Leava, I understand that you feel like you are leading the little lambs to slaughter, but on the other hand, if they are taught in the class just exactly how difficult the weather here can be (and will be), then they are going into gardening with their eyes wide open. I think that's a good thing because they'll have a better understanding of the challenges that lie ahead. Often, new gardeners think they'll rototill the soil, sow seeds and....then come back in a few months and harvest. Many of them underestimate the importance of proper soil preparation/soil amendment, irrigation, mulching and weeding. So, if they learn those things in the class, they'll start out their new gardening venture with a much better idea of what gardening actually involves and that ought to improve their chance of success. It is important that all newbie gardeners learn that the idea we have a "long growing season" here does not mean that they can grow everything they want any time between February and November. They need to learn that the long growing season has multiple smaller growing seasons contained within it. I find that newbies in their first year or two do not really grasp that most cool-season crops go into the ground only between mid-Feb and mid-March because later plantings will not mature before the heat gets bad. They also generally have no idea that they can grow another round of fall cool-season crops by planting them from July through September. I mean, really, who wants to plant anything in July through September in our heat? No one does. But if you do it, and you keep them irrigated, mulched and weeded, you'll get great harvests most years. Around here, I see a lot of new gardeners give up in July when it gets hot. To me, that heat is just the signal that it is time to start the fall garden. Proper variety selection is something they need to learn too, and they need to understand that tomato varieties that produce smaller fruit (anything from bite-sized tomatoes to 12-16 oz. tomatoes) will do better here than the varieties that produce 1 to 3-lb. tomatoes. The tomatoes that do best here are those with DTMs of 75 days or less. Those with DTMs of 80-90-100 days often do not set many fruit before the heat shuts them down. Someone needs to teach the newbies that bush beans give a heavy yield earlier than pole beans, and pole beans need to be planted as early as possible so they can produce before (a) the heat shuts them down, (b) the grasshoppers and blister beetles eat all their leaves, and (c) the spider mites attack any leaf left behind by the hoppers and blister beetles. Once again, though, fall beans can be planted in July or August and will produce great through October, into November, and sometimes even in December if covered up with row cover on freezing nights. They also need to understand that if they can keep their pole beans alive through the July and August heat and onslaught of pests, they'll get great fall production but, if they can't keep them alive, it is okay to sow new seeds for a fresh bunch of pole bean plants. If a hot summer threatens, the newbies need to understand they'll get much better production in June-August from okra, southern peas (purplehull pinkeyes, blackeyes, zipper, cream and lady peas, hot peppers and melons of all kinds, than from other veggies that don't tolerate the heat as well. Someone needs to teach the newbies how to deal with pests naturally and organically to the extent it is possible to do so, and they need to understand that sometimes the pests will win no matter what you do. More than anything else, they need to learn it all starts with the soil and that poorly prepared soil will not give them huge yields like they may get with well-amended, improved soil. They also should be taught how to use row covers, low tunnels, cold frames, etc. to extend the season both early and late. That can make a big difference in how well their gardens produce. Gardening is a wonderful "hobby" or "lifestyle" but the newbies need to be taught that, while they might not have great success in their very first year, they can expect that their harvests will get better year after year as they learn all the different ways to cope with the annual onslaught of weather disasters and pests and diseases. It is so easy for newbies to get discouraged and to give up. I feel like some of them give up too easily instead of using a tough year as a learning experience and moving forward to the next year with a lot of good experience under their belt and ideas about how the next year will be better. That's why we all keep gardening right? Because of the idea that things will be better next year. : ) If I had friends on food stamps who were counting on the garden to supplement their meals, I'd have them focus on foods that produce a lot of food for the space involved....potatoes, onions and corn do that, and so do bush beans, cabbage (it is hard to fail with cabbage), sweet potatoes and (most years) tomatoes. Sometimes squash produces a lot, but the newbies need to understand exactly how big of a threat squash bugs and squash vine borers can be. If they are not able to successfully battle the squash bugs and SVBs, they could get nothing from their squash plants. Cucumbers can be a great producer, but only if you successfully prevent diseases from getting them. I always plant County Fair because it is the only variety that doesn't get bacterial wilt at some point every year. Those are the kinds of tips that help newbies achieve success even in a hard year. Lettuce can produce very