Tiger dunes, show us your numbers. Have you ever tracked customer use? Understanding the experiential base of your comments would help us understand whether to accept or dismiss your claims. Claims about efficiency "if running on low" are hard to reconcile, and cause to question unsupported claims you make. If you have data or anicdotal evidence, please share. PSU, Trane modulates down to 35k or so. This means when load is less than 35k, you basically have an oversized single stage furnace without the heat pump. Knowing when this happens for your house would be very nice. I have a client, 3200 sf 12 year old moderate build quality, 45,000 btu load (60k infinity runs medium stage) at 2f outdoors. Let the equipment tell you, equipment won't lie about load. If you set the pump/furnace switchover properly, the pump will kick in before that point and manage heat replacement down to IT'S minimum output of 1.5 tons before IT effectively becomes oversized single stage. If you are paying 10c/$1 kwh/therm, your breakpoint where gas btu at roughly 90% delivered eff meets your pump is probably between 20-25f. Your dealer should have an equipment specific calculator for this.

Silver Quite interesting reading. I have thought about EX and how he must feel about DD, or any woman that has been in his life. I do understand the conceptual thinking behind the term "limerance". I had a man that I felt that way about once. I never told him, figuring that if he felt anything for me he would approach me. There were a few mixed signals, I thought but he never made an attempt that was something that I knew for sure showed he was interested in me. He had enough chances to do that and he didn't. He thought of me as a friend or sister I guess. Or he would have gone for a little "roll in the hay" if I would have. He even introduced me to a girlfriend that he began dating and ended up getting her pregnant and they later married. Ouch! With EX's past ( if what he has said is true ) he undoubtedly has great fear of rejection. Again, if what he says is true, he wanted my DD to stay with him, build a future with him and he wanted a family with us. There are too many things though that are negatives to the success of their relationship that he is completely out of touch with which makes me think that he has a break with normal thought processes. This is evident with other actions...his extensive lying and his criminal behavior. My DD did not want to marry or have children ( my goodness, she is only 20 ) and he did. Very much in fact. I don't know that she will ever change her mind but he had said that he would rather have had her and no kids than to not have her at all. I don't know that it would have been something he could have easily lived with though. The age difference is something that was too vast....11 years...when dealing with her age group. Had they met when she was in her 30's or 40's or older then it would not have been as big a deal. I am sorry for him when it comes to honest, heartfelt feelings that he might have had for my DD. The fact that he could install such fear ( and continues to do so ) and the fact that he has told so many lies negates all of that though. It sucks to be rejected. Our family histories have a lot to do with whether or not we can process the rejection in a healthy way. Most of us have been and some of us have stepped over a line while dealing with it that we cringe at after having healed a bit. It is important to teach our kids that when they deal with peers or a romantic interest people have a right to reject them. In the long run it is for the best. I don't know how much EX has control over when it comes to his emotions about the breakup. I am sorry that I can't talk to him. It just can't happen. I want him to get help and to go onto have a happy life. More importantly though I want him to leave my DD alone and let her move on. Thanks for the thread and the link Silversword.

LOL Nancy! Your dogs sound just like my Jas-purr! Our cat Nikita always knows when DH is about to return home - he could be gone on a business trip for two weeks. She starts rolling around in the doorway about 15-20min before I see him at the gate. It's not the sound of his car; he always takes a cab home from the airport. She started 'chattering' one afternoon while I was reading a book - it was different from the sound she makes when she sees birds. She led me into the guest bedroom and I realised I'd forgotten to switch off the iron; maybe she saw and heard the steam and decided it wasn't 'normal'. Once she 'told' me I'd forgotten to put the washing machine water outlet into the washbasin - there was water all over the bathroom floor. Niku loves water and enjoys her baths but somehow found this incident 'different'. Of course we got the plumber to fix the outlet so that it never happened again :) She alerted me to an injured pigeon in the balcony; when I brought it inside she kept sniffing it and sounded very concerned about it - while all the other brats saw in my hands was a snack. The brats had been eyeing the poor bird with glee but only Niku thought of letting me know abt it. This gal is definitely special. The other four cats don't seem to have anything but crazy-kitty-games going on in their wee lil brains LOL

