Hi again, I suppose rainfall here might make a huge difference. We have had plenty of natural hosing-down in the form of rains most of the year. Where our roses do get some mildew, we hose them down and that has always taken care of mildew nicely. But I don't recall any mildew this year on the roses located where the Duchesse de Brabant is, so Duchesse hasn't had that treatment. A rose as old as Duchesse de Brabant might also also have some different cultivars around. As nearly as I can recall, our Duchesse came from Chamblee's. We had much better than average luck with three Gruss An Aachens that came from Chamblee's too. That is, until the Rose Rosette Disease got them. As far as mildew goes, I doubt that having an all-organic yard made that particular problem vanish, so I don't know why we haven't had a problem in that particular rose bed with mildew. I do think a no-chemicals yard might correlate with less of a fungal problem in the long run, though. Anyway, for whatever reason, our Duchesse de Brabant is EASY to have good success with. Our Duchesse apparently loves the heat. It's in a spot where the ground is a very large berm that we created a long time ago from ideal mixed-up organically rich part-clay dirt all the way down to a sloping ground level of fertile woods dirt topsoil on clay. So the rose roots would have an easy time of it to go down about 3 or 4 feet to have a constant supply of moisture except in the very worst of drought conditions. I kind of think also that in weather that's as hot as we had this summer, the bit of extra shade for our Duchesse might have held some advantages too. Anyway, we didn't quite have a really bad drought here this summer. For whatever reason, Duchesse de Brabant is the easiest to grow healthy and prolific rose that we have. Ducher is healthy and blooms pretty well too, but isn't quite so prolific in the intense heat as Duchesse de Brabant has been. And the blooms aren't as pretty or fragrant as Duchesse either. Spice was prolific in the spring, but not once the heat really hit hard. It's plenty healthy though, and it sits in more shade than Duchesse de Brabant. Thanks to all who commented. I just was feeling so grateful for the good luck with Duchesse de Brabant I couldn't help but recommend this rose to others, at least to others with similar conditions to NC. Best wishes, Mary

Fiberglass at the rims is a particularly poor choice in the South, where the pressure drive (warm to cold) is predominantly from the exterior to the interior. Judging best practice by looking at what other builders are doing is not the best way to improve the details on your own home. Liquid water from leaking exterior sheathing will leak around and through foam boards and sprayed foam. But unlike fiberglass insulation, the foam board and spray foam are not moisture sensitive and will not lose R value or provide a home for mould growth. Here is a link that might be useful: Understanding Basements--BSD-103

As far as water hardness, it depends where in the Bay area you live. If you are in San Francisco or south til about Palo Alto, your water mainly comes from Hetch Hetchy and is pretty pure and soft. If you're just south of there like me or beyond including San Jose and Silicon Valley, much of your water can come from groundwater sources and is pretty hard. I just put in a water softener last week - they seem uncommon for this area even though water can be fairly hard, but I learned about them visiting my parents in Las Vegas where the water is very hard. With zero hardness I may even try doing without rinse aid altogether. Our friends were admiring one family's brand new Miele from a just-completed kitchen remodel. One couple with a Bosch weren't happy with the (lack of) condensing drying on their plastics, and admired that the new Miele pops open the door automatically to help with the air drying. So amongst our friends, two happy Miele owners and one somewhat dissatisfied Bosch owner. For ourselves, unfortunately we had a top-end Maytag carried over from before our own remodel - it is a fairly mediocre performer but just refuses to die (even when it was left in the yard for a year during the remodel). I do hope it does die prematurely, admittedly it mostly works OK as long as I clean out the holes in the spray arms from accumulated gunk about once a year.

I wrote a lot a long time ago and have learned a lot since then. We did three projects with two contractors. All were done to high standards. The first contractor, the one I thought I could trust to do cost plus, ended up being a mess. He wasn't dishonest, just incompetent as a GC. His estimates were almost worthless. He didn't really care if his subs ended up spending more because it just got passed on to me. His scheduling was horrendous so there were too many periods of time where nothing was happening. He always had excuses for why things were late/over estimate. I really don't think he knew how much things were going to cost. In the end, he was no less expensive than the other high priced contractors we talked to, though he appeared to be at first. Hard to say if he was more expensive. And like I said, the quality of work was very high: he did have good subs, so quality didn't suffer. (And his custom cabinet maker walks on water: the nicest guy and such great work. We use him for lots of stuff.) So we went with another contractor for the second project (an extensive cottage remodel) and a finished workshop. We did another extensive search. Both of these projects were fixed price and were fairly expensive. The cottage contract ended up having lots of change orders: but that was because the cottage was a mess. We expected a lot of issues and we got them. It really wasn't possible to know what we would find when we started and the contractor made that clear. When we called references on him, one person, maybe a realtor?, said "I can't believe I'm actually recommending a contractor ..." The second and third projects were fixed price but it wasn't just given as a lump sum: he gave us a breakdown for cost for every division (though that doesn't break out labor/materials). And he added profit and overhead at 25%. The biggest thing about him was there was never an excuse. If something was wrong, it was always "we'll fix it." We mostly dealt with a super (which we also really like) but dealt with him directly on stickier issues. So the big thing for us is finding someone we trust. We've been lucky to find that with a landscape contractor, too: same attitude: "we'll fix it." Sometimes there are issues of "has to be this way" but always trying to achieve what we can and always fixing anything that goes awry. We do smaller cost plus jobs with them on an ongoing basis so we've done both fixed and cost plus. Trusting is not just about the way the work gets done: it's also about pricing. We trust that he's charging market rates and not trying to take advantage of us. We ask about costs for projects now but it's more to see if we can afford it than it is to price shop. (With the cabinet maker, we don't even ask ahead any more ... we totally trust him and have no comparable sources anyway.) We feel really fortunate to have found folks that we have such a good relationship with.