well, but must be planted extra early because it is going to bolt once the temperatures are in the 90s. Most newbies plant lettuce too late. Often, new gardeners are in love with the idea of growing their own pumpkins and they want to plant round orange ones that make great jack-o-lanterns (if the squash bugs and SVBs don't get them) but aren't so great for eating. Well, pumpkins take up a whole lot of ground for months before they produce a single edible squash. I'd encourage them to plant bush-type winter squash from the C. moschata family because squash vine borers rarely get them and those varieties can be highly productive. Will they be as cute as orange jack-o-lantern pumpkins? No, but they will be food that can be eaten. It is the same way with watermelons. Often newbies will choose the varieties that produce 20-30 lb. melons, but those varieties take up a whole lot of space, need lots and lots of water to produce big melons, and don't produce a lot of melons compared to the space used. It is smarter in our climate to plant the mini watermelons that only get between 6 and 10 lbs. or so, as they take up a lot less space and need less water and produce quite a few small melons per vine (although a good muskmelon (cantaloupe) will produce more melons per square foot than refrigerator-sized melons will. I think a gardening class is a great way for a newbie to get started, but they need to be taught in that class that gardening is a journey, and not a destination. They need to understand there will be lots of frustration, pain and misery along the way, but that they, as gardeners, will learn as they go and they'll get better at it the longer they do it. So often, nowadays, I feel like we live in a society where people expect almost instant gratification from the things they do, and gardening definitely is not an instant gratification process. It is long and involved (well, you could get almost instant gratification from growing radishes....but how many radishes will any one person eat??) and the successes are spread out along the whole timeline of the garden, as are the failures. Finally, new gardeners need to know how much to plant. A friend of ours once invited me over to see his brand new garden. He proudly showed us his one row of tomato plants and three rows of squash plants (among other things). If he had asked me before he planted, I wouldn't have suggested three rows of squash plants for exactly two people. Dawn

Hi oberon! I hope that you realize that part of my exasperation at this point was that Guardian showed us what was possible, and now we are just trying to achieve that goal. But on to your questions... Guardian was the supplier to Benor well before we entered the process. When we went looking for windows and found Benor, and when our architect realized that the Guardian Architectural Division was willing to participate (there are some personal relationships involved here that made this happen), we started to get a tremendous amount of involvement by a couple of their engineers. The Guardian folks were very helpful in explaining to me and my wife ALL the sources which would degrade both the VT and CRI, and then discussed all that they could do to reduce their impacts. One of the larger impacts on VT that could be mitigated was the interlayer index of refraction mismatch by supercritical choice of the laminate interlayer (including the batch number). They spent hours showing us more than two dozen samples, taught me the laser trick, and then explained why we would want to use their ultra-white glass with Saflex rather than some of the other PVB products available, and why the PET interlayer while it delivered better impact performance was not the right one for us. That decision alone they explained would improve our VT dramatically. They then introduced us to the Munsen Color chart as a way to assess color neutrality, and a myriad of other details that would appeal to the artist in my wife. As we went through this process, they kept plugging the various lite selections into a program ("Windows 5.2") that predicted the performance of the whole glass assembly. Here is where I received the real education. What appeared to be relatively small changes in the components of the glass assembly (such as using the the ultra-white glass with Saflex) were responsible for increasing the VT by 5% (which I have come to find out is HUGE!) The spacer that they suggested was a specialty, "two polymer, warm-edge" system that separated a dual pane glass system. The gap was was about 0.267" and filled with krypton. No window glass on our house was wider than 32" (based on the advice of Guardian engineers). After Guardian designed the complete glass assembly, Benor used that data to estimate "whole window" performance (including frames) and based on these data Benor suggested that they use a "fully foam insulated" vinyl sash and frame for our windows. After this good experience, I had been very disappointed speaking with nearly all of the "established" window brands. Since then however, we have found a couple of specialty window makers that appear to be willing to work with us. The glass samples that they have sent us for inspection appear to be quite good and I am hoping that we end up with a positive outcome. If anything, I think I am the product of "raised expectations" that were the result of a specialty window manufacturer who had tremendous pride in his work and a glass supplier who (for whatever reason) decided to show us the "bleeding edge" "art of the possible" for our house.

