Dave, thank you SO much for posting that link, it's very useful! I now realize that I am being paranoid and inpatient. :) It appears to be early still! I just hope to pick as many as possible before frosts hit considering how long they take to ripen. Bummer. Thanks again!

...when you know the workers' first names, taste in music, dramas du jour (crashed the truck! girlfriend dumped me! ex wife is a witch!), and preferred fast food.... ...when "TKO" doesn't refer to a boxing match! ...when you become a dust connoisseur -- you can differentiate between drywall dust, sawdust, stucco dust, and regular dust.... ...when you start answering newbies' GW questions that you yourself were asking just a few short weeks/months/eternities ago.... ...when you realize that this forum is one of the few bits of sanity left in your life.... ...when you can detect the subtle differences among Grohe, Newport Brass, Moen, Delta, etc. faucet on every tv show and friend's house you see, but all of them actually work, unlike the one still sitting in the box that arrived three months ago when you were so excited you showed it off to all your neighbors and friends.... ...when you've gained 10 pounds due to horrendous diet of microwaveable and fast food crap, and you can't work out in your family room at lunchtime (or any other time that workers are present) without being classed as some sort of weirdo....

We built a 3000 sq ft (or so, can never remember if the square footage includes the garage or not) house in the mountains on a hillside lot and it took 18 months +. This will be our retirement house, so we didn't need fast, and we made that clear to all of the builders that we "interviewed". But it did take longer than planned, mostly due to unforeseen issues. We built (intentionally) right before the construction industry started going again, so subs were still available. The GC is a small one-man shop, a great guy - he's now a friend, so most work was done by him, and all of his subs. Biggest delays we experienced: turned out that the architect hadn't provided the results of the ground tests (whatever they're called), so the builder didn't know until excavation that we would need a deeper hole and more gravel etc. due to the soil composition. Very snowy winter, which which was great for skiing but caused all sorts of delays because the snow started early on one end, and took forever to melt on the other. Then a rainy summer, which we don't usually have. We just rolled with it. I will say that our GC was good at letting us know about delays generally, especially the impact that the snow was having. I agree that if you can nicely tell your GC that it makes you nervous not to get updates or status reports, maybe he'll be better at letting you know what's going on. Also, our GC isn't great with technology either, but I discovered that he was much more likely to answer my texts than my emails. So I communicated mostly by texts and phone calls (though my personal preference, due to my profession, is emails). Ask your GC what method of communication works best for him.

This can be indicative of a failing glow bar igniter. If so, generic replacements should cost around $30 and are usually easy to change out. Of course, buying the OEM's igniter instead of the generic part could cost a lot more (up to $200 depending on brand). And service calls often have large minimum charges (could be another $200 in some markets). And it always is possible that it actually is something else that is failing. It could also be the thermopile or the gas valve -- or something even more exotic. But my best bet from the limited data that you provide is on glow bar igniters. They are built to eventually wear out and fail.