One reason is the shorter processing time and low pressure with PC supposedly results in less loss of nutrition according to NCHFP. It also uses less energy and you get less boil over than when you BWB it. And it uses lots less water. For me it is primarily convenience. If I am already PC other foods why drag out the BWB? If not... your choice. Dave This post was edited by digdirt on Mon, May 26, 14 at 19:00

For home use and canning, USDA rules is not enforced. If you mean there are no canning police who will come and arrest you then yes, they are not enforced. However liability, not to mention responsibility, does attach to any home canned foods that are shared with others. fill the jar, tighten the lid, then place them upside down, ...how the heck bacteria is going to get into it ? It doesn't have to "get in". It is already in there. So is the air still trapped in the jar that allows the bacteria in the jar to continue to grow, reproduce, and produce toxins. The only foods where inversion sealing is still commonly practiced anywhere is with highly acidic foods - fruit jams and jellies, canned fruits, and brined pickles. Tomatoes do not quality as highly acidic foods since they are borderline pH at 4.5-4.8. If you cannot kill a bacterium by boiling, forget about canning and eating tomato sauce. There are many bacteria, including c.botulinum, that cannot be killed by boiling but that doesn't mean the food cannot be canned. Those bacteria are killed only by irradiation (which isn't possible at home) or by high pressure temps in excess of 240 degrees for a period of time determined by the density of the food in question. Alternatively they are packed in an highly acidic medium which prevents the bacteria from reproducing in the jar. Thus the requirement to add additional acid to tomatoes when canning them. None of this is new info. It dates from research begun back in the 1950's. And it is all discussed in great detail on the Harvest forum for those interested. But I would suggest some research into all the science behind the canning guidelines before sharing such mis-leading information with others. It does them a dis-service otherwise. Dave

If you're bargain-hunting for fixtures and DIYing things, I get it. There are things in my house I'd never have if I'd had to pay someone else for a soup-to-nuts install job. That said, what you want to do is hugely expensive to put in and wasteful in operation. I stand by my guesstimate that you're spending $6k on water heating equipment for your uber shower. If you put in 2, each tankless unit (installed by a pro) will cost around $2k. That's including piping them up and running the stainless exhaust pipe outside. Firing those 2 burners at 180k to 200k BTU/hr likely will require upgrading your gas line, which could also easily be $1.5k plus. If you put in 2 showerheads and 8 sprays, that's around 25gpm of flow you need to provide. If the water piping in the home isn't big enough to provide that much flow, adding a booster pump ($600 to $800 installed) won't help. If it can't pull the flow required from the suction side, it will cavitate and you'll just destroy your $300 pump in short order. You'll need to have enough supply based on code for potential other simultaneous uses. Also, what's going to turn it on/off? It can't just sit there running when there's no flow downstream (i.e. nowhere to pump to). Thus the need to hire a professional if you really want to do this. You will also need to make sure that your drain piping can handle 25gpm. Again, there's a code calculation method to determine this. In operation, shower plus 2 sprays is ~7.5 gpm. That costs ballpark of $3/hr for gas (37F delta T, 90% efficient, $1/therm). It goes up to $10/hr to run flat out at 25 gpm (and I'm not sure even 2 tankless heaters put out that much heat). That's the quick-and-dirty, likely mistake-laden assessment of some of the issues of what you want to do. In more places than you'd think, water is a scarce, expensive resource that we don't really pay the real costs of producing. If everyone and their brother pulled out their flow restrictors or put in something like this, we'd be in big trouble.

You wouldn't be able to tell the difference between PT #1 select structural and regular PT #2. Lumber has an ink stamp from the sawmill indicating the grade, species, sawmill, etc. Usually the presure treating process covers up the original stamp. The little dashes or color of the chemical treatment do not have anything to do with structural grade. Lowes and Home Depot do not sell any #1 structural grade lumber, with the possible exception of 4x6 and larger timbers. You need to look at the stamp to know for sure. The PT at lowes and HD are definitely not structural grade. If I need #1 select structural PT lumber, I special order it. The sawmill grades the wood #1 and then sends it for chemical treatment. The large PT beams are often already #1, but in order to get PT 2x material in #1, it basically has to be special order. Don't waste your time even asking the people at Lowes or HD any of these questions. They are probably the ones who told you about looking at the little dashes.