I missed the spam, as I am just now reading this. Kevin used to work for a rental car agency, and so he knows all the ins and outs. He had the job in Austin, and it made it easy for him to move here and transfer his job at the same time. I had him quit that job as soon as I was able to cover both of our expenses so that he could get something different. On Maui, we bought the total coverage insurance from the company, and it was not that expensive. One of the guide books we had said that there were hostile natives on certain parts of the island, and so we didn't want to be bothered with worrying about parking in a sketchy parking lot. Plus, we were used to Venice Beach and were aware of all the incidents that happen there. Nothing happened on Maui, however. I made a claim on my insurance a few years ago, and my rates did not go up at all, and they are extremely low because my car is not worth anything. I pay less than $200 a year to State Farm for car insurance, and that includes coverage for damage from uninsured drivers. In California, insurance companies cannot raise your rates if you make a claim for this type of coverage, but in my case, I had run into someone's bumper and did a small amount of damage. We take pictures of cars that we rent, but have not had issues. If we did, I would probably make a scene, something short of throwing keys into a cornfield, however. I also would not hesitate to allow my insurance to handle it. If you have not made a claim in a long time, you do not have much worry from rates going up. Lars

Having read through all the posts I can see that there seems to be some rather confusing information here. As a retired plumber allow me to help you sort it out. Although there are some rare exceptions, generally on the front of your property there is a strip of land from the curb to the house side of the public sidewalk that is owned by the city. That strip of land is defined as the "utility easement" and that is were the underground water lines, sewer lines, storm sewer lines, gas lines and buried electrical or communication lines are located, as well as the poles to support overhead electrical, telephone, cable TV & commercial communication lines are located. Whenever a structure is built the municipal water supplier taps the municipal water line and they install a short length of pipe to a buried valve which is known as a "Curb Stop Valve" A curb stop valve has a raised flat bar across the top of the valve that serves as the valve handle. A piece of 3" or 4" pipe is then extended up from that valve to finished grade where they place a round metal cap that says "Water". To activate that valve they remove the cap and use a long rod that has a tee handle on the top end and on the valve end it has an inverted U shape that will stradle the bar on the valve to turn the valve. By code, the line and the curb stop valve must be a minimum of 1' deep or 6" below the average frost depth for your area, whichever is deeper. The line from the municipal main, and maintenance on that line is the responsibilty of the municipal water supplier. The line from the curb stop valve to the structure is technically defined as the "House Supply Line" and the property owner is responsibile for installation and maintenance of that line. When we pull a permit to install that line the water company will provide us the exact location where they intend to put the curb stop valve. We then attach the new house supply line to the end of the curb stop valve and run the line to the structure. In regions subject to freezing that line must enter the structure at the minimum depth below grade. If the house has a basement we then go through the footer wall and into the basement. If the house is on slab we have to enter the house through the footer wall, then stub it up into a utility space inside the house. In southern regions where there is no frost the line may stub up on the outside of the house. When we pull the permit to install the house water line the water company will also give us a location and the "Fitting alloances" for the water meter. In regions where frost is not an issue they may require we install a "meter vault" at any given point from the house side of the sidewalk to the exterior base of the house. Generally the meter allowance will say we have to cut out a section of the pipe from 15" to 24" and we have to put a female pipe thread on both open ends of the pipe. Once the installation has been completed and passed inspection we contact the municipal supplier and they send someone out to install the meter. Code also requires that we install a "House Main Water Shutoff Valve" on the end of the line downstream from the meter and generally the main ater shutoff valve must be within 6' from where the line enters the house. Jemdandy mentioned that there is a valve on both sides of the meter, but that is not correct. Code requires the valve on the house side of the meter, but the valve on the input side of the meter is optional. Code also requires that we install an electrical grounding wire that must be attached to the pipes on both the input and output side of the meter and that wire must be connected to the house main electrical ground at the electrical service entrance panel. Years ago all water meters were manual and they had to send a meter reader around once a month to read it, although more often than not they sent someone every third month and estimated your bills on the two odd months. They then developed an electronic sensor that could be attached to a manual meter and a wire was run to the exterior of the structure where they attached a small black hokey puck looking thing on the side of the house. With that, the reader just walked up the driveway and touched his/her recording device and it read automatically. They then developed a sensor that reads the meter and it has a built in two way radio device so the water company can slowly drive down the street with a specially equiped car of pickup truck and it will automatically read all the meters as it goes by. There is another type of meter that has a sending unit that is connected to your telephone line and they can read your meter via the phone line from a remote computer. And for those of you who are like Jan & I and use cell phone exclusively, the old phone wire is still attached to the house and they use it. Some electric meters work the same way. OOOOOOOOOOH and while discussing the old phone line. Even is you do not have landline service, if you still have the old phone line attaced to your house you really should get one analoge type telephone and keep it hooked up. Although you don't have phone service and that phone cannot be used for normally telephone service, there is a federal law that says all phones, whether the phone service is on or not, must be able to call "911", so if you have a power outtage where the cell phones are down you could still call 911 in an emergency because the phone company has their own power system, but keep in mind, you must use a phone that does not require power.

