Waterbug guy, First I will talk a little bit about concrete in water. You say it is a myth that concrete in water can kill fish and raise the PH. When concrete first sets up the surface PH is 12.0. Which is the same PH as a drain cleaner called "draino". As it is exposed to the CO2 in the air the PH goes down. But water is a very good leaching agent and so water will continue to try and get the chemicals out of the concrete. So will the PH in the water be raised? If the water has normal PH of 6.5 to 8.5 the answer is yes. The real question should be "how much will it raise it"? That question isn't easily answered as there are a lot of variables. Just to list some the age of the concrete, the condition of the concrete, is the water flowing over the concrete, the natural PH of the water, is the water being changed, and the volume of the water versus the contact area of the concrete. In some cases the rise might be so low as to make it very difficult to measure. But in other cases it can and does raise the PH to 9 to 9.5. At these levels it can and does kill fish. If I remember correctly you have stated that you are a pond contractor. If you are I hope you having started using roofing liner in the ponds that you build. Most of the time a person on this forum is never going to have a problem with roofing liner. Can there be a problem with roofing liner? This should be the question. The answer is yes. The chances that there could be a problem is very low. The largest pond product manufacturer in the US sent out a letter to all their customers a number of years ago. This letter said that all their liner in the future would be tested to be fish safe as they got a batch in that was not. In other words they were selling roofing liner as pond liner. This company had been selling a lot of liner for 10 years before this problem. If it had happen today with the wide use of the internet I would have think that some lawyer would have gotten this information and started a class action lawsuit against them and they would be out of business. The lawyer could easily have sued them not only for the cost of the liner that they had sold but for the cost to replace all those liners in the ponds built with them going back to the first time they sold this liner. The largest liner manufacturer in this country has told me that almost never would you ever have a problem with roofing liner but you might. I think that as a contractor you can't take that chance. If you were unlucky and did have a problem and were sued over that problem the lawyer handling the case would find out that they would sue for every customer that you have that has this liner. In other words you would be out of business. So is roofing liner toxic? No most of the time. But there is a small chance that there maybe a problem. I have only talked about 2 of the 8 things that you listed. I could easily talk about many of the other things listed but my point is this. You listed these things as black and white but they are not black and white. The only thing that is black and white about ponds is that all aquatic life will die. Mike

loves, I open the oven door and let it cool that way. If I were to leave the oven door closed, indeed the fan runs a while but not 1 1/2 hrs ! Yikes! I had read somewhere on the forum that you might injure the electronics by leaving the oven door open as it cools since I guess they were saying the hot air rising over the front controls would/could damage the innards. Well it doesn't say anything in the book about this and I have been doing it over a year. My ovens preheat really fast. I never start the preheat for say my bread , which I make at least 1x a week, until I have the loaves risen to double. My DH does preheat the baking stone for 30 min and also the Le Creuset pot when he makes Sullivan Bread. Other than that I have not done anything special about preheating or baking. The Miele have a lot of special modes so if you are using the probe you do put the meat in the oven as it is preheating and you follow the screen for the probe plug in etc. I have never had a failure in the ovens. If I bake, roast, rotisserie, cakes, cookies, bread ,quiche turkey etc everything has been prefect. I use the ovens a lot and am very happy with them. I have not baked 6 pans of cookies using both ovens, as we just don't eat cookies since there are no little ones anymore. I keep thinking though that I will try it to see if indeed the convection will brown/cook them all as it says it will. If I do I will be sure to post and let everyone know. caroline

I just bought a GE Microwave and Oven Profile Series, and the first time I baked a dish, it was soggy. Turns out when the preheat chimed, it was not ready. In fact, it takes 35 to 40 minutes to preheat to 450. I called a GE appliance service guy, and he said GE Profile has gotten caught up in trying to compete and so its owner's manual on purpose says it takes 10 minutes to preheat, and they set the preheat chime to sound after 10 minutes, but it is NOT preheated. It also has hidden bake elements, and it can't be fixed. My repairman said I have to live with the fact that GE lied in its owner's manual and just adjust my attitude to disregard the preheat chime and just wait 40 minutes before baking.

On my old double oven unit, the top one didn't have a "preheat" option. You set the temp and the one element came on to heat up. The large bottom oven had bake and preheat. As mentioned before, preheat used the broiler element to help heat it up much more quickly. My new unit (single oven) has no option for just "bake" when you turn it on. Push the button and set the temp, then the "Pre" (preheat) display comes on until supposedly up to temp then clicks to the temp. I can't tell if the top element is on, and I suspect if it is, it's on low. I'll have to take a look. I kind of miss the old unit in this respect, but not in the cooktop.