There are a number of ways to make keeping your pond maintenance more efficient without the outrageous price your handyman puts on the job. The first problem of fine leaved Honey Locust leaves could be solved by making a screen sided or mesh sided basket to put into the top section of the pond to collect the leaves. Just leave it in place between cleanings. If you are handy, the screen sided bucket is simple enough but premade mesh fish nets come in some rather large sizes and shaping the handle to serve as a cup type handle is easy enough as is making some sort of shelf to hold the net in place. Just lift the net out by the handle, let the water drain back if it is sufficiently clear and dump the leaves out. I am putting in a link for a website that happens to show several products on the same page that would do a good job of cleaning the mulm under the bottom drain. The fish capture nets are there, too. The Muck Vac is about as simple as it gets. The price is a bit steep but it works. All you need is 50 lbs water pressure in the hose. The leaf vac uses a bag to catch debris and I use one to collect leaves on the bottom. It isn't as good for mulm unless you get the extra bags for that purpose. The price is hard to beat. It adds water to your pond so prepare as for a water change. The Python pond vac is a more elaborate version of the Muck vac designed to collect leaves and mulm. It is more difficult to get into tight places and I have a problem opening and closing the jar that collects the debris because my hands hurt a lot. The pond vacuum on this page is pretty expensive but you can get a garage(utility)vac with a continuous flow(water)discharge for between $75 and $90. It works, too. Just add a hose to run the water to the garden. I got one at Walmart and I've seen them at Lowes, Menards, etc. It took me a while to get the hang of it but Horton came through for me with proper instructions. UV, UV. Hum-mm. I don't see anywhere the flow rate would be low enough to let the UV work. I see you have valves all through the system that makes in-line space at a premium even if it lets you adjust the flow. It seems to me that adding another pipe with a valve to control that flow would make the system complicated to the point of maintenance inefficiency and it would certainly raise the scream level. Maybe I am wrong. Since you are going to move, I would use a small submersible pump and a stand alone UV + filter. It might even be possible to get by with only the sponge included prefilter to protect the pump. The object is to increase dwell time to allow the UV time to work. You can get small fountain pumps for cheap. Try Harbour Freight.I found the UV and filter from Laguna on sale for 45 bucks. several years ago. That screwdriver must be a sign of ingenuity or ineptitude. I don't know which. One of these days you will laugh at it. In a number of stores I see wire shelves that are stackable in the laundry and storage departments. I don't see how deep the hole is but I bet you could find one of those shelves that would fit close enough. You might need to do a bit of bending or cutting. Please do not put stones on the bottom of the pond. It will make cleaning an impossible task and eventually the water will become stinky. Now I will let the smart guys take over. I still like your pond. Sandy Here is a link that might be useful: Simple inexpensive ideas that work well

Hello all, just wanted to post a follow-up on my new w/d set. Lowes replaced my Whirlpool Duet w/d just this past week. My wife and I picked out the Bosch 800 Nexxt Series. The unit themselves looks nice but once again we are not as pleased as I thought we would be with a new set. As you will see from my previous post, we had a problem with the washer shaking violently and moving all over the place knocking into the wall etc. So to deter that from happening this time, we put down a rubber rug mat first and then an area rug on top of that so that the washer would be less likely to walk when in the spin cycle. Well here are the facts, the washer and dryer are both level (I check with a level myself both side to side and front to back) and when it enters the spin cycle it seems like on low to medium spin it is just unbelievable the amount that it shakes. You can here the thing vibrating the floor and walls of the house from any room on the bottom floor. Although I must say when it finally reaches the highest point of the spin it settles out and just moves a very little. So my biggest issue is getting to the high rate of spin when it gets there it is just fine. I read a lot of other posts and people were talking about loading one piece of clothing at a time to balance out the load. Usually we just throw a handful of clothes in a time and don't worry about it. I certainly don't think you should have to take sock by sock, shirt by shirt, etc and load the machine but maybe you do. Then I thought the drum might not be balanced but not sure what the liklihood of that is since it's a new machine. As soon as we did our first load and noticed the erratic shaking on low to medium, my wife and I just looked at each other and said oh no not again. We are really seriously beginning to think that no front loader out there is going to be right for us because of the way they shake when spinning. I think if I had it to do all over instead of going with another front loading model we would have went back to top loading, I just can't take all the racket. Now we are thinking about making provisions to just do clothes when we don't have company or setting the delay and having it wash while we sleep. It's a shame you have to do that with such expensive equipment. The only other issue that we had was with the new dryer. We kept getting the error of clean lint filter. After cleaning the lint filter 5 times during one dry cycle, I decided to contact Bosch to see if they had any suggestions. The lady advised me that my exhaust hose might be bunched up causing the machine to get warm thinking that lint is clogging up the filter. So I looked back behind the dryer and it was pretty warm back there and the hose might have been a little bound up but nothing to where I thought it should cause any issues. I wanted to leave a decent amount of length to the exhaust hose just because it makes it easier to pull out the dryer if you need to without disconnecting the hose because you have plenty of length. So as a work around or potential fix, my wife and I slid the dryer out a little from the wall to ensure that the exhaust hose was not being bound up or crunch up at all and I just completed a full load without any error messages claiming that the lint filter needs to be cleaned so I guess we are on the right track. If anyone has any suggestions or comments about either situation/example, please let me know. Thanks for all your help, Michael

8 kilo is the rated capacity for the residential models. Doesn't mean one should force eight kilos in there, though. I mean, yeah, you can put that much laundry in these washers but it'll take 2:59 hrs. for a wash to complete. That is because Miele, like all European manufacturers, overstate the capacity of their laundry machines to remain competitive on the market that wants washers and dryers with higher load capacities. In the REAL WORLD, I think, both your washer choices have the same size drum in them. The Little Giant dryer has a roughly 20% larger drum than the residential models. Alex

See, I'd just tell my DH that he could enjoy the sunrise while he's doing the laundry rather than while he's making coffee! ;) I kind of like the look of latest rendition, but I'm not loving the function. Leaving the laundry in the MBR would kill it for me. I know you don't mind it, but I can't imagine that it wouldn't be a sticking point for some potential buyer down the road. It would be for me. The issue raised earlier about kids having to come in the parents' room to do their laundry as they got older would be even stickier with the addition of another bedroom--i.e., room for a second kid with laundry needs. Could your stackable W/D fit in that closet area in the mudroom? Also, how will you use this desk? Will it become your home office space? If not, it seems like it would become a clutter magnet, ruining that nice view. I still prefer the rendition above where you reuse your sink and five-panel door. I think it makes the space far more useful in a house where useful space is at a premium.