Pat, before taking on your issues, let me distill my philosphy in one sentence: the individual reigns supreme, but borders matter. Without much exposition, this means that every person has value, but even the US has limited resources, so we need to take care of ourselves first, and expect other countries to take care of thiers. And then help where we can. But in real life, there is a power struggle between groups that want power. Republicans-Democrats, China vs. US, US vs. Radical Muslims, corporations vs. government, rich vs. poor, etc.. The last one is probably more misunderstood than most people realize. I was raised in Texas, my family was laizze-faire in their outlook. I was raised middle class Baptist, and "the Lord helps those who help themselves." My mother never has understood that isn't a Bible verse, but rather a saying from I believe Benjamin Franklin. (Too lazy to look it up right now.) We had a good life. And I feel lucky because I still do. From this, I do think everybody ought to do the very best they can to support and help themselves. It matters. But the first eye opening book that I read was a paper back my dad got in 1973, maybe 76, titled, "Why SOBs succeed and Nice Guys Fail in Small Business" (perhaps slightly different from this). This book showed how the laws, even in that time, were manipulated to favor those in power. It gave an example of a boondoggle bill that was passed by congress and signed by the president that affected only ONE company. And saved them millions. Additionally, it showed how laws were passed to keep competition low in certain industries. It also pointed out how a rich person may give a million to charity, and be hailed as a great philantrophist, but still be worth $100 million more and get a tax break to boot! Rare is the rich person who really hurts his financial position for charity! The best example of this today would be Bill Gates. I think he gave some few hundred million for immunization of the poor. Maybe it was a couple of billion. Wow, how generous! In the meantime, he was just estimated to be worth $52 billion! He didn't really hurt hisself. And he never will. Anyway, before I buy hook, line, and sinker into something, I like to look at the power-money trail. What does it gain the person pushing an agenda? This is why I have a healthy mistrust of environuts, oil execs, and even doctors. I have nothing against Marshall, but he runs an organic farm. Any wonder why a lot of his posts deal with GMOs and Monsanto? Doesn't mean he can't have good information. But I temper his information with his motives, and want hard data to support his stance. Of course, that's from everybody on everything. Finally, I'm human. I have my own motives. I want cheaper gas. I want more money. I want, I want, I want, I want. But I try to temper that with caring for others. Most people do. And being human, I have limited intelligence. I get things wrong sometimes. Right now, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if their were alternative energy sources for vehicles that are not being developed and marketed because of the oil/auto industry. In 2000, Toyota made the Insight. A/C, room for 2 plus a small trunk, and 70+ miles a gallon. But sales have lagged. Even now. And the Prius and others that followed have gotten worse gas mileage, not better. Anyway, windfall profit tax has Carter written all over it. But that name works for me. Instead of taxes, how about freezing the price, or having a SIMPLE (no political boondoggle) formula that sets prices? That would benefit most people. Although, not the poorest people. I wouldn't suspend tax cuts for those who make less than $100,000.00. The truly wealthy make much more than that. I'd probably graduate the increase until you reached $160,000.00 or so. These numbers are arbitrary, but they are fairly high because of people who live in expensive areas, such as San Fran, New York, and the like. Unlike O'Reilly and most Republicans, I realize income redistribution happens. Unfortunately, it seems to be going to the wealthy too much, and not to the middle class and poor. But I want to protect jobs, and the private sector, so I don't think I'd be too radical. Just some quick thoughts...

We are on our third heating season with a quadrafire insert. We heat the main part of our house--an area of approximately 1300 square feet. Noise was a consideration in our puchase (it is in our TV room) as was quality and looks. We have been extremely happy with our stove. We program the thermostat just like we would for our oil boiler. The hopper holds one 40lb bag of pellets. The burn pot is self cleaning. Once per week we thoroughly vacuum the burn chamber, clean the glass, and empty the ashes from the lower tray. We have it serviced annually. The amount of ash in the tray and dust in the pellets varies with the brand of pellets you burn. This year we found a dealer (in CT) that offered several different brands of pellets and detailed the wood and size of pellets. Our price for pellets was about $2.25 per bag--purchased by the ton. We will burn just over 2 tons. Quadrafire Mount Vernon insert. (60,000 btu)