Sara, Ion beat me to it and gave you some good advice. I'll offer a bit more clarification on some questions you may have. It is a little difficult, as it's hard to discern how much knowledge you have in this area. I don't want to offer information which would be redundant to you. "1) Grounding of the furnace My generator's ground is connect to the ground prone of three prone plug(other two prone are not connected) through a 12 gauge wire and plug into an outside wall outlet. Is this good enough grounding for the generator? if I plug the furnace wire into generator, is this good enough grounding for the furnance?" Assuming you are simply using a pigtail on your furnace, as Ion mentions, do not connect your generator to any of your house wiring system. I would treat the system as simply a portable generator system for NEC purposes. Namely, simply plug your three prong pigtail into a three prong extension cord and plug your three prong extension cord into your three prong recep on your generator. No ground rod is required. Lastly, make sure the neutral in your generator is bonded to the equipment ground and the generator frame. Most generators are set up this way, but some aren't. It should say in your generator manual, but also do a check to make sure. You should see a wire bonding the generator to its frame. You should also see a jumper bonding the neutral to the equipment ground, but you may have to take off a cover to observe this. Your generator should have GFCI for the 120V receptacles. You don't need any other ground protection than this. Remember it's really the neutral that protects one against most faults which could cause electrocution. What most people call the "ground" is really a case ground (or equipment ground) which is ultimately "bonded" or connected to the neutral at some point. It's the "bond" of the neutral and case ground which really provides the fault protection when voltage leaks to the case. A ground rod doesn't really provide any protection in this sense. Let me give a real world example (I hope I'm not offering info. redundant to you here.) Decades ago, before case grounds (or equipment grounds) were installed on refrigerators, people were sometimes electrocuted from them. What happened was this. The refrigerator had a two prong plug - one for the lead, and one for the neutral (i.e. return current). The refrigerator would get old, wires would fray, or the motor would start leaking voltage. A lead wire would touch the case, or the motor would leak enough voltage the case/housing of the refrigerator would become energized. Maybe from time to time one of the family members might notice the refrigerator would "shock" them. It wasn't a bad shock, because the impedance was too high for the return path from the case through the persons body to the neutral. In other words, the path of electricity wasn't a good connection. They had shoes insulating them, etc. One day one of the family members, while getting some milk out of the refrigerator, spills some on the floor. It's early in the morning, so they're in their bare feet. They mop the milk up, but the floor is still wet. They grab the handle to put the milk back, but now the impedance is much lower (the combination of a wet floor and bare feet make a much better path for electricity). The current flowing through the person causes a constriction of the hand muscles. They can't let go of the handle. They can feel they are being electrocuted, but there is nothing they can do about it (by themselves). After a few moments, the same current causing constriction of the hand muscles makes the heart labor to keep it's rhythmic beat. After a short period, it stops beating altogether. By installing a case/housing ground (i.e. the third prong on the plug) a low impedance grounding conductor provides a direct short in the circuit if there is a lead fault in the refrigerator housing. The path would be from the lead, shorted to the case, through the case ground wire, back the the main panel, where in the main panel, the neutral and the case ground buses are bonded (connected). This direct short will "pop" the breaker, or blow the fuse. So long as the third prong on your pigtail is grounded to the case of the furnace, and the neutral and case ground are bonded on your generator, you won't be electrocuted from your furnace. You could still be electrocuted from your extension cord lying in a water puddle, or wet from rain if the outlet on your generator isn't gfci, but all newer generators are supposed to have gfci receps. "Why all this precaution when it comes to wiring the furnace, like separate circuit?" NEC requires all stationary appliances to be on their own circuit. So the main answer to your question is that it's code. The reason for the code requirement is to avoid people putting a lot of appliances on one circuit, causing the breaker to trip. Let's say you have your refrigerator, deep freeze and furnace on one circuit. One day the breaker trips rendering all three appliances dead. It normally happens when you are on vacation, so you come back to your house with all your food spoiled and your pipes frozen/broken. As a bonus, the water thawed enough to run for three days, flooding your house. NEC code allows an exception for any associated furnace equipment (humidifier, condensation pump) to be included on the same dedicated circuit as the furnace. "Olpea mentioned electricity generated by generator is of poor quality and can damage furnace. a 20 amp surge protector can prevent the damage to furnace from happening, right?" Unfortunately surge protectors really do very little in this regard (I'm referring to the surge power strips). A good one will prevent a major surges until the material inside is "consumed". This can happen with one surge. They won't prevent voltage drops. They also do nothing to correct sine wave distortion and frequency stability, which are also hard on electronics. My main point was not to try to talk you into a new generator but to keep your generator lightly loaded if you need to run electronics like your furnace. That will at least provide more stable voltage. Re: Inverter generators When I mentioned inverter generators, I was thinking of high quality Yamaha or Honda inverters, which are pure sine wave inverters and known for producing the cleanest power. Ion is correct, cheap inverters produce a poor waveform (as do cheap non-inverter generators). I disagree with Ion that electronics are not sensitive to power quality. I believe the opposite to be true. This post is a lot longer than I intended. Didn't mean to write a book.