I am not disagreeing with Laag's take on sustaining lawns in his local conditions, but I think he glosses over the extent that most homeowners feel compelled to expend resources on keeping their lawns green and weed free. An awful lot of chemicals get applied to lawns to kill grubs and weeds, that also wind up in the local water supply. It may also be a matter of semantics, but the rainfall levels he cites are necessary over the entire year to keep grass evergreen and growing, and do not reflect what is needed to keep grass alive and growing in the southwest, or parts of the midwest and southeast. It takes much more water than naturally available to keep grass green in much of the USA, and most people who have lawns are unwilling to accept a brown lawn in summer, or use species that might go summer dormant under low/natural rainfall amounts. In these parts of the country, there are definitely other plants besides turf grasses that can remain presentable at height of summer and use less water. Even the trend towards using supposedly low water use Dwarf Tall Fescues is a bogus ploy to continue planting lawns here in California, in my opinion. They still need too much water to make sense as the predominant plant cover in our local climate. While much of wild California can also be considered natural grasslands, and survive on even lower rainfall amounts that Laag cites, they can not be maintained as mown, evergreen surfaces without huge amounts of additional irrigation. Even the really drought tolerant species that can serve as mown lawns, such as Buffalo Grass, will go winter dormant here in California, and don't satisfy the urge to have a year round green landscape. If we are talking about lawns as a ground cover that is to be maintained without irrigation, will be mowed, and is expected to remain evergreen during the warm months, there are few parts of the country outside of the far north and wetter northeastern USA that will sustain lawns as the American public prefers to grow them. In my opinion, in these parts of the country, and especially here in the arid west, lawns just don't make sense as a sustainable garden practice. I predict they will continue to lose popularity as the default plant choice in areas where water is in short supply, and cities are usurping agricultural water supplies here in the west so that cities will not have to ration water. So far, the water continues to be available for urban users to use as they prefer, but since over 70% of urban residential water use is used to irrigate gardens, the cost is going to get so prohibitive that people will vote with their wallets, and lawns will disappear over time. Perhaps there will be a trend towards using winter dormant Buffalo Grass and similar for people who must have lawns here in the arid west, but even the subtropical lawn grasses such as Bermuda grass or St. Augustine grass require regular summer irrigation to keep them alive here. I highly doubt that the vast American public will agree to keeping lawns in their future if it costs them over $300 a month to irrigate them, and few will be willing to have a summer dormant lawn that greens up again in winter, which would be the default condition here in California without irrigation. I also predict that ground cover alternatives similar to lawn will continue to become more popular here in the arid west, with homeowners converting to mowable Carex species such as C. pansa and similar, which can get by with less than half of what a Tall Fescue lawn uses to stay green. I have often tried to interest garden design clients in using very drought adapted turf species such as Kikuyu grass, Pennisetum clandestinum here locally, but few are willing to accept the aggressively spreading nature and coarse wirey texture of this grass. Not even when I explain that this is a grass that in my local coastal northern California conditions can remain green all summer with absolutely no summer irrigation, when it has clay loam soils and receives some regular summer fog which moderates the summer temperatures as well as significantly reducing evapostranspiration. I have also had great success planting lawn meadows using Carex tumulicola, which only needs mowing once a month, and can remain green with just once every 2 month irrigation in summer here in coastal conditions. At least here in California, I think that fescue lawns are a dying breed, and will be replaced with something else as the cost of water continues to climb, and possible mandatory limits on landscape irrigation are imposed across the state. I don't see this as environmentalists running amok, but just plain common sense, and dealing with the local conditions as they are, rather than applying some design sensibility inherited from regions where grass actually grows and survives without irrigation.

