It is true that experts and pamphlets are always going on about layers of brown and green of particular depth, and wetting and turning the pile, Probably they are thinking they should start newbies out composting according to best practice, without the experts realizing that they make it sound so complicated that it might stop people from even trying. A health and fitness magazine I used to get had a small article about composting. They made the whole layering/turning/wetting business sound mandatory. I wrote a letter to them explaining that if you throw whatever you have in a pile, it will rot, and those other things are optional. They printed the letter, but who knows how many people had already thought, "Oh, composting is too hard." John, you say that you leave the greens and browns pile up separately. The fact that they compost faster than predicted is probably because they are doing some composting while they are waiting to be mixed together, also because you shred them. Smaller items compost faster. As for quantity applied, well, most people don't have that much, so they don't say to use that much. I garden mostly in lasagna beds that are quite deep with compost, and almost everyone agrees that this will work fine. As for turning, that can help the process, but I think most of us know that is optional. So really no conflict with composting theory per se, you just don't follow the 'best practice' possible for fastest, hottest composting. So what, sounds like you are doing great. (You must have one heck of a shredder to shred that much material!) Marcia

Karen As far the water is concerned I also have a water softener and I use that water for the hummers. If your tap water tasts ok to you, is palatable then use it. Where I lived before I had hard water and it would almost make you throw up , but my water from the tap now is very drinkable. As far as the sugar is concerned there has been much discussion on the subject. I have done a lot of searching on the net and different forums and some people have said their hummers drink the beet sugar no problem and others have said they prefer the cane sugar better. My preference would be the "white cane granulated sugar" mainly because thats what I was raised on. Its a good bet if it doesnt say cane on the package that its beet sugar and if it says it comes from michagan sugar co. you can bet on it that its beet for they are a major producer of beet sugar. In this state one of the biggest brands of sugar is Domino which what I usually get, that is "Domino white graulated sugar" although on the package it says "premium pure cane granulated" hope this helps.

The problem is that most meters are "high impedance" devices meaning they are sensitive enough not to disrupt the circuits they are attached to. Normally this is what you want because you don't want to disturb the circuit by making the measurement. The problem is that when you have a long length of unterminated wire near other wires carrying current in your house, it will induce small currents in the wire enough to cause these confusing readings. You can see similar things just by holding the meter prongs in you hand (you make a great antenna for picking these up). Typically the way around this is you recognize that things other than a solid 120 or 240 v reading (or close to that) is likely spurious. The other way is to use a lower impedance measuring device officially called a "solenoid voltmeter" or commonly a "wiggy." These use a mechanical indicator which is not sensitive enough to be fooled by these phantoms. These days they make low impedence solidstate voltmeters that emulate wiggys and similarly aren't fooled. Searching amazon or home depot.com for wiggy will get you examples of what I'm talking about. Oddly, searching Lowe's for wiggy gets you gibberish (search instead for voltage detector). Note that non-contact ones (where you don't have to touch the bare wire), are also frequently fooled by this.

If the cooktop or range is against a wall, then the amount that the hood aperture extends past the burners front-to-back should be commensurate with the amount the hood overlaps the burners side-to-side. This is because the rising effluent expands equally in all directions as it rises. (A powerful hood will cause some distortion, but nominally and for the most part practically, the hood air flow does not "reach out" and suck in air that already has a velocity that dominates the air velocity of the hood intake air away from the actual aperture.) The best insertion of make-up air (MUA) is any method that doesn't cause any cross-drafts at the hood. In test kitchens, this is done by introducing MUA through porous walls. We can generally exclude this approach for residential kitchens. Floor, wall, or ceiling registers (diffusers are what you want for air flowing out, but are not really suitable for floors) are all potentially suitable options. Mine is a ceiling diffuser located down a hall that leads to the kitchen. This provides some flow straightening and area expansion as a means to minimize cross drafts. Cost of heating MUA is not high, but the assembly of parts needed may be high in cost. Unless you operate your hood 24/7 boiling off maple sap, you likely will only be running the hood at partial to full power for short durations. I have a heat exchanger hooked to my hydronic heating furnace that can utilize all of its (forget the exact number) probably 180 kBTU/hr output if needed for MUA heating. I think the furnace at this rate uses 1 point something gallons of oil per hour, so this high cost is around a few dollars an hour for usually less than an hour when the exterior temperature requires the maximum temperature correction. In any case, I believe that an electric heater in the MUA path will be an easier thing to integrate. Cost per hour may be higher in proportion to your electric rate's higher cost (per BTU) over oil. You may have to run significant power from breaker box to heater if you are going to make-up very high flow rates through the hood at -20F. (Fireplaces can have high flow rates that have to be made up also, but I don't know anything relevant about the flow rates of gas fired fire places, so that should be something you can find out for planning purposes.) If you are rugged enough, the MUA heating doesn't need to be perfect in temperature control, just good enough to keep the introduced air tolerable during the cooking. Your code requirement doesn't provide for different conditions needed for safety, it just mandates MUA. The safety requirement that should be driving a more sophisticated MUA requirement, applicable where combustion appliances are used without their own separate MUA sources (ducts to outside, operation in a closed room ventilated to outside, or whatever), is to keep the internal house air pressure high enough to not back-draft the appliances, and thus avoid pulling carbon monoxide into the house. For unblown gas appliances, the house negative pressure limit is 0.03 inches of water pressure, and requires very low pressure loss in the MUA system with a powerful hood. I think this is necessary for fireplaces also, as they depend on the draft for flow, and the draft depends on the pressure difference between hearth and top of chimney, given hot flames to provide upward momentum. All this means is that you can either provide a code-compliant MUA system that is rated for a given flow rate, and for safety do whatever is really needed to safety proof your combustion sources, or provide an MUA that is sophisticated enough to keep the house pressure up over the range of ventilation flow rates possible with the hood, fireplace use (potentially high flow rates themselves), bathroom fans, etc. While I am working toward a closed-loop pressure controlling MUA system for myself, I am certain that for most needing MUA, isolating appliances is the better cost approach, allowing the MUA to aid hood blower performance, and not be so critical for safety. My oil burning furnace does have its own MUA, but I wouldn't operate my fireplace with my kitchen ventilation running at full power, even with windows open (due to pressure loss in the screening), without a powered MUA path. Can't help with an educated HVAC company, but FanTech has a line of powered MUA systems (don't recall if they are heated). If not, a suitable heater can be found and inserted into the duct path. Someone on this forum back in the 2008 to 2010 period, possibly clinresga, provided an image of his basement ducting with coil electric heater in the path. My [not yet completed] system is in my attic and draws air from above the roof. A blower will push this air through a filter, through the heat exchanger (think car radiator), and into the diffuser. HVAC companies dealing with restaurants will understand what you have to do, but often their setups are not compensating -- flowing a fixed MUA flow rate against fixed vent hood flow rates. Large building MUA is usually compensated, but the schemes used are better suited (as far as I've been able to learn any details) for continuous pressurizing MUA systems that have to compensate for outside door openings. They can do this with passive air pressure control of dampers that recirculate MUA around the blower. The blower motor runs continuously. The relatively recent of introduction of residential MUA requirements has provided some impetus to development of residential MUA systems, so availability of systems and components should be expected to increase. Keep reading; be sure to check out the Greenheck paper available at their website: KVSApplDesign_catalog.pdf, as well as CKV_Design_Guide_2_031504.pdf, available somewhere on the Internet. These are commercially oriented, but should provide useful insight. kas