A few hives do very well with no attention (both feral and those abandoned by a beekeeper), but the vast majority will fail within 2 years time due to disease or queen failure. Why a few hives survive no one seems to know for sure. Genetics possibly, but some feral hives that have survived for 5+ years crashed quickly when captured and placed in modern hives. Yes it is possible to keep bees and not harvest honey. I know someone near me that is basically doing just that. You still need to inspect them periodically for disease and general health (queenright, etc.). I'd guess once every 3-4 weeks minimum. 2 hives is still recommended if for no other reason than to provide a queenless hive eggs they can raise a new queen from, plus you can split come spring if one dosn't survive the winter. So you still need to buy much of the gear (smoker, veil, etc.) and spend the time learning the diseases, how to inspect, etc. It's still a good amount of work to get started. Another option would be to offer it as a permanent apiary to a local beekeeper. If it's a suitable location (good access, water, forage, etc.), convenient for the beekeeper, and he is looking for another location, you just might get him to place 10+ hives for free and with no work. (Though there may not be a great chance of that). -Tim

I had six new plants that started as tubers. Planted them along a fence and they get 5 hours of sun per day, plus the heat off the wood fence is a plus. . This is their second year with slow start due to the bad NW Spring, too much rain and little sun, but last year they all performed beautifully. I had blooms into October. We'll see this year. One plant didn't come up, but the rest are growing. My old gardens got about 7 hours and I had 20 plants. All did beautiful. Key is to deadhead old blooms and water regularly. Don't stress dahlia or they will not due well, like overwatering or competing with weeds, and not desdhesding. Happy growing!

All you need is to get a sch 40 PVC union. Some have sockets that are glued other threaded which you could use a PVC threaded nipple between it and pump and an adapter for the pipe. You can even get a union with a ball valve in it if you feel that will help. Either case, just cut the pipe closest to the pump leaving some pipe stubbed off the the male adapter (at least 3") to glue the union on. Suggestion, get the union first to decide where it will fit best. During install the union wasnt needed and costs the PB $$ so it wasnt installed, this is common to put one in later for service. Except in the north where people tend to breing their pumps in for the winter.

I'm still waiting on getting a plumbing flow diagram, so I'll hold my opinion until then. Paramount is evidently recommending a dedicated 1HP motor for the in-floor cleaning system. The way I see it, if I want to fun the PCC2000 system for 3-4 hours per day, I need more GPM. Whether that comes from an Intelliflo that is programmed to send the extra GPM or a dedicated pump, does it really matter? To me the only way to compare this from an energy efficiency standpoint is to look at how many extra KWH is required from the Intelliflo and compare it to the dedicated 1HP KWH. Check my thinking on this. For normal filtering WITHOUT running the in floor system, I could run the Intelliflo at 40 GPM. From what I can tell, this would be enough flow for the skimmers to work effectively (Is this right). Cost would be approximately 300 KWH. When I wanted to run the in-floor system I would have to ramp up to 80-100GPM for a few hours. The cost to do that is approximately 1,800 KWH. That means that I would be using an additional 1,500 KWH when I want to run the in-floor system. IF I just go with the dedicated 1HP pump for the in-floor, it consumes approximately 1,800 KWH. Therefore the energy consumption difference between using the Intelliflo and the dedicated pump is only .3KWH. Over the course of a year, this is only about $16. I know this is just theory. For you guys with more practical experience, does this make sense and what would you expect to see from an energy usage standpoint.