gotta love threads like these, and gotta love the people that need to convince themselves that their $3,000 honda generator was made by GOD himself and since they bought one, - everyone else should buy one too. especially had to laugh when someone suggested buying a generac over a another brand with a real honda engine. let me remind everyone that pride of ownership is a huge factor here, and if you ever take a trip to a honda dealer, you will find a long line of equipment in the back room waiting for repairs. so just because you bought one of the most expensive generators around, doesnt mean they dont break. so seriousy - get over yourself. i know this is an old thread but the issue will go on forever. my personal feeling if i were to buy another generator, is to buy the same deal the OP described. many suppliers offer generators with real honda engines for about $200 more than a similar sized unit with a honda clone. AND - even the honda clones these days are extremely reliable if broken in and maintained properly. what many people dont know, is the clone engines are designed using expired honda patents, and have come a long way in recent years. the karting world even has a separate racing class for them, and a 6.5 hp engine can be modified to push almost 20hp and rev up to 9000 rpm. that being said, a clone motor will have NO PROBLEM running a generator at 3600 for the occasional black out and power loss so long as you use common sense to maintain it. i dont care if JESUS HIMSELF built your honda generator, if you leave the same gas in it for 4 years - your carb will need to be cleaned. now - i am not saying that honda and honda clones are of equal quality and reliability, but something has to be said for a $650 ETQ generator with a pure sign wave, that makes more power (7250 cont) and will keep my lights on just as well as a $3,000 Honda with 5000 cont watts.. furthermore, after your 2 year warranty expires on your $3,000 honda, you can enjoy the $100 an hour labor rate, and $1200 repair bill god forbid you ever need to bring it to a dealer for repair - THAT YOU WILL DO since you spent so much money for the "best" me on the other hand - if my $650 generator gets used 3 times in years, i will feel i got my moneys worth out if it, and it it dies - i will toss it the garbage or sell it for parts, and buy another brand new generator with another 2 yr warranty for less than you paid for the labor alone on your repair bill.. - unless your a contractor using the thing on remote jobsites for 30 weeks out of the year, you have no need for a $3,000 portable generator anyway, because this is who these things are made for. for $2400 you can buy a 12kw whole house standy unit at costco made by generac, thats completely automatic, runs off natural gas, and is big enough to run 2 central air units along with most of your home. lastly - I hate to break the news to all the honda guys, but honda is not the "top of the line" when it comes to reliable generators. i work for a major utility company, and you will not find ONE honda generator on ANY utility truck.

Eleven years ago I replaced the cheap beige carpet in our house with beautiful Karastan wall-to-wall beige carpet. We have a lot of kids and back in 2004 we still had toddlers. I don't regret the carpets, at that point it was hard to know what type of hardwood to put down on a concrete slab, it seems that engineered hardwoods were an emerging product and solid hardwood planks were not recommended for slab foundations. There were moisture transfer issues that seemed to make hardwood floors a risky proposition back then. Our carpet looks exactly like the close-up sample that AuntJen posted. It looked to me like beautiful sand, the quality is excellent. We paid a fair sum of money for it in part because it did not off-gas, and we installed rubber padding (instead of the compressed foam) which helped prevent goat trails. Now we have a dog who occassionally barfs. So our carpet is stained. And worn out. Having a Dyson vacuum had made all the difference in keeping it looking good when we vacuumed daily, our carpet looked fabulous. Wish we had a Roomba. It's a frieze and I love it. I'd love hardwood floor more, but do not regret the carpeting. My kids played on the floor until five years ago, and the carpet kept the house a little quieter and allowed them to lay on the floor and play anywhere. I certainly miss those days.

And we're no further ahead. To a purist, everything must be real and genuine or it's dishonest (with arbitrary exceptions made for non-genuine materials the purist likes, such as IKEA cabinetry). For the near purist, materials must be honest and the method of use must also be honest but non-genuine materials are acceptable if the method looks correct (in other words, really good fakes are honest - stone veneer around the foundations on all 4 sides of the house gets a pass mark). For the practical person, a concrete-look countertop is honest because it's a more user-friendly surface than actual concrete, just as brick veneer or hardiplank may be a better cladding than clapboard. It seems to me we're all applying our own definitions of what the term "honest" really means, and perhaps confusing it with "genuine" which isn't quite the same thing. I've personally always been conflicted about wood veneer furniture. A lot of it is pretty poor quality junk, so neither genuine nor honest, but what about the very high end veneered furniture? Where does a veneer cabinet that's a real Chippendale fit into the honesty scale? I suspect, when it comes right down to it, aesthetics plays a bigger role than we think in deciding what's honest. We dislike McMansions because they're ugly more than because they're fake, while we like 1920s mock Tudors or modern, brick veneer Georgians because they're well proportioned and attractive, even if they're not the real thing.