Argh...so many threadlets to address. Kirimarie - I read your posts and obviously your opinions are valid based on your experiences. But, you never addressed what I specifically cited: walk around any average middle to upper income residential section of a randomly selected mid-to-large UK city. Walk around the same in the US. Anyone paying attention will spot huge differences in the amount of effort put into the personal landscapes, on average. It's not like I'm saying something crazy here that has never been said before. My parents aren't into gardens at all - I got the bug from my childhood neighbors who in a strange twist of fate were all avid gardeners. But every time they are in the British Isles they go on about how great the gardens are and my Mom will just take some pictures on a random street of people's gardens brimming with Fuchsia, Choisyas, Lilies, various vines, etc. A friend of mine who is also not at all into gardens went to Ireland with her erstwhile fiance and both said the gardens there were absolutely amazing. I'm sure they didn't visit botanical gardens, and by amazing they weren't talking about the fact there's a Phoenix canariensis in Cork. They were just talking about the gardens they saw in neighborhoods that were on their way to someplace. "I think the whole UK are "better" gardeners point of view is nonsense. " When you clearly spend more time at something, the world usually rewards you with the accolade of being "better" at it. The only scintilla of unfairness in what I say might be that, obviously, the climate makes it easier for the English to have the sort of gardens that they do than it is for most in the US. But that isn't to say it can't be done. I've visited private gardens in PA that are every bit as impressive as any I know of in England...(on a per unit land basis, of course...you can't really compete with Sissinghurst when your entire spread is the size of one walled garden there) but they might well be more work in PA. Doesn't have to be someplace moist: I once spent about an hour walking around the neighborhood near the Denver Botanic garden. I saw a couple very interesting private dry-climate gardens. Employees maybe? Probably just supporters who went to the plant sales. But most were just boring standard landscapes...blue spruce, some bland shrubs, whatever. This climate factor influences US regional differences, obviously, as gardengal noted. The whole west coast seemed a bit more gardenesque to me than the rest of the country, and I especially single out some parts of the Bay Area. Lawns... I agree in the west, the watering of ornamental lawns is absolutely a massive and foolish waste of water resources. (though I've gotten in huge arguments with some westerners about this...not online, in real life!) In the east, over maintained lawns are a different kind of environmental timebomb. Particular in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, where, years too late, the amt. of phosphorus in lawn fertilizer was finally restricted. But this doesn't mean lawns per se are the problem, it's just that people have a pig headed approach to them. I will never water my lawn. In the terrible summers of 2010, 2011, and 2012, it had periods of going brown. Big deal. I also don't fertilize it, because I don't need it to be a perfect shade of green, and fertilization would make it grow even faster than our often abundant rains do. Because I did some judicious broadcast spraying with trimec years ago, and - DUH - cut at the highest depth permitted by my Kubota MMM which is 4" on the scale but probably a little higher in practice - broadleaved weeds are so rare I can just spot treat them as needed. So, I am ecologically caring for my lawn. Many people are not, and too many people want theirs to look like a putting green. The house I posted, no, is not nearly the worst example of McMansion landscaping. Definitely not "horrible", in fact I would just call it average to mediocre. But the reason it's partcularly egregious is, sorry, someone who collects plants on such a massive scale, should by my estimation have known better. The formally trained person they hired (this I know from the real estate site where I snagged it) still got it wrong, which is actually more comical than some random local landscaping dude not knowing what he was doing. In fact, the university trained landscape architect producing something that pretty much says "local landscaping dude cramming plants in front so he can get the bill up to 25K". (thus feeding the wholesale industry beast which - to loop back - is the whole reason I branched out into this) It reminds me of the hilarious story of a mature Araucaria araucana - one of the only on the east coast - being cut down at a historic estate near Wilmington, DE, by a professional landscaper for "not looking English enough"(!). Seriously, you could not make up a funnier and truer anecdote about the ignorance of some in the US landscaping profession. It's priceless.

Carrier #58UVB is their 95% AFUE furnace. I do not know of any material problems with this model. I have many of these units installed and have not experienced and reliability problems. Condensate into the sump, why not. The condensate is slightly acidic but should not present any problems. If the thought bothers you, take a piece of 6"PVC with an end cap, drill a hole in the bottom, fill the PVC with marble chips (lime stone), run the condensate over the chips and drain into the sump. The ph should be around 7 which is neutral. You will get a slight by-product of co2 from the reaction. A 16 year old house, how large? Your home should have R13 in the walls and minimum of R-30 possibly R-45 in the ceiling depending on building codes when your home was built. 100k-Btu sounds large to me, except if you have a mansion. I would advise a manual-J. How large is your existing furnace? If you are changing your furnace to save a lot of $$ in energy costs, your savings will be about 16%. Is that enough to justify a $4000.00 investment? Good luck,

Although I have a lot of originals, I also have a framed copy of John Singer Sargent's, "Corfu, Light and Shadows", an Old Master's (Bruegel?) still life and another flower study that I have hanging right along side of them. I could care less that they're not originals, because the pictures themselves make me happy just walking past them every day. Art should speak to you and I think it still speaks when it's a copy, too. One thing about those copies with the brush strokes, though: my still life is like this and what it is, is really just a print of the original on canvas that someone painted clear brush strokes on top of . . . and they don't even match the brush strokes in the painting in many places! I'm not sure one is worth several hundred of dollars, if this is what you're thinking of. I bought mine secondhand, framed, for $30, so I'm satisfied that I didn't pay too much for it, although I did have to repaint and antique the frame ;~P

Hi todds, Unfortunately the answer to your questions are not so cut and dry. Many of the bulbs that we carry have not been tested to LM79 standards as of yet and therefore the exact lumen output of the bulbs, even if one is given by the manufacturer, can be suspect. That is why we try to provide an equivalency rating, done through in house testing, on most of our products. On the dimming issue the same thing applies, while companies like Cree give a dimming percentage it may not be exactly that under all circumstances. Different dimmers, the number of bulbs on the circuit, how good the wiring is etc. can all make a difference in how well the lights dim and down to what percentage. For instance, some people may need to use an ELV dimmer when only using one or two LED downlights on a switch whereas four or five on a switch will dim fine with a standard incandescent dimmer. Therefore it's quite difficult to make a claim on dimming percentage when the manufacturer is not specifying the dimming percentage and what dimmers are tested and compatible. The R30 we carry does have a downloadable spec sheet where the dimming percentage is listed as 5% (link included below). As stated above, I can verify that the R30 does dim particularly well. Fortunately the market and standards are evolving rapidly. By the middle of next year, new labeling requirements will mandate that bulb packaging carry a label listing lumen output, wattage etc. on the front of the packaging. A paradigm shift will take place as consumers stop thinking about brightness in terms of wattage and start thinking about it in terms of lumen output. Hope this helps to clarify some of the issues currently present in the LED market. Here is a link that might be useful: R30 LED Light Bulb Spec Sheet