Well guys, We still live in the house we bought to in 2014 in order to move Donna's aging mom who was (at that time) showing symptoms of dementia. The dementia progressively took its toll on her mind, and then in October of 2016, she was diagnosed with stage 4 bladder cancer. She lived until early February 2017 and died here at home with us, as she wished and she had made us promise not to let her die in a hospital or nursing home. She died surrounded by family and a hospice nurse was present. I only relate this story because Donna's mom's health situation was the reason we bought a house big enough for all of us to live in, under one roof.........and the subsequential multiple projects and renovations.........were the reasons I dropped off of the forum. As soon as we moved into the house, I had a long list of things that HAD to be done, and a long list of lesser things we WANTED to do......so my time on the forum just could not be justified.....I simply had too much to do. The first things to be done were to come up with safety measures to help prevent an elderly woman with dementia from injury by being proactive about preventing her from "escaping" the house. I had to equip all exit doors with a deadbolt lock keyed inside and out (all keyed alike) and we had to come up with a nearby "hiding place" close to each lock location for spare keys in case of emergency. This house has a full basement with stairs, and we did not want her mom to have access to the stairs, so I included the same deadbolt on that door too. The sliding door to the second floor deck was a challenge in that it had a key lock on the outside ONLY with just a paddle lock lever on the inside. I had to come up with a way to make that door lockable with a key from the inside. My solution was to remove the lock assembly from the door and "reverse" location of the paddle lever plate and the key tumbler plate, so that the key tumbler would be on the inside. I stripped out the guts relating to the paddle lever and covered the hole where the paddle shaft came through with a small brass plate.....heavily epoxied in place from the backside (inside the door). All you can see from outside is a small hole blanked off with brass. The deck is on the second story on the backside of the house with stairs leading down the the pool, which is enclosed inside a fence, so we never use the sliding door as a "key entry" point anyhow. Then there is the attic storage space epic adventure. The attic space when we bought the house, was almost non-existent. There was a total of 4 sheets of 4' X 8' plywood (128 sq. ft.) on the joists at the top of an extremely rickety pull down wooden stairs. Stairs were the first to go. Replaced with a sturdy aluminum pull down folding stairs. Then I hauled 22 4' X 8' sheets of 3/4 OSB into the attic space.(each sheet was cut in half lengthwise to fit through attic stairs opening). We now have about 800 sq. ft. of usable attic storage space. I built 2 inverted trusses (strong backs) to attach to the joists on the sections spanning the 12' kitchen and the 18' den. These trusses ensure that the load imposed by the extra OSB and stored material are ultimately borne by the load bearing walls at the hallway, den, and both walls of the kitchen. The addition of the trusses assures that the ceiling joists do not assume a sway back shape over time resulting in cracked ceiling gypsum board. I assembled the trusses in the attic and fabricated them to have about 1/2" "preload bow" on the 18' truss and 3/8" preload bow on the 12' truss. This was to ensure that the trusses were actually carrying some load right from the start. After I got the trusses built and fastened onto each joist they served with metal strapping, I built a 30' long, 2 tier shelf system into the truss structures. Shelves are 24" wide and the bottom shelf is 20" off the floor, while the second shelf is 46" off the floor, so you have the attic floor under the shelves, and the 2 shelves themselves for storage, That yields 180 sq. ft. of space, plus the remaining 720 or so sq. ft. of attic at various head space. The tallest overhead clearance is about 6'2" at the rafter collar ties (and I added collar ties so that every rafter has a tie, instead of every third rafter as the house was built). There were 4 rafters that had "split" open due to improper orientation by the rough carpenters. They had placed rafters with knots situated on the lower chord of the rafter (tension side), which is a no-no. These rafters had to be jacked back into place and reinforcement panels of 3/4" plywood "scabbed" onto each side, glued and screwed. The original scheme had the ventilation exhaust fans from both bathrooms simply dumping into the attic space, another no-no. I extended the exhaust hoses over to the gable area of the house and busted through the brick and installed 2 bona fide exhaust hoods with insect screens. On the longest hose, which was a 4" hose....I built a booster fan box in the middle of that run and wired it so that it turns on when the original fan turns on. I felt that a 16' run of 4" hose would probably need all the fan power it could get to keep from simply "stalling out". The other hose was 6" and only 8' long, so I felt it was adequate with no additional help needed. I could go on and on about other projects, but these were some of my most major undertakings, Now, about my employment. I no longer work as a forklift mechanic in the shop. In midsummer 2015, I took over running the parts department when our longstanding partsman retired. This was challenging in that it put me to the task of acquiring and dispensing the parts instead of installing them on vehicles. It has also been challenging in that I was the first partsman in our history to actually have the capability of searching the Volvo and Daimler websites to look up parts. It was in the summer of 2015 that the company finally got onboard with software to enable this. Prior to that advent, our method of ordering parts involve looking the parts up in hard copy paper parts manuals, or talking to a vendor/dealer on the phone and trying to describe what you wanted, it was sometimes a crap shoot whether you would get the right parts or not. The outgoing partsman never had to use the computer to look up and order parts, and when it was introduced, he refused to do it saying that his time was too short to need it, so he told me to get all the training and he would just watch. LOL He and I worked side by side for 3 months while he showed me most of the ropes before he retired in October 2015. That is a summary of what I have been up to. I know this was completely off topic, but since the request was posed here, I felt OK in responding here.

Hi Dan, Interesting post, and I must say it is one of my pet peeves also. I've bought a lot on ebay (too much!) and the majority of sellers do not leave feedback, such as the following: 333behappy 5170scottw 99centpinshop african-plants allstardist annette8 bertramsblooms betshoff bmw_boi boughtcheap caldeal cowboyflowerman dmonlinesales evokes 81 exjensen foxproductions garyoverton gemma1535 green*sunshine halfbuiltstars hix406 imperial jammer 1109 jolf-greenham jr-stuff60 julia4537 kitcatgreen koolf34 mayberry_treasures mercury32 mishaguy mom*2*riley nm2nv oldstreet onlinesciencemall patric7024 potato-rock potz100 precious_pastimes prettylinens pudlenut rick34 rockdonkey rows1x rrrjjlamb serious coder spannyeyes sports_plus stardrifting stardrifting susieb6427 the_shoe_guy! twigpen wellspring100 westeng77 westowlwitch widenose-collectibles yesterdaysbeginnings I used to try and email every seller with something along the lines of 'received the xxx, I love it, it's great, thanks', but that didn't help get me any more feedback. Another thing about feedback- don't assume with 100% feedback everything is fine- that is usually a 'blackmail seller' that will only leave feedback after they received a positive. I never trust the 100% seller! You can also go to http://www.toolhaus.org/ to check out feedback- goes right to the negative or neutral feedback without you having to page through hundreds of other feedback. Today I received 3 small plants that had newspaper around their leaves to protect them. Unfortunately newspaper was taped to the stem. I mean the tape was ON the stem! Ouch! Poor widdle plant! Here is a link that might be useful: Toolhaus

for me.. the issue .. THE FIRST WINTER .... is heave ... the roots arent deep enough to hold with the freeze thaw fluffing of the soil ... then.. with roots that are 2 to 4 inches deep ... watering can become problematic ... they tend to be a lot less forgiving ... if not watered often ... these are NOT driveway hosta.. lol ... on top of all that... you have a nice little.. though aggressive baby bunting.. a weed ... but in TC.. they come up with all these edges.. and centers.. and the plants CAN BE inherently weaker .... a 1 inch edge on a 16 inch leaf is one thing.. but an significant edge on a leaf the size of the nail on your little finger... MIGHT BE just too much ... the trough thing .. is just to keep them nearer.. to get that extra TLC that will help them survive ... once a mini has achieved substantial mass ... relative to its size... it is like all other hosta ... and doesnt really need all the foo foo TLC ... years ago.. there was one guy.. who was actually using bonsai to mini large hosta ... i wonder what ever happened to harry ... ken

So, are those size returns too large to do this, because I am more than capable of making it happen and if it requires some real pros to get the supply right, so be it, but at least I'll have the returns large enough. I was also going to oversize the return boots one size with a reducer to the duct, but yet I will have larger grilles for more free space area. This is a Goodman furnace and it is designed for 2,000 CFM @ 0.5 static, which is very common, but it seems impossible to achieve since they don't make a coil with that low of a pressure drop and I have checked around other manufacturers and none are near that low except a horizontal slab coil and it was @ 0.298. Someone told me you should aim for percentages of 40, 40, 20 out of that 0.5 or coil, ductwork and filters in that order. But I said you are saying a 5 ton A-coil having a PD of 0.2 or less? Does that even exist and what is typical pressure drop or static of flexible duct work for 5 ton systems? So, is the HVAC world going to be silent on this or do what this one guy is saying that is mix and match like 4 ton condensing unit and coil or go to a variable speed DC motor furnace because they have higher PD's (0.8- to 1) etc. So, it seems to me it must be about non-existent for a standard 5 ton unit to be designed to operate within those specs. I am anxious to hear what they have been doing for years to make 5 ton residential systems using the PSC motors work under 0.5" IWC.