Hey Steve, You really should ask this in the Fruit and Orchards Forum. Many of those people have lots of specific experience with these issues. It's their specialty. Here, I think your more likely to find readers/posters with different interests and maybe very little if any actual experience growing persimmons. I will still add my two cents. I frequent both forums and know a little about persimmons. The "stacking" scheme you proposed is likely to have disadvantages for many reasons. I can think of one option that you could consider. I'm not really sure how good of an idea it is, but I'll describe it anyway. Some of the regulars in the Fruit and Orchards Forum would likely be much better at evaluating this idea than I am. You might be able to train the tree in an open vase form with four scaffolds. You could graft one variety to each scaffold base. Essentially, you'd have one base with four main branches (scaffolds). I've never tried this with a persimmon, but it might work. I also think planting them 15' apart would be OK. In nature, there are many persimmons growing 15' or less apart. If that's all the room you have, that is actually what I would recommend doing. I don't think you will have to worry about pruning them any more than normal because they are planted close together. They will shade each other out and compete for available light just like they would if they were growing wild.

thanks Bill! If, however, our goal is to avoid problems (mold, mildew, water damage) 10 - 15 yrs down the line, should we change out the tub surround (yes, I'm going to presume you'll say) AND the floor? Or, can we seal the grout and call it a day on the floor? Many many years ago, I remember seeing a mushroom grow up between the wall and the floor, in a bathroom, of a place that I was living in. Guess that there was a wee bit of water leaking out of the shower!

Hey guys. I was having the same problem last week. My Trane heatpump condenser fan motor failed. I went out and got a Dayton motor from WW Granger. It was a 4 wire motor and my orig. GE motor was three wire. so I installed it by taping off the brown wire with white stripe and hooking up the other three. (This is a commonly used method of using a four wire in a thee wire pump.) Also replaced the split capacitor with a new one. After the fan ran for 15~20 minutes it would overheat and shut down. Like you I ran the water hose over the unit to let it drip and it would run forever... I checked all the voltages, etc. and voltage drop accross the contactor and everything was fine. The fan started fine but still overheated. FINALLY, I installed a seperate fan capacitor, 5 ufarrid @ 370v, on the advice of a tech support guy at Granger. VIOLLA! Dont ask me why but now the fan runs at about 35 deg.C in the air stream and stays there. If anyone has a theory about why this worked please let me know. If you want a wiring diagram on how this worked email me @kidshows@gmail.com and Ill scan it into a pdf for you. You have to make a jumper wire. (I used the wire off my old GE motor and just added another spade connector to match the capacitor). Hope this helps you out. Im in Dallas and its already close to 100 deg. and the unit is running full bore with the best cold air I had in months. God Bless and take care. Mark

I just got back from the pool store... CYA is now 16. It has been 5 full days now. The pool store says that they have been experiencing this phenomena for about a year now. The inside theory, according to him, is that all CYA is manafactured in China, and that the quality control is poor. So for the past year, they have been seeing hit and miss as far as the CYA actually bringing up levels. He says that they have tried 3 brands, and all are the same. The brand I used was REGAL. I will give it one more day, and then I will add more of a different brand from a different store. Have any of you insiders heard of this rumor?