I saw your other post that contained your plan, and you've got it all down. You know exactly what needs to be done and you're prepared to do it. You live in a climate where KBG can do very well (New England, i think I saw). You've already purchased the seed, and you've lined up all the equipment. I think it'll turn out just great. Sure, you might want to overseed next year, but that's probably the worst possiblity. Most lawns take 2-3 seasons to really establish themselves anyway. You've done your homework, you know what needs to be done, and you're prepared to do it. Go for it and don't look back. This time next year, you'll look back and have a good laugh at yourself. Cheers!

Let's get away from squash for a minute and back on focus. I started my farm, and have run it for 20 years, and am starting another one now, to sell to restaurants. Only. What does that mean? 1) Know your market. I sell to high-end restaurants. There are 17 Mobil 5-star restaurants in the entire country. 3 of them have served my vegetables. They buy their lamb from 3 farms, lobster from 2 vendors, cheese from farms whose names they know and who have been written about in the New York Times. If you don't read Food Arts or Saveur, you aren't competing in that market, but any good chef in even the smallest city is reading those magazines, and so by definition that is who you are competing with. Delicata squash was 10 years ago. 2) Good restaurants don't care about price. It all goes on the menu. If a person is spending $150 for dinner, per person, it really doesn't make that much difference if your baby green beans are 50 cents a pound more than Farmer Browns', what makes a difference is that they are tastier, smaller, better color, fresher, crisper. Chefs may not know what it takes to grow great produce (many do), but most know what great produce is. In the main, it is the growers who don't understand what makes restaurant-quality produce, and that is why they don't make those sales. Chefs and farmers work on opposite ends of the clock. Good farmers are typically getting up when good chefs are going to bed. When either of them judges the other based on that timetable, both suffer. No chef worth the title is done before the last diner leaves - typically, the most sophisticated diners - those who know what good produce is - come in for dinner after 8:30 pm and leave after midnight - and spend $130 per person or more for that privilege. A good chef will not only be there to say "thank you" and "good night" to them, but will have shucked their heirloom peas and explained the importance of serving Gilfeather turnips. A grower who wants to market to restaurants has to understand this. 4) there are restaurants and there are restaurants. If all you do is grow one thing, you sell wholesale to a chain. If you grow lots of things, you sell, ideally, a few excellent things to a very few excellent restaurants. Otherwise, you spend 3 days a week driving around to many places trying to sell the same damn thing everyone else is trying to sell. If all of your produce is generated by hyperbole from seed catalogs, you're already a year behind - if you are reading food blogs and European gastronomical journals, you might get a jump on the competition. If you are talking to Melissa Kelly or Dan Brown, you might be actually setting trends for the growers who will be reading about you next year - which could be three years too late. This is the age of the internet, and the market for edible flowers in Iowa is only a precursor to the purple Rosemary blossom foam that is selling on Telegraph hill. If you're reading the seed catalogs to decide what to sell, your market is the people who watch the food network, not the chefs who are on it. 6) The restaurants that you want to sell to are the ones that are busy. This economy has meant a major shake-down for the restaurant industry - there are three sectors that are doing well - chains - grow a lot of the same thing. it must be good, consistent, and constant. it doesn't have to be great. the money won't be either good restaurants - grow excellent produce, be reliable and communicate constantly, expect excellence from yourself to not always be affordable, but have a steady income 3 excellent restaurants - arrive at 2:17 with 7.4 kilos of blanched European celery and 13.2 kilos of haricot verts, with stems attached. If you have sea-kale early in the season, or local green-house ripened raspberries in February, after cognac with the chef go directly to the bank to make your deposit... once every 5 weeks. 5) No chef wants to taste your tomatoes at 11 AM. But if you have blue radishes at midnight you might have a good conversation. Don't expect to get an exclusive arrangement if you don't have a good understanding of what they want - don't try to sell arugula when they want agretti, or Charentaise carrots when Nantes are in favor. Selling to restaurants means volume - the 10 pounds of garlic per week you read about earlier - or quality - the best tasting, hardest to find, most beautiful produce they can get. There is really no point in growing onions or carrots or potatoes or corn for restaurants unless you grow hundreds of acres or a half acre of endangered varieties - some huge conglomerate in Iowa (or Argentina or China) can do the bulk stuff cheaper and maybe even better. If you want to sell to restaurants, you have to make a choice about what you want to grow, and how, and you have to have the market to support it. I can sell my produce in Maine in July and August, but I can sell it in Philadelphia year-round, because the winter market in Philly can afford what I grow, and will gladly pay for it, but the Maine market will not - can not. every restaurant market has these same limitations. 6) Most farmers - hell, most people - don't have the budget to afford to pay me what I expect for my produce. But most restaurants have 36% of their clientele coming in for a special occasion, so on any given night it is possible that I can sell my peas (or potatoes or parsnips or persimmons) to someone who will have the chance to taste such perfect produce professionally prepared and proudly presented more than once or twice year - at best - so it better be memorable. That is why they come back, to spend $130 per person for dinner. That is the kind of produce you need to be marketing. Nobody who knows good food is going to drive a half hour to some annoying "dining room" to have a snooty hostess and a dismissive waiter sell them week-old iceberg from California, if they can drive ten minutes more for winter spinach from some teenage server who really believes in biodynamics. You have to be the guy who grows the spinach, and it has to be delicious, and fresh, and clean. That's how you sell to restaurants.

