yet. Remember this when you see claims about low energy use and low heat output, LED lamps use somewhat more energy and produce somewhat more heat than a fluorescent producing the same amount of light. The reason that the units seen for sale use so little energy, typically 2W-6W per lamp, is because they produce very little light ;) LEDs have several useful properties. They are light (don't weigh much!), almost unbreakable, last a long time, produce a very directional light output, and produce an almost monochromatic light. The long life may be useful in a plant light, but this is where you have to start being careful about claims from people selling LEDs. The typical number you will see quoted is 100,000 hours. In practice this is meaningless. LEDs do not fail, they just get dimmer over time while continuing to draw power. The 100,000 hours is some time that someone in a lab found they were still getting light out of their LED. In practice LEDs become too dim to be useful as a plant light after as little as 5,000 hours. Other LEDs can still be producing good light output for as much as 50,000 hours. Until the sellers show you lumen maintenance curves for their lamps, you should be cautious. The directional light output is quite useful in a compact plant light, one intended to light a limited number of plants, but you can get the same result with a reflector and a conventional light source. Again the LED unit can be very compact because it doesn't need an extra reflector. The main thing that makes LEDs viable as plant lights at this point is the monochromatic light output. Plants use light at some wavelengths, red and blue, between 2 and 5 times more efficiently as green light. An LED system can be designed to produce only those wavelengths and so maximise the effectiveness of the light on the plants. In fact they produce mostly the red light because it takes less energy to produce one red photon than it does to produce one blue photon, and then they add in a little blue light which is required to make the plants grow healthily. It isn't clear exactly how much more power-efficient this can make an LED lamp compared to a fuorescent and it seems to vary depending on the plant, but claims of 33 times better which you will see are bogus. That number may come from comparing an LED system to an incandescent bulb with a bunch of best-case assumptions, I really don't know. I think you will find that you can get equivalent growth with an LED lamp for about half the power of a fluorescent, possibly as little as a fifth the power in some cases. The takeup of LED lighting by commercial growers can tell you a lot about when these are the preferred lighting system. Takeup is essentially zero because they are not cost-effective. A very few systems are in place in Japan, and are claimed to be cost-effective over other lighting systems, where both space and electricity are very expensice and the setup cost probably a lot lower than most other countries. So, use LEDs if space, weightm or robustness are issues, they were used for space shuttle experiments for those reasons. You may also choose them if the lowest possible electricity use is vital. Perhaps the design or appearance may be preferred, my own home-built light setup is hardly attractive! Set those factors against the very high initial cost, several hundred dollars for even the most basic system.

It doesn't matter, but I've been seeing a lot of "pillog" recently. Just to be informative, I'll tell you it's PLLLOG. 3 L's. If you want to change one into a vowel, I'm not offended, though one is rightly a numeral and there is no tittle. :) I spoke to your smoke question in the other thread just now. I'm not sure venting is going to help it. Yes, I do have a Gaggenau oven, and a 1200 cfm ModernAire hood. I tried oven-smoking a brisket once. The foil might not have been as tight as it should be since this was improvised, rather than in a smoker box, and no actual appreciable smoke came through, and I get more smell from baking, but I could tell that there were some toxins that the filters couldn't catch. Primo campfire headache, though I think running the hood helped a lot. That's the kind of thing an exterior venting oven would be good for, though it occurs to me that allowing some odor to be pumped into the house is probably a safety feature to remind people they have stuff in the oven before it catches fire if forgotten. I do get some baking odors, as I've said, but no clingy residue. Just scents that dissipate. People don't come over six hours later and say, "Oh, what's cooking?" When something pungent has been cooking for a long time, the smells, etc., really do build up in the oven and come tumbling out when you open the door. That's where I was saying my hood helps, even though it's off to the side and five feet away. It'll suck out the world, if you let it. It doesn't clear every little bit, but it helps. It even helps pull the onion fumes from the island four feet away, making it easier to chop. My biggest problem is that I don't need a lot of (loud!) fan for many things I cook, and usually turn it to low. When I'm searing meat on the stove (cooktop), I sometimes forget to put it on high, and too much escapes. That's user error, though. I'm surprised that the reviews for F&P are so bad. Rhome410 loved hers. There is the issue with the enamel in the self clean, which she had, but manually cleaning an enamelled oven just isn't that hard. The Gaggenau has the best pyrolysis ever which goes over 900 degrees. Which draws a lot of electricity, and warms the room (from the fans cooling the electronics). I only do it a few times per year. You have to clean off the loose stuff anyway. I was going to buy the Gaggenau oven based on using my mother's, so didn't research the filters much. Nice added bonus. If you think that it's something you need, however, it might be worth getting the F&P, if it has it and that part is known to work well, and just cleaning it manually. It's supposed to cook and bake well, which is the important thing! Cleaning hints: Trailrunner taught us a chemical reaction: If you have charred yuck stuck to an oven or pan, cover it with baking soda, lay a paper towel on it, dampen the towel thoroughly with boiling water and leave it overnight. If the char is very thick it might take two or three applications, but it'll come right up with no scrubbing. Acid is good for other kinds of crud, so warm a small dish of vinegar in the oven, so it gets all steamy, then get out of the way when you open it (try not to breathe the vinegar. Scrub down everything with a scrubby dampened in the vinegar. And, most of all, if you have a big oops, try to clean it up right after the meal, while it's still warm.

Hi Bouncing... Here are a few random thoughts from someone who has worked in "Office Environments" and had my own home business for 15 years now. You've mentioned some of the types of items you'll need to save. Think them all through and create a list of categories. Then think of where you would be most apt to look for a document. Truly the art of a good file system is what works for YOU. Would you be most likely to look for billing with the contract for that customer? In a separate binder filed by month? Set up your accounting files separately so that tax time or pulling out a paid bill is fast and easy. I find it easiest to file paid bills by expense type (all phone bills together, all computer maintenance bills grouped, etc). A good guideline for categories is simply the expense line items shown on schedule C (I think!) of a tax return. Create a very basic index of how/where things are filed. If your DH wants to find the invoice issued to the Smiths, where should he look? Set up your files in a manner that allows you to easily box them up at the end of the year and start fresh. If you have to sort through folders when it's time to archive, chances are it won't get done. Make your archiving process as simple as possible. Know that you will have to spend time on "company administration". You've just become the office manager, bookkeeper and head of computer and systems maintenance. Allow time in your day for billing, filing and maintenance. Finally, I know you weren't asking on advice for *where* to put your office...but I'm going to throw some out there anyway ;-) Please reconsider setting up your office in your MBR. IMHO to work at home successfully you have to be able to focus on business - and you have to be able to shut that off from time to time as well. It can be hard to separate home life vs business life if the business is a few feet from your bed. Find a little corner of your home for your office. Truly, office furniture doesn't have to be really nice...just really fuctional. Determine what you'll need for file space and worktop space then determine your furniture needs from there. I've read your profile here and maybe you could even incorporate an ebaying station within your home office area. Best of luck for a very successful business for you!

My cousin and her husband retired and have one. With plumbing and electrical, cawaps! They avoid the earthquakes, leave Florida when hurricane season comes, head back when the snow flies, set it up in their kids' driveways in various parts of the country. It's their fifth-wheel camper with pop-outs and awnings!