Yep, "lite" is the correct spelling/usage for a window glass pane. And yep, laminated glass does block 99% (or a little bit better) of UV light from entering your home thru the windows but keep in mind that UV blocking isnÂt the same as keeping heat out of your home; consider UV blocking to be a side benefit. In terms of heat transfer, there are two aspects to consider - U-value and Solar Heat Gain Coefficient or SHGC. In the environment that you are building, SHCG is more of a consideration than is U-value. In a nutshell, U-value is concerned with far infrared heat and SHGC is concerned with near infrared heat. Near, or shortwave, infrared is direct solar gain. This is what you feel when standing directly in a sunbeam. This is primarily what you need to stop from coming into your home in the Virgin Islands. Heat is transferred in three ways, conduction, radiation, and convection. Conduction is the transfer of heat energy thru a substance by atomic or molecular interactions - or, more simply put - when you touch the aluminum handle of a frying pan on the stove and the handle is hot to the touch, then you are experiencing conductive heat transfer. Convection is transfer of heat energy thru mass motion of a fluid (yes, air is a fluid) resulting from the movement of the heated fluid from the source of the heat. An example is warm air rising and displacing cooler air which then falls and warms up and then rises replacingÂetc. Radiation is heat transfer by the emission of electromagnetic waves which carry energy away from the emitting object. In other words, when you stand in direct sunlight and you become warm, you are being warmed by radiation. About 2/3's of the heat energy that enters thru your windows does so as radiation. The remaining 1/3 is conduction. By limiting direct radiant solar gain (SHGC) you will be affecting the significant portion of unwanted heat from entering your home. Your current Schuco windows with dual pane and LowE and argon fill are designed to limit heat transfer including radiant (LowE coating), conductive (air space with argon fill), near infrared (LowE coating), and far infrared (LowE and airspace with argon fill). Or, more simply, your current windows are designed to perform both winter and summer. They keep heat out and they keep heat in  depending on the season and the requirement. In your new environment keeping heat out is what really matters  not so much keeping it in. As you may have already noticed, it is the LowE coating that limits the direct solar gain that will be warming the inside of your home when the windows are closed. And to finally address your question directly, if you were to opt for a single laminated lite, rather than the IG units of your current windows, is it possible to get the same level of performance that you get with the IG windows? Yes and noÂyou wonÂt get quite the same overall performance with a single laminated lite that you do with an IG because with a single laminated lite you donÂt get the U-value advantage that you get with the IG  but as mentioned, you probably donÂt need it in the Virgin Islands. You can get some very nice SHGC numbers though when using a single laminated lite with the coating laminated to the interior of the laminated "sandwich". SHGC numbers that are very close to those that you can get with a dual pane IG. A number of the laminated glass manufacturers laminate glass with softcoat LowE between the lites. Also, there are some window manufacturers who offer tinted or reflective hardcoat LowE coatings that would be on the exterior of the glass. The primary positive of the exterior hardcoat is that it actually blocks a bit more solar gain that the internalized softcoat. The negative is that being highly reflective  and often tinted  in some cases it can look like you have colored mirrors in your windows. You can often see this mirrored effect in high-rise buildings that have reflective coatings. The softcoat LowE will be much more color neutral  even unnoticeable, depending on the coating  but the SHGC may be a bit less than the exterior hardcoat performance. There are two primary products available in laminated glass  Polyvinyl Butyral or PVB, and Sentry Glass Plus or SGP. Another little interesting fact concerning your question is that the largest manufacturer of residential LowE coatings in the world (who also happens to have a laminating division), does not offer a PVB laminate with an internal LowE coating. They do laminate a LowE coating inside with SGP interlayer though - and which is readily available in a monolithic version from several window manufacturers. What is interesting is that LowE coatings tend to corrode when exposed to moisture. PVB is very hygroscopic in the right environment whereas SGP doesnÂt seem to absorb moisture nearly as much  so one has to wonder if there is concern (with at least one company) that placing a LowE coating between against a PVB interlayer could eventually be a problem? While they are apparently happy using SGP against their LowE coatings? Something to consider... Okay, this is really long (typical), but I have attempted to offer a bit of background rather than a simple "yes/no" so that when you are chatting with window / contractor / designer folks you will have a better understanding of how these things work. Please feel free to ask more questions if you have some (and after this I suspect that you will)Â

Talk about putting things up and forgetting where.....the lady I fostered the pups for gave me a huge bottle of pyrantel, a wormer, and it was in the front seat of my truck forever, and I finally put it up somewhere. Now I need it and I have looked everywhere I can possibly think of and I haven't found it yet. One time I found $900 in the glove compartment of my car. I had put it there and forgot it about it. This was years ago when obviously my husband made a lot more money than he does now. We went on vacation and I think I put it in there in case something happened and we needed the extra money. I got a pair of shorts at a thrift shop and the first time I wore them, put my hands in the pockets and found two twenty dollar bills folded together in one of them. I have also found kittens in a dumpster. Raised them on a bottle. Right now I am raising 3 baby squirrels. Someone found them in the attic of an old house they were tearing down. I don't usually raise squirrels, but the person who usually does, "retired". Actually, her husband retired and they want to travel, and so she has quit rehabbing. There is someone I could have given them to, but they aren't good at raising baby animals. I am feeding them every 4 hours and I am worn out from not getting any uninterrupted sleep. I go to sleep easily and wake up fast, but after being up and moving around for 30 to 45 minutes, I have a harder time going back to sleep again.