This is a typical scenario of many couples who have been married for years. You both settle into a comfortable routine of what is your position, your job, your responsibility in the partnership with faith and trust that the other will continue to do the same indefinitely. This is what makes for a peaceful marriage. Unfortunately I've seen many old widows and widowers who, during the grieving, must learn the other half's responsibilities, and if they married very young, some have no life experience at all to fall back on. Simple things that we take for granted like driving a car, buying groceries, managing a check book, cooking a meal, can be daunting if you hadn't done so in 30, 40, 50 years because your spouse always did it. I guess the issue with your husband celtic, is he doesn't have to learn about investments because he knows you've already taken care of it without him. He probably sees this as your asset to the partnership, your responsibility. Sharing the load, knowing the other is doing their best to further the "cause" is what makes a good partnership in business and a good marriage in life. I think you're right, your Hubby is extremely smart and resourceful in that he has YOU for his partner and doesn't sound like it was by accident ;-) Don't worry about the cooking.

I don't doubt he could abuse drugs and never get caught. It happens. Some CPS workers are more liberal than others.. Some cops are more liberal than others... and same with family court Judges. We have a therapist that believes SD10 should be seeing her mom on supervised visits only because of emotional abuse, yet he is not willing to say so in court. He doesn't want to be involved in court proceedings. We had a Judge that heard testimony on BM bringing BF's to sleep with her in the same room she shared with her daughters.. and from what SD acted out with her barbie dolls (in sexual positions) and told us about what she saw... the court did not think that was enough to give BM less custody than DH. I have had cops tell me that CPS ruins families when I asked them to check the welfare of my 10mo old DGS. I have had CPS see the bruises on DGS and tell me that unless they see the mother high with the child, they can do nothing... babies get bruises. It is very difficult, not impossible depending on WHO the players are, to get supervised visitation or to take away a parent's visitation or rights altogether. You pretty much have to go back to court repeatedly, with the same Judge and prove these things are going on and hope that eventually the court will take your side. I have seen it go the other way... a parent bringing multiple actions to say things are going on, only to have the Judge admonish the parent for dragging the other parent back to court over and over. A good attorney is a must. There are attorneys that will take a case pro bono or at a reduced fee if they believe one side is at a disadvantage because of financial position and they believe it's in the best interest of the children to be with that parent. Men have Father's rights groups, Mothers have domestic violence & family services groups. One thing I have learned (and always work on practicing because it is HARD), is to let go. Many times, these battles are about control, power & let's not forget about MONEY, not about the kids. The more you battle in the name of the kids, the worse it gets. When it's not fun anymore (or when there is no 'rush' from the fight), the other side will eventually go away and leave you alone... if they are just in it for the battle. I stopped fighting when my son was 12... his dad vanished into the woodwork. I have never heard from him again. After my son turned 18, they have seen each other & spoken, but I have nothing to do with it. I removed myself from the situation. The more we ignore SD's mom, she has had less to do with us... she's still damaging her daughter, but there isn't a battle with us anymore. She still tries.. does things that if WE did them, she would go ballistic, but we shrug & say see ya next time... and go on our merry way. Now, I am working on doing the same with my DIL... as she calls me every name in the book... as she brings DGS back to me with red marks that 'could' be signs of abuse.. or everyday marks babies get.. and she likes to imply he hurt himself by telling me he tried to drown himself or he's depressed/bipolar. I have good reason to believe she is abusing him & she is mentally ill.. but it is still going to be an uphill battle to prove it in court & the last thing I am willing to do is allow myself to get sucked into a battle of wills with her. I document things. I don't confront her, she just denies it. I notify the proper authorities to document what I believe is going on... if they do nothing, at least it's documented. That's all you can do. He is their father and they know better than anyone what their father is about... the time will come when nobody can force them to go. Emotional abuse is horrible, I see it in my SD10 and she lives with us. Her mother makes it impossible for her to live a happy life here, all because she doesn't want to pay support. In time, she will decide for herself. We don't like to let her go because we know the things her mother puts in her head but we have to, it's the law.

I am continually impressed with your willingness to take the time to solve problems with A___. Your willingness to learn, and find answers, to teach and thinking outside of the box for solutions as you guide this young boy with skills that will help him throughout his life. Well done!

With a complete reno, you can match a condensing boiler very well to a well-designed hydronic heating system, but you need to learn a lot or have a contractor knowledgable about condensing boilers and radiant heat design. Short cut and any extra money spent on a high efficiency boiler easily could be wasted and poor performance leading to equipment failure might result. Calculations need to be done. It is not rocket science, only arithmetic and experience. Here is some term that you need to understand, "outdoor reset". That is a control that turns down the temp of your boiler water as the outdoor temperature rises. "Combination boiler"is a boiler that provides DHW and space heat with no other added tanks or heat exchangers (Note that the Versa boilers from HTP do have heat exchangers, they are a remarkably different type and may be a good match for you.) Modulating boilers modulate their firing rate, usually 5-fold, but maybe as much as 10x or as little as 3x. The main issue that you need to get in your mind is that the colder the return water is, the more efficient a condensing boiler will be down to, maybe, 120F. Look on the web for a description of how they work. In-floor radiant heat is a good, no, the best match for a condensing boiler. Second best is probably cast iron radiators. If you are not installing radiant floor heat upstairs, you might need a mixing valve so you have two water temperatures available for two zones. There are some complications that you should be aware of right off the bat. If you are zoning the heat, it gets more difficult to find a boiler that will support the whole heating load and still throttle back to run the individual zones in any reasonable way. Sometimes when modern boilers are added to older systems, extensive zoning added to the home in intervening years as energy prices climbed, are re-combined to fix this problem. There are other ways around it, however. Ditto for a combination (combi) boiler to supply sufficient hot water in good new construction where you don't need much space heat. You will likely be better off with an indirect tank DHW in conjunction with a regular, high efficiency boiler. Don't forget that if you have a well-insulated, well-sealed home, your investment in ultra high efficiency heating appliances may be wasted. I suggest that you hire a home energy expert to help you with these decisions. (more calculations) An initial evaluation might be paid for by local utilities or state programs. If you end up with a well-sealed and insulated home, set backs may be counter productive. High efficiency boilers are most efficient when run at partial load so recovery cuts deeply into any potential savings from the set back. In addition, the temperature won't change that much anyway due to good construction.Take a look at this study and surf over to the boiler foura at http://www.terrylove.com/forums/index.php and http://forum.heatinghelp.com. You will find lots of enlightening boiler discussion over there. Optimizing Hydronic System Performance in Residential Applications L. Arena and O. Faakye Consortium for Advanced Residential Buildings It looks like the system 2000 is designed to operate with fuel oil and gas. I think the compromises needed to burn oil may compromise performance with gas. I think this is a niche market device or it might be a fine choice if you can only use fuel oil. If your heat loss is low enough, you could buy a Westinghouse (WGR060NG076) nat gas water heater and heat your house with that for less than $2500. Buy a second one for DHW. The highest efficiency boiler may not be the most economic choice since gas price is very low right now. Will the price stay that way? (Get a crystal ball and pass the info on to me!) You need more calculations to decide that. With a well set up system, a modern, condensing, modulating boiler will run for hours at a low firing rate rather than cycling on and off constantly. To do this, the whole system needs to be carefully designed -- heat loss calculations, radiative capacity, boiler choice, circulator pump choice,....