We sealed our bonus room (over the 3-car garage) floor, knee walls, and ceiling with foam, and then insulated with cellulose. My daughter and grandson sleep there, and it's the warmest room on the 2nd floor. Be sure they seal EVERY crack between the garage ceiling and the MBR/bath floor with the foam. In my previous home (a condo), I had a long wall crack and some tie rod form holes that had popped leaks sealed with some kind of soft white goop--done by a company called Mr. Sponge. Their web site is mrsponge.com, but they are only in Michigan. They have some kind of proprietary sealer that they inject, but maybe if you look at the Fox News explanation posted on their web site, you can figure out what to ask someone in your area about for your leaks. 25 years later, when we had to take out the finished wall paneling to fix a different leak, these patches were still as dry as a bone, and the goop was just as resilient as the day it was put in. The walls are repaired from the INSIDE. Our present master bath is on 2 NW facing outside walls plus a garage wall, has a 9' ceiling, and is too cool for me--it's also at the far end of the heating run from the furnace. We just use a small space heater sometimes in Nov-Mar, and it is fine. However, with your "HUGE bathroom with very, very high cathedral ceilings", if a space heater doesn't solve the problem, you may have to make a choice between tearing up the floor tile and putting in radiant, or dropping the ceiling down quite a few feet. We put radiant in our lower level bathroom, since my mother was supposed to spend several months down there. As it turned out my daughter uses that bath to shower, but even though it can be cool during the winter (we're still in the process of adjusting our ducts throughout the house, since when we use the woodstove it throws off the house thermostat), she doesn't use the radiant since it takes a while to warm the floor, and she doesn't pre-set it. We got a Brookstone sleep therapy machine similar to the one linked below to block out the noise of our 3 very young grandchildren (early risers) who live with us during the week. Maybe something like this might help you adjust to the noise from your garage door opening under you. You don't have to spend this much--DH likes his gadgets! We chose a New Age sounding music from the 12 choices, and like that it goes all night. I can empathize with how tired and discouraged you are right now. We were owner-builders, so when we moved in, there were quite a few things that still needed to be finished, and we certainly had our share of unexpected things to be fixed as we went along. We've been in for over 2 years, and our list is getting shorter. Life is finally getting to be more enjoyable now that we're past our major hassles and most of the extra little jobs! The unexpectedness of your need for some major fixes, plus having to spend more money after saving for so long, when you thought you'd move in and love it must be a real downer. I'm sorry you're having to go through this. Part of the difficulty and discouraging part is not knowing how to fix everything. Good luck with it all--they are fixable problems, and I hope some of these suggestions will work for you. Anne Here is a link that might be useful: Brookstone sleep therapy machine

An older way was to put short dead ends above each fixture, often concealed i the wall. Instead of an elbow to exit the wall, a T was used and about 12 inches of pipe run vertically ad then capped. As long as the stub remains full of air it acts as a hammer arrestor. Wen the air is finally absorbed into the water they stop working, and then the whole system needs to be drained to restore the air to in the stubs. Modern hammer arrestors use a seal between the air and water. They are required at every 'fast acting' valve (DW, washing machine, and large bore electric type solenoid valves) and are often a good idea near single handle facets since theys can often be slammed off fast enough manually.

I always plant my garlic in the fall, usually October for me here in Virginia, though I've done it earlier. Of course, my garlic stays in the ground over the winter. Garlic just doesn't seem like something you can expect to plant in the spring and get really great heads by the time it dies back in early summer. At the same time, I often have heads or cloves missed at harvest time that I find newly sprouted at some time from fall to spring, and I gently dig these up and break them apart to space the individual plants 4 to 6 inches apart. I've gotten good heads of garlic from these divisions, though the absolute best are the fall planted cloves. So I would definitely dig and divide your sprouting heads into individual plants as early as possible when the soil can be worked. And realize that garlic is not usually a fall harvest kind of crop - they should be harvested when the tops die back when temperatures and day length cause the tops to die back.

This is typical behavior for a scaled-up coil. There could be, however, another cause. Do you have a good service company? Oil-fired boilers should be checked and cleaned annually, no question about it. I've only personally dealt with boilers that are, or would be over 50 years old at this point so I have to ask you some questions about how this is set up. Your hot water is supplied by an indirect tank heated by an third zone from the boiler, or is there an another coil in addition to the space heating coil? If the former, you should not have scale build-up on the coil. I an not saying it did not happen. It cold be caused by a leak leading to excessive water turnover in the boiler. That would be hard to miss but most of the damage may have been done before you moved in and then something fixed. If you have one coil and your DHW performance is poor, your space heat may be suffering as well. I don't think that I have to point out that if that is the case, you really need to get this fixed to avoid excessive oil outlays. (If you have one coil supplying hot water and heat with no heat exchanger somewhere, you have some big problems.) If you have an indirect tank, is there a temp gauge on it? What does it run when you are not stressing it as opposed to use? I suppose there could be something wrong with the tank so that you are filling at the top or drawing from the bottom. I don't know how they are built or how they may break. The coils/boilers that I am familiar with are not tricky at all to remove and clean with hydrochloric (muriatic) acid. You kinda hafta know a little about what you are doing so you don't overdo it and dissolve the metal. My parents went through a period between village water supply shift to harder well water from spring source and installation of a water softener to fix that. During that period, the coil was removed by (very good) service people and brought back with the annual service. My dad got tired of being without hot water for a half day and bought a stand-by coil. that they swapped out. He figured that it might wear out and need replacement eventually anyway so he might as well buy one "now" and have the convenience. Ah, I see now that you probably don't have an indirect since you wrote about that option in the future. I missed that.. Are you thinking about an electric "tankless" I don't think that is going to be your best option. If you have hard water, don't do it. it will be a more difficult task than keeping the boiler coil clear. Even if you don't have hard water, I don't think it is your best option. Are fuel oil , propane and electricity your only options? Just crunch the numbers to see which gives you the best outcome. If it is electricity, get an electric tank or figure out if a heat pump water heater makes sense. (If electricity is less expensive, it will be to heat the house as well so you might want to get an electric boiler if you like the HW baseboard.) If fuel oil is a less expensive source, and you have hard water, get the coil cleaned and install an indirect tank if you want a permanent fix. (Either that or install a water softener. My parents never regretted their decision. you might need to clean the coil every few years, but it will not be nearly as often.) You know, if you are in a temperate climate, and this is a hot-start boiler that makes your basement too warm in the summer, you might be better off turning it off and running an electric (HPWH?) tank in the summer. That is especially truer if the basement is humid. Go back to making hot water with the boiler in the winter if the investment in an indirect tank is not too much to recoup. The boiler is idle most of the time under those conditions and it costs a lot to keep it warm. You could consider having your plumber install a flat plate heat exchanger to heat water in your electric tank so you don't have to invest in the indirect and have that take up space in addition to that water heater..