landa_mac - your posts on this forum are generally informative and well reasoned. I honestly have learned a lot from them. In this case I think you are missing my point. Pentair has created a CLOSED, PROPRIETARY automation system for the pool which is DIFFICULT to interface with the rest of the systems in the home. On estates such as the one we are building, this prevents integrating for example, water and music systems in any meaningful way. Yes, you can buy or get for free products from Pentair which let you work from an iPhone or a proprietary panel or PDA, but you can't create a button to kick on the "1812 Overture", turn down the inside lights, start the waterfall and light the fire pit. - Without a published protocol spec the RS-232 or RS-485 interfaces are problematic for integration. - The Indoor Control Panel and the Screenlogic applications DO NOT SUPPORT any way to provide different levels of control for the "master" homeowner, wife & kids and guests or renters - The iPhone Application and the ScreenLogic remote application user interfaces cannot be simplified for the homeowner that just wants a minimal amount of control (Spa On/Off). The desires of homeowners are varied and all over the map. No one company or product is going to do everything. But, all of these objections could be overcome very simply by Pentair creating an open, web-based API which developers could integrate with. Pentair could maintain the safety and security of the system and would not need to be in the HA business at all. There are plenty of qualified people that can take on the custom work.

I think Houzz is located just 20 minutes up the Peninsula from me in Palo Alto. If they have their customer service locally, that would be the Pacific Time zone. As for the name thing, almost EVERYONE got that message about their name already being taken. Somehow I think there is some kind of doubling effect that goes on when you register with GW. I was absolutely not going to give up my online name so I wrote to customer service and insisted that I am the real, original, one-and-only Rosefolly, and they gave me back my name. I think the same kind of thing is going on with many GW users. I believe that if it is important to you (it was to me) and if you persist, you can get your name back. Rosefolly

I loved gardenweb, but I will so not be returning to this walmartization of yet another good community interaction. I hope gardenweb's owners made a bundle because they maintained an excellent source of intercommunication between garden enthusiasts for a long time; but the bigger fish will always eat the smaller I suppose. The question is, who or what will be the biggest fish and simply devour us all? BTW, houzz is extremely user unfriendly, no doubt slapped together by some billionaire with a "bright idea," customers and clients be damned. What's new?

Sue, I did receive your private message and just responded. You are right on. I can not read the message in my email because with HOUZZ it is sent as a "private message". My private email only tells me that somone has sent me a HOUZZ message, thus I have to sign in to HOUZZ to read it .........On GW, we were sending an "email", thus I could read the message in my email.. Hello o o o o Annie, is anybody home???? This is what I say when something is so obvious and I don't figure it out....LOL!!! Email vs private message....kind of basic!!!! Thanks for being an awesome rbb...... Annie