There's a lot of good information in the healthyheating post, but unfortunately, some misleading/inaccurate info as well. The good - building a really efficient house is definitely the way to go. The better insulated and air sealed, the more stable the temperatures, and the less it will matter what type of heating system you use. As the poster noted: "Its not just about the flooring its about the system the building (affects heating load what you pay the utilities) the flooring affects resistance) the tube spacing (affects fluid temperature affects efficiency) .theyre all joined at the hip" I'm not sure what the comments about VOCs have to do with heating systems. I might be missing the author's point, but the implication I get from reading the posting is that somehow radiant heating helps reduce the VOCs in your home. I know that's not the poster's point, but the way it's mixed in with talk about radiant, it's quite misleading. To clarify, VOC levels are a function of materials used in the house and the fresh air ventilation rates. As for radiant heating efficiency. There is a lot of controversy surrounding the efficiency of radiant systems. The industry claim is that you can set your thermostats lower because the heat radiates up from the floor, resulting in greater psychological and physiological warmth. In actual practice, the studies have had conflicting results. While it is true that in a low-temperature radiant installation, you can operate water heating equipment at more efficient temperatures, it's not true that it's a slam-dunk savings in all situations. This is particularly true in basement radiant slab installations where a fraction of your heat is going downward to heat the earth or out the edge of the slab. This can easily result in a 10-30% efficiency penalty, or more depending on the installation. The comments about the emissivity of the floor material is a red herring. While the follow-up comment about the R-value of the floor material is valid. What matters is the ability of the system to transfer heat into the living space. Tubes in concrete, exposed, is most capable. Tubes hanging in the joist bay, under the wood floor under a carpet is a worst case scenario. It is simply not true that the floor material does not make a difference! Consider this - if you have a concrete floor and a carpet, both at 70F, which one will "feel" colder when you stand on it in bare feet? The feeling of "cold" that your feet pick up is due to the heat being more effectively transferred from your feet to the concrete floor than to the carpet. The thermal conductivity of the concrete is much higher than the carpet. The floor material makes a profound difference to the actual functioning of a radiant floor heating system. Also be aware of the flywheel effect. Large, heavy masses take a while to speed up and slow down. The same with thermal masses, like concrete slabs. They have a capacity of holding lots of energy. Because of this, they take a lot of energy to bring up to temperature. With a forced air heating system or conventional baseboard heaters, you can set the temperature back at night or when you leave for the day, saving considerable energy. With a high mass radiant system, it takes a lot more heating energy to get the slab up to temperature, so it is slower to respond. This applies to the time it takes to cool down also. Quoting from the EERE website: "Thick concrete slab systems have high heat capacity and are ideal for storing heat from solar energy systems, which have a fluctuating heat output. The downside of the thick slabs is their slow thermal response time, which makes strategies such as night or daytime setbacks difficult if not impossible. Most experts recommend maintaining a constant temperature in homes with these heating systems." This is particularly problematic in the spring and fall, when it may be in the 40's at night but sunny and in the 60's during the day. Ask people with radiant systems about their comfort in these situations and you'll find a fair number who are dissatisfied with the comfort. This is a good reason to keep a forced air system for heating as well as the radiant. Use the forced air for primary heating during mild weather and radiant when it's colder. The healthyheating describes this on their website under "myths". Unfortunately, the way it's discussed is highly misleading. Radiant heating systems do NOT act like heat lamps. Heat lamps operate at very high temperatures and have essentially zero heatup time. Heat lamps do work by radiant heating. In floor systems do not. They operate at very low temperatures and can take considerable time to warm up and cool down. Depending on the design, this can be many hours. Quoting from the EERE website: "Despite their name, radiant floor heating systems also depend heavily on convection, the natural circulation of heat within a room, caused by heat rising from the floor. Radiant floor heating systems are significantly different than the radiant panels used in walls and ceilings." I don't want to seem negative on in-floor heating systems. I like them and use them in my own tiled bathroom floors. But you need to know that it is not "child's play", even for a competent installer, due to complicating factors.

He's just splitting his Fee into a % of actual cost for overhead and a fixed sum for profit. How he arrived at the Fixed Fee becomes irrelevant as soon as it is established. When you said the overhead % fee was "in the costs" you meant it would be added to the costs in the bill. I think you understand all of that now. I agree that a Cost of the Work contract can be difficult for a homeowner to administrate. The success of the Fixed Price/Lump Sum option depends a great deal on the quality of the documents and the subs he intends to use. Choosing the contract type is a conundrum. IMO the best contract is a Cost of the Work with a Guaranteed Maximum Price and Shared Savings. It corrects for the deficiencies of standard the contracts. However it requires someone, like an architect, to manage your side of it which would add to your cost. I use it whenever I can but I act as the architect from the beginning to the end. The savings can be greater than my fee but sometimes not; you can't know in advance. And then some contractors are not comfortable using a contract they haven't used before. Conversely, some have gone on to use it exclusively on all of their projects. Who designed and documented the project?