Ciao all- Easy: Opalka, hands down. It's a champ, produces very well and is my machine for just about any tomato product you could make from sauce to V8 juice to ketchup to salsa. I can't say enough good things about this awesome variety.

HRU - Not what I consider the best value especially for a homeowner. I'm a 57 year old retired , at 46, scientist who worked for many years in the field consulting in analytical materials labs. I worked with lots of instrumentation and it all had various systems to move heat or do various things with materials and electricity. I also was exposed thoroughly to developing methods to test how plants who make things run their production lines. Anyway I say this kind of product doesn't look like a good value to me for a couple of simple reasons. 1. The initial cost . If it's $100 or less well I can't complain. It's only a box with a tube basically. So what you pay is money that's out of service for you and not working elsewhere. 2. The freon has to be plumbed into the unit. This is more cost and introduces something I would never do in a laboratory unless it had more gains than this ... A leak would ruin the A/C unit and cause downtime plus the cost of the A/C unit. This isn't a good plan. If the unit came with the A/C mfg design I would consider it a part of the method the plant uses to build the entire unit. But aftermarket just does not ever make much sense to me unless .. there is no other way. I think there's another way. 3. The efficiency ratings I read are 10%. That is exactly the gain I got when I water cooled my coils on a home refrigerator unit. I got a similar reading when I cooled a regular home A/C unit with water. The amount of water to cool my parent's 4 or 5 ton , 1935 (it's still running) A/C unit is about 6 gallons / hour. The amount of water usage is very low. So I say this: Use water to cool your coils. You'll lose the heat energy to the water if the water's thrown away but assuming it's at home the water can be used so it's not wasted. And if you want some heat that's in the water then plumb a regular $50 heater core or small radiator on the cooling coils of your A/C unit. If the size doesn't fit .. yes you'll have to reconsider the design. Maybe you can only run 1/4" copper tubing firmly attached to the coils .. But you'll be running water through the secondary coolling system .. not freon. And a failure of that system won't affect the safety or even the operation of the A/C .. as long as you haven't blocked the air flow. If not for the probable high initial cost . I'm guessing $400 and the plumbing into the freon line I would be positive towards a unit like this. Which I am via the design ideas above. 4. Another method to cool coils without putting water directly on them is to use a 'swamp cooler' design around the coils where air comes in to pass over. I realize this won't work as well in Houston or Florida. However air that is 90F and wet will still carrry away more heat than air that is dry and at 90F. Any gain of humidity with pads and a bit of water over them will give you some gain of efficiency. And there is the fact that your compressor will run longer.. ours has been running in 100F Summers since 1935. And I personally know it's been running since 1975 without any maintenance or downtime and the costs of running it are low. This will occur with both plans of my idea or the HRU. One things I don't quite get in the marketing is the absolute heat temp of the output of the HRU. If the compressor is to run cool it 's going to need cool water. The outflow from the unit we have , from 1935, is at about 15F above the incoming temp. While this would help to preheat water I would not expect hot water nor would I want hot water. I 'd want my compressor to run as cool as possible. You decide. I have not run extensive testing. I'm using mostly experience but not any calculations on the HRU except the specs I've seen. I have an idea. Seriously. Why not put a 100 gallon tank of water in your car and use your engine to heat it to about 180F as you drive around? Then when you get home you'll have a day's worth of very very hot water 'for free'. Seriously. This is the exact design used for carpet cleaning vans which use engine heat to heat the steam either preheating or fully heating. I don't know how they can get to 212F without the engine overheating but they do , for about $3000, offer a heater that runs off the engine and heats the clearning water. why not do the same and then 'plug in your water tank' when you get home for an whole night's worth of hot water ? There are ideas out there. They're not dumb. Just weigh the cost and risks. Andre

My 3.5 ton 13 SEER heat pump will drop from 14 amp to 11 amp on a 90 degree day when I switch on the HRU circulator pump (I added a manual switch to the pump circuit to be able to gauge savings). The hotter the tank, the less amp drop and when the thermostat temp is reached, the circulator pump switches off. I incorporated a circulating loop in my domestic hot water system to afford instant hot water and shed further heat, increasing the energy savings. Keep in mind that as opposed to solar, a HRU will provide hot water in the evening and morning when most people shower and do laundry. A solar system won't provide hot water at those times and the back-up elements will switch on to reheat the tank. Even with a large storage tank, remember the cold make-up water will trigger a re-heat thru the electric elements, a HRU will provide heat thru the night assuring a full tank of hot water in the AM at the lowest cost.

With reasonable electric rates (which I assume would be cheaper to operate a heat pump with than an 80% gas furnace with your gas rates), and a mild winter climate, a heat pump would be a good option in my opinion. You can keep the gas furnace for backup, though it may not see much use, and doing so would not allow you to leverage the tax credit since you'd need a variable-speed fan which boosts the efficiency for higher SEER equipment. What you would potentially install is a heat pump and a fan coil inside, and that would take care of the heating and cooling and could keep you the tax credit if you choose the correct components. A contractor should come to your home and discuss all this with you and hopefully do a heat loss/heat gain calculation to determine the correct size equipment. I'll attach the link below where you can see what is a rated match (just a tip: keep the model numbers as simple as possible; for example, a Trane may be proposed as 4TWX5036A1000A, but in the database it only reads 4TWX5036A1 -- if you are having trouble finding results). The first link is for air conditioners, and the second for heat pumps. Your 58STA is probably not in the database because it isn't variable speed. Just so you see how it works, look at heat pumps and type in 4TWX5036 for outside and 4TEE3F for inside, and you'll see possible indoor fan coil matchups and their ratings. Here is a link that might be useful: AHRI Directory