Hope you feel better soon, Lydia. No one was sick Christmas Eve when we were all together, but my aunt was sick all night, both ways, lives alone and almost called the squad. It finally quit after about 5 hours. She did go to the ER on Christmas day and was given an IV and told that she couldn't go to work this week. And that it is re-occuring. If she started with it again to ge to the ER IMMEDIATELY because this virus is causing heart problems. DN started puking on Sunday, lasted a day. His mom still has a cold or something that started about the same time. My dad went to the dr. this morning with a cold/something. He goes to pnuemonia very fast, along with other health problems. He was given anti-biotics to prevent the pneumonia (they didn't last year when it happened this fast and ended up in the hospital) and something for cough. He is to call the dr tomorrow with an update to see if that is all they will do. I went to the dr Monday with an inner ear infection. Hope no one else gets sick, in our family or here with my KT family. Tami

So you dismissed all core aeration studies that are for crop fields as irrelevant, then came along with your own crop field study that's relevant , because you say so. Show me a study on core aeration for crop fields. Tilling is not core aerating. I didn't present that OSU article for a discussion about aeration. In fact the one weakness is that it isn't specifically geared toward home lawns, so we have to make some assumptions. I'm the one saying it is hard to find any real scientific studies for a "home lawn." My interest in this article is more in the soil biology that explains why a biologically healthy soil probably doesn't require aeration. I guess this seems hypocritical to some people. Not sure why. As to your next point, yes, I say the soil biology presented in this article is completely applicable to a home lawn. Explain why it isn't. 1. In an average well maintained organic lawn, with no deficiencies, what is the average percentage of organic matter? When you say "organic" lawn I assume you mean any lawn, even yours, that has enough organic matter mulched in each year to maintain a healthy level of organics. I'm not an expert on what the exact organic level should be, but the number depends on the type of soil. Sandy soils will be hard pressed to get very high levels, while heavier soils can exhibit much higher numbers. I think morpheus' lawn is around 15%. Morpheus says 3 or 4% is borderline low, 5 or 6% is good and anything near 8% is excellent. 2. Is this level of organic matter sufficient to get in between all soil particles and prevent all soil particles from compacting and if so, what do you base that assertion on? I understand what you are getting at with these two questions, but again, you'vegotten something into your head that has no basis. You seem to think 100% of the particles must be linked to an organic particle in order for the soil not to need aeration. Nobody but you is asserting that. The article clearly shows the relationship between roots, bacteria, fungi, bugs and worms and all the other things that form macroaggregates. If you have lots of these macroaggregates around the root level, which is what naturally regulates oxygen, then you probably don't need mechanical aeration. Listen, the way science works is that you have to go on a hypothesis that may or may not be proven out over time. Eventually it becomes an accepted "law" or fact if it holds up. I've come to believe that this and other online forums are like laboratories where everybody contributes their experiences with their own lawn. Lawn companies and even universities have biases. Ask dchall about all this. He has been here the whole time and has seen a lot of what works and what doesn't. My position is that I am not going to do something to my lawn unless I have evidence that it does good. Otherwise you can do more harm than good. From the evidence I've seen in this forum, from doing other online research, and just observing problems different people come into this forum with, my conclusion is that there is no need to aerate if you are doing everything else properly. The nice lady, Lisa, started this discussion by saying she had summer fungus caused by over fertilizing ("live and learn"). She cut back on the fertilizer and started aerating. I think she is attributing the lack of fungus to the reduced fertilizer and the aerating. My reaction would be to get a Logan labs test and see if there are any soil problems, and then decide whether aerating is really doing anything. Again, if she has good soil biology and plenty of us never aerate, then why should she have to? I think too many people see lawn companies aerating and just assume it is a good thing to do. The article I presented from OSU suggests the increased oxygen can actually do harm. Scott's recommends you weed and feed in April. Do you think that is a good idea, too?