Waterbug guy, First I will talk a little bit about concrete in water. You say it is a myth that concrete in water can kill fish and raise the PH. When concrete first sets up the surface PH is 12.0. Which is the same PH as a drain cleaner called "draino". As it is exposed to the CO2 in the air the PH goes down. But water is a very good leaching agent and so water will continue to try and get the chemicals out of the concrete. So will the PH in the water be raised? If the water has normal PH of 6.5 to 8.5 the answer is yes. The real question should be "how much will it raise it"? That question isn't easily answered as there are a lot of variables. Just to list some the age of the concrete, the condition of the concrete, is the water flowing over the concrete, the natural PH of the water, is the water being changed, and the volume of the water versus the contact area of the concrete. In some cases the rise might be so low as to make it very difficult to measure. But in other cases it can and does raise the PH to 9 to 9.5. At these levels it can and does kill fish. If I remember correctly you have stated that you are a pond contractor. If you are I hope you having started using roofing liner in the ponds that you build. Most of the time a person on this forum is never going to have a problem with roofing liner. Can there be a problem with roofing liner? This should be the question. The answer is yes. The chances that there could be a problem is very low. The largest pond product manufacturer in the US sent out a letter to all their customers a number of years ago. This letter said that all their liner in the future would be tested to be fish safe as they got a batch in that was not. In other words they were selling roofing liner as pond liner. This company had been selling a lot of liner for 10 years before this problem. If it had happen today with the wide use of the internet I would have think that some lawyer would have gotten this information and started a class action lawsuit against them and they would be out of business. The lawyer could easily have sued them not only for the cost of the liner that they had sold but for the cost to replace all those liners in the ponds built with them going back to the first time they sold this liner. The largest liner manufacturer in this country has told me that almost never would you ever have a problem with roofing liner but you might. I think that as a contractor you can't take that chance. If you were unlucky and did have a problem and were sued over that problem the lawyer handling the case would find out that they would sue for every customer that you have that has this liner. In other words you would be out of business. So is roofing liner toxic? No most of the time. But there is a small chance that there maybe a problem. I have only talked about 2 of the 8 things that you listed. I could easily talk about many of the other things listed but my point is this. You listed these things as black and white but they are not black and white. The only thing that is black and white about ponds is that all aquatic life will die. Mike

You did say that you didn't know her well and that she was new to the choir. It seems to me like maybe she likes her new acquaintances and would like to get to know you better. It's not necessary to give a gift every time. You could attend the wedding, take a few minutes to greet her, welcome her to married life, the church, the choir and invite her to call on you in the future when she and her new husband are settled. Back in the good old days when calling cards were the norm, it was also considered an honor for a young bride to be invited to call on an "established matron" after her marriage. It was a matter of being accepted in local society. Not necessarily high society, but older folks were prepared to provide young marrieds with their wisdom and an occasional small gift. Young married women who eschewed the invitation were rarely if ever invited again. Now since this is 2009, and the young bride probably hasn't been raised to recognize the signs of graceful society, she might be forgivven if she doesn't come around. But I think that through time, she may well come to recognize you as a wonderful person, and since you go to the same church you may still have opportunities to share the wisdom of your experience with her.

I think nowadays washers are pretty much designed to last 5 years. The extended warranty people won't sell a warranty that lasts longer than 5 years from purchase date, and they know their business. They've no doubt got it all graphed out and five years is where the average expenses involved in keeping machines going starts to climb steeply. Right now I'm waiting on delivery of a Bosch frontloader. Old top loader machine is six years old, the five year warranty has expired. Getting someone to look at it would cost AU$110 before they even dropped their tool kit down next to the machine. I could open it up myself and tinker with it, but I've a fair idea what is going wrong and it would need a moderately priced and somewhat fiddly to install new part and since I'm not terribly good at such things there's a chance I'd balls it up so bad as to make it not repairable at all. A large machine is also difficult to handle when doing repairs, and both my partner and I have had back injuries in the past. And quite frankly, the old machine was OK but it had it's problems. New machine cost AU$745 delivered. I get AU$200 of that back from the city because they run a rebate scheme for buying high efficiency water using appliances. In every year of use I'll probably save about AU$100 on my water bills. And it's a nicer machine in general, with a better choice of cycles. And I get to buy a five year extended warranty for it for just AU