Our foundation isn't below the water table; we're just trying to make sure that the water stays away from the foundation & crawl space. Three directions from our house go very precipitiously downhill, but the the drive, which is bedrock  basalt  comes in from above and funnels down onto the south side the house. Some redirection has been done, but the bedrock is disinclined to be shaped or contoured. It would take quite an event for rainfall to be a real problem, but events do happen. (Basically, we're just trying to follow our stinkin' engineered drainage plan.) But the thing is, it IS right there in our engineered drainage plan. Our builder either blew it off or never looked, and that bothers me more than anything else. As you can tell, we don't know enough to take care of ourselves in this situation, and should barely be allowed out alone. It's a shakey feeling to be dependent upon the kindness of strangers (by which I mean the builder, not y'all.)

Please remember that shocking a process and like all processes, there is a right way and a wrong way. More is not better and can be detrimental. Its one thing to raise one's chlorine for cause, normally combined chlorine, and another to address the perception that more is faster. While it can be faster, adding too much can result in the formation of by products and a thinner wallet. The speed is not normally an issue. Chlorine is fast acting against the vast majority of bio-badies and other contaminants as long as it is in the correct amounts. The 10X rule, aka breakpoint chlorination, that is taught in the formal Certified Pool Operator course is for one type of contaminant, ammonia, that forms combined chlorine (CC). In 15 years, I have had to go that far twice for a residential pool. My normal elevating level is 5X to reduce CCs. CPOs are generally needed for commercial pools like at a hotel or the Y. I did it personally for marketing reasons. When opening a pool, raising the free chlorine is important. There may have been contaminants that were left alone for an extended period. If they were alive, they need to be killed but not nuked. Nuking is not a good thing. Proper testing and dosing is important! It saves you money. Scott

We "built" the house we live in now, tract home in new neighborhood, with some customization. House conversations with friends and neighbors always have regrets in there. Bump-outs, boneheaded designs we should have caught, upgrades that should have been made, upgrades that aren't worth it... the list goes on. Based on our experiences here, I already know there will be design / decor issues that will have D'oh! moments. It's impossible to think about EVERYthing. I think we've hit all the major points, and have enough flexibility to change in the future. Our lives changed quite a bit in the 6 years since building (the once large pantry is now crammed because I now do the majority of grocery shopping at Costco and that not change for at least 15 years for example). I can't see into the future, but we learned from this build, and kept the evolution of our family in mind with our design. 1) The architect/draftsman is only as good as the information provided. They don't know us, or live our lives, ( I wonder if there'd be a benefit to having separate design consultations with the clients, much like relationship counseling, to get a really clear picture, lol), which is why we rely on their education and expertise. 2) The reason copy editors exist: to catch the technical mistakes writers make, and can no longer "see" due to closeness to the project. Same reason med errors occur. I think when we originally like a design, then look at it, dream about it, obsess over it, we can't "see" the flaws or potential problems that others might. Hence all the floor plan critique posts here. I think too, that online and builder plans lull us into a false sense of security- "they design and build houses all the time, they're experts, hundreds of people have bought the design, what could go wrong?!" We found that customizing our builders plan threw them for a loop, and didn't realize it would do so, until after the house was built, and weird things weren't right; towel bar location, depth o linen closet, outlets, etc. 3) We are often playing on tilt. We're all living SOMEwhere, right now, and designing a new place to live, with many features that we love (or would love to have) or without the ones we loathe, those HTOD, that we obsess over in our current or past homes. Finally, the same way any artist of any medium does, we aren't always satisfied with the end result of a project. Sometimes you just have to be DONE, even if to your artists eye, you could have kept going. Having said all that, I know there's going to be some regrets, but hopefully -I believe- the joy will outweigh them!

Foyer was done with planks going perpendicular with entrance door and fam/kitchen room with horizontal direction of same material. however, they were separated from carpet in living /dining room . Now we will remove carpet and lay same planks in living/dining room and same horizontal direction as family/kitchen room. should we change/redo the foyer? Thank you! Appreciate the feedback and experts advise.