EVen in new construction, this isn't going to be exactly an inexpensive option. You have to plan the whole system for "worst case scenario" rather than the more common everyday usage. A tankless water heater that only supplies one or two of your MB shower features while the tanked heater supplies the others might be the best way to go to give you your once a week indulgence. However, it won't be an inexpensive indulgence. A tankless able to supply enough heat rise to run 2 shower features at once will run you around $1200-$2000. It will need to have it's own separate supply line for the gas it will consume. As Antss said, you're talking 199BTU+. And although a gas tankless unit is smaller than a conventional tank unit and can conceivable be located in a master closet location close to the master bath, there are still some pricy requirements about their venting needs that need to be considered. THe double wall stainless vent pipe isn't cheap, and if you have a long way to go to penetrate the roof, then you may have just incurred another 1K of expense for the project. And there's the additional labor for the install, probably another $500-1K, depending on complexity. If your home doesn't have natural gas available, then electric on demand units are also available, but your home's electrical requirements just doubled, and you have to factor in a much larger service drop from the pole in the beginning as well as a larger service panel installed. Only your utility company and electrician can tell you how much that will add to your expense. The biggest bonus to electrical is that they do not require venting, and thus are easier to place in the home. However, they really do not save you but about 1-3% over a standard tanked electric heater, so it will be difficult to recoup the much higher initial up front costs without being in the home for 30 years. A better choice for someone who has an electrical only home would simply be an additional 80 gallon tank dedicated feeding those 2 extra features that you only turn on on Friday night and then turn off on Saturday after your shower. An 80 gallon tank with a 9 year warranty would run you around $800 here, plus the extra pipe needed to do the runs, you might only be looking at an additional 1K in systems materials to have your shower---PLUS the cost of the controls and the trims and valves for those features. You can figure out the additional operating costs of running your once a week shower from your utility rates and water consumption rates of the features you are considering. Other considerations to having such a shower would be the ventilation needed to ensure that the additional moisture was correctly removed from the home. With a vent fan needing to run for such a long period due to the long shower times, a cold climate bath might need an ERV unit attached to keep from exhausting so much conditioned air to the exterior. ON the whole, you're talking about adding around 5K extra to your project for a once a week indulgence. NOt a lot of money up front, and as I said, you'd need to look at the utility costs to be able to determine operating costs. But once a week shouldn't be onerous unless you live in a water restricted environment where water is expensive or tightly regulated. Unfortunately, more and more of "regular" America are encountering water restrictions. Much of the South was under water restrictions a couple of years ago and Lake Lanier outside Atlanta was almost dry. Check into your municipalites water sources and the possibiltiy of them encountering issues during drought times if you want to really be clear of any ecological impact of your decision. But, the good thing about putting just the "feature sprays" on a separate supply is that you don't have to use them during water restrictions if your area encounters them. Your everyday shower heads are the ones tied to your home's main water heating supply, and those can be "ultra low flow" heads if need be.

I'm baaaackkk! My contractor responded to my question to him about why the heat pump quote was so much higher than the non-heat pump quote...He didn't really answer it, but he has revised it to include the Infinity furnace (variable I think) along with the Infinity heat pump-a/c. My total payment after rebates is about 13,500. This includes the system below, 50 gal powervent hwh, 950 sq feet of r-19 blown in fiberglass and air sealing gaps in attic and as needed elsewhere. I have no idea what a reasonable price for this Infinity system is. I know the hwh and insulation are a little high, but not crazy. Any ideas what this hvac alone should cost? He doesn't list Infinity control but maybe that's an oversight as one of the units (a/c?) seems to require it. I would ask for it to be included in the price. This is the same price as he originally gave me for the 59TP5 furnce..the only diff is the furnace, is it much more in cost? � Remove and dispose of existing furnace, coil, line set, and plenum located in basement � Clean duct system. � Install new 2-stage, 100,000 BTU Carrier 96% gas furnace. (Model 59TN6A0100E2120) � Install new 4-ton Carrier Infinity 16, 2-stage heat pump condenser on legs. (Puron) (Model (25HNB636B) � Install new matching Carrier evaporator coil. (CNPVP4821A) � Install new properly sized disconnect/ whip. � Install new media cabinet and filter. (MERV 10) � Install new Carrier Edge programmable thermostat control. � Install new plenum and duct adaptation to existing supply and return duct. � Install new copper line set to connect units between indoor and outdoor equipment. � Install new condensation removal system terminating to exterior. � Connect to existing intake and exhaust piping to exterior. � Includes Carrier Limited Lifetime warranty on heat exchanger. � Includes Carrier Limited 10-year warranty on heat exchanger. � Includes Carrier Limited 10-year parts warranty and 10-year labor warranty. � Includes 1-year maintenance agreement. (Fall 2012 and Spring 2013) � All UCC required permit fees included Of course I do know that if my unit dies I could replace it with something for around 8-9k...but don't know how much Infinity would cost or if it's worth it. Also, He wrote his in the email, "This project will save over 27% of Total usage but I used 25% reduction over the course of one year. Using your utility bills from 5/11 to 4/12 you spent approx. $2,397.00 on electric and $1,040.00 on gas. (Keep in mind this was one of the warmest winters on record. From 4/11 to 5/10 you spent $1,375.00 on gas). Taking theses costs and deducting the 25%, we have an average monthly savings of $21.66 on gas and $49.93 on electric which equals to a total average monthly savings of $71.59. Remove that cost from the $83.33 loan payment you have $16.74 per month payment which equates to paying back $2,008.80 on a $10,000.00 loan." BUT, isn't part of my electric my fridge, computers and tv??? Also, I doubt the people who paid 8k got a 10yr pt/labor warranty...which does have some value.