Seasun, a south window is great, but 5 feet away is too far. You are not giving your phal enough light and it will decline into death if you leave it where it is. Orchids take some time to die, so you'll think you're doing fine, doing ok, maybe not growing like it should. Oh NO!!! What happened to my beautiful orchid???? Here's how where to put the phal figures: phals need about 1000 footcandles of light to grow and bloom. *Outside* at high noon = app 10,000 FC. You are never getting anything near that indoors because of the ceiling and roof of the house cutting off that directly overhead sun. All you are getting is the slanting sun, of much less than 10,000FC. Cut in half by the window glass and screen. Cut in half again *for every foot away from the window*. At 5 feet from your south window you are giving it *100FC or less* by my fairly generous estimate of what your south window actually lets in. In St Louis, I can keep phals *in* a south window with no damage, just far enough from the pane for a shade to slide down. Start moving it closer to the window. The first day move it to about 2 feet from the window. Leave it there a day or two, feeling the leaves where the sun falls on them (if it does). If they are hot, it's too much light, move at least 6" further away. If barely warm or cool, move closer. Repeat above, moving it 6" closer to the window every couple of days til you are at the place where nearer the window = leaves are hot (or it's in the window). There's been a lot of discussion with newbies about how much light to give phals here lately. Mostly newbies wanting to argue for keeping it on an inside wall in a bookcase where it looks great, more experienced growers arguing for more light, LOTS more. Your phal will love you if you do a search for these threads. Use the search function and put in something lilike "phal + light". If you leave it where it is and it dies in 6 months, put it down to needing to learn things the hard way. Actually that's how most of us learned this lesson.

Here is a quote from the U.S. Dept. of Energy: "Installation Concrete block insulation is typically installed for new home construction or in homes undergoing major renovation. Since installation involves masonry skills, it's best to have a certified cement mason do it. When using masonry blocks for a foundation wall, filling the block cores with high-pressure foam works better than most poured-in insulations, like polystyrene beads or vermiculite or perlite pellets. Note that even though filling the block cavities and special block designs improve a block wall's thermal characteristics, it doesn't reduce heat movement very much when compared to insulation installed over the surface of the blocks either on the exterior or interior of the foundation walls. Field studies and computer simulations have shown that core-filling of any type offers little fuel savings since the majority of heat is conducted through the solid parts of the walls such as block webs and mortar joints." In Wisconsin a common construction method is to place a skin of foam insulation on the outside of the wall, whether it is made of concrete, concrete block, conventional or steel framing, then a layer of expanded metal lathing, held on with lath washers and fasteners that extend through to the base wall and finally a layer of stucco. The stucco layer is put on in three coats, a thick base coat, a thiner "primer" coat and the final color and texture coat. The joints between sheets of foam are sealed before covering them with the lathing by using drywall tape (the sticky fiberglass mesh variety) and conventional drywall compound. In order to maximize your ground contact, you should also extend the sheets of poly foam below grade at least 16-18 inches and then outward, away from the foundation at least 4 feet. This implies, of course, that your concrete cast foundation is at least 16-18 inches below the surface. See the document about insulated frost-protected foundations below. The joint between the vertical poly sheet and the horizontal one should be made and sealed with construction adhesive (the water-proof polyurethane type). Here is a link that might be useful: NAHB Frost Protected Foundations

Hey, Angelina, many thanks for the link to that article. I'm not familar with upswing doors, but I say to go for it if it's something that will work well for you. It looks like a good solution for higher shelves on upper cabinets, if you have the headroom to accommodate the swing. Side note re. the article: I had my carpenter lower my upper cabs to 16" above the countertop, not because I'm short but because it just felt far more efficient -- but I've been agonizing a bit because of the "rule" of 18". Your link just validated my decision, yeehah! I'm also heartily in agreement with the recommendation to put the dishwasher at least 12" off the floor, if not higher -- if there were any way to accomplish this I'd go for it. Huge backsaver. Thanks for a useful reference.

Hi Rob, Not much to add ... and hope that you're back at least part way out of your blue funk. Brother, retired farmer who lives 1600 miles way, has one son, only child, in a city 100 miles from here, a couple of small grand-daughters from son's second marriage, and comes to visit them a couple of times a year. He'd called to say he was to be in the neighbourhood, and we got together on Friday, I called son and he and his partner were there for lunch, as was brother and wife ... and a couple of favourite cousins were, as well. Brother spent a few years when he was very young with the family of our Mom's brother and their two children when she was ill, so he considers one as almost a sister: the son, a local farmer, died several years ago. The other cousin lives locally and I see her at church fairly often - she, who had voice training, has sung in the choir for 75 years. The brother and I went to deal with some complications over inheritance of cemetery plots that Dad owned ... and it looks as though resolution is to be easier than we figured. Then we sat and had a chat ... and he's rather worried about future viability of his son's marriage. We don't see one another often, but we've been close, over the years. Our brother died over forty years ago, when his kids were in their teens, and our ready-made sister that came with our stepmom lives near brother in Saskatchewan. It's a red letter day when we get together. ole joyful