I know a sheet of metal roofing would hold the water away from the roof. I guess if I was careful I might be able to just use the metal and one piece of glazing. But wouldn't another piece of insulation under the metal make it more efficient? Bending the edges up just a bit might make me less paranoid about leaks. Another option as apposed to screws is to use construction adhesive. It is really tough stuff. You folks are making me itchy to get out in my shop. After X-mas maybe. I think I should probably build a very small experimental trickle through collector just to try it out and see how I do with leakage. about the "sky cooling" . . . It all makes sense for the most part. Though biology is more my thing than physics. If you wouldn't mind explaining a bit more I would appreciate it. I am having trouble connecting the cooling of the panel with your explanation karen. So lets say you have a panel that is circulating warmish water in it that you want to cool down. You put it on the shady side of the house on a day when the air temperature is greater than the temperature of the water you want to cool off. So the water molecules release IR radiation into the panel and the panel passes that IR on to the air. The air is made up of all sorts of stuff, oxygen, nitrogen, CO2, water vapor & then a bunch of trace stuff. So here comes our IR wave and it runs into a gas molecule. With sunlight the gas molecules would absorb some energy and start bouncing around faster. We would measure this as a higher air temperature with a thermometer. I would imagine that the with the air being warmer than the water in the panel it would do the same thing in terms of energy transfer and warm up the water. Does IR work differently? Do some gases reflect the IR or not interact with it at all? This seems to be the key paragraph that is confusing me. "Now, not only are things on the surface radiating, but things above you are as well. However, the atmosphere isn't a nearby solid (ARE YOU IMPLYING THAT THE ATMOSPHERE RADIATES DIFFERENTLY BECAUSE IT IS A GAS INSTEAD OF A SOLID?). You're getting radiation from a broad range of particles, from ones radiating right above you, further, further, and further away, all the way out to the frigid edge of the atmosphere and beyond. It is the net radiation of these particles that matters in determining how much incoming infrared is absorbed by something that faces skyward (SO YOU ARE SAYING THAT THE NET INCOMING RADIATION FROM THE ATMOSPHERE IS LEss THAN THE OUTGOING RADIATION FROM THE PANEL?)." I am still a bit lost. Sorry for needing so much explanation. If you ever have frog questions feel free to ask and maybe I can reciprocate a bit.

I can't say much about the long term since I've only been living in this house for a couple years but I'm strongly with the "the heck with em" camp about pests and diseases. I do try to rotate my gardens around (not planting the same thing in the same spot all the time with annuals.) I am very firmly against buying bagged dirt, Just costs way too much. I do get mushroom compost when I can and I have used the free compost from the county too (ya just gotta watch out for glass in it.) We collect most of the neighborhood bagged leaves and grass clippings for the gardens and compost. We ask tree services working in the area if they need a place to dump the chips they can do it at our house. We compost and have a worm farm. I figure the more biologically active I can make the soil, the less likely the negative stuff can out compete and proliferate. About the only things I've sprayed as pesticides or whatnot, were thruicide, organocide, and neem. My biggest problem seems to be potassium deficiency. I spray with maxicrop but that gets costly when I have most of my yard growing squash, pumpkins, zucchini and cucumbers that are all asking for more potassium (powdery mildew tends to attack those plants when they are weak on potassium.) Anyway, most of my gardens started as "lasagna gardens" with cardboard and mulch and mushroom compost. We don't till though occasionally we will for or spade through a bed after harvest to try to get rid of most of the annoying grasses. I can't really see replacing soil though if a particular bed or area seemed to get "toxic" I would probably knock it down and leave it fallow if I couldn't find something that wanted to grow there as a cover crop. I only add organic matter. I don't buy "top soil" or even "sand". I don't even buy bagged potting mix anymore. I just make a mix of old garden or potting soil mixed with new mushroom compost, other compost, some home mixed organic fertilizer and worm castings and call it new potting mix. I figure the more composted stuff around, the better everything will be inoculated to the possible diseases. I can't say for certain the long term effects of my methods as they have only been going on a couple years but I seem to be doing well so far. Here is a link that might be useful: TCLynx

I use it to give the plants a boost when I plant out. Also, I have some new beds this year that have quite a bit of organic matter that's still breaking down and could tie up nitrogen, so I use very diluted fish fertilizer when I water to try to make up for that while the organic matter breaks down (this is in addition to tomato/veg fert, which I apply regularly once fruiting starts). So far, plants seem happy, no sign of nitrogen excess or deficiency, but it's still earlyish. Because I just use tomato fertilizer on all my fruiting veg (just keeps thing simpler, fewer things to buy) I also use the fish fertilizer to supplement those plants that like a little more N than tomatoes. The fish fertilizer is good for leaf veggies. I don't foliar feed. I already do regular preventive spraying for fungal diseases and will spray if I have pest issues (thinking of adding a capsaicin product for squirrels and chipmunks), and too many things sprayed on the plants seems kind of silly, as it seems I'd constantly be washing off what I previously sprayed, etc., plus, more importantly, I'd spend ALL of my time spraying, which is not my favorite activity. Since I've never had problems with deficiencies when I apply fertilizer to ground/roots, I haven't yet felt a need to feed via foliage.

Alisonn, I had a pool removed too when I bought my house here in NJ. There is a requirement from NJDEP that your removal company needs to comply with. Basically it concerns the fill material that gets put into the hole, how large the pieces are from the concrete that is broken up and put back into the hole, etc. In Atlantic county, I needed a demolition permit, and then had to get inspections once the pool was removed and the cement chunks put into the hole, then again after the final fill was completed. $3500 is a good price. Mine cost $5500 to remove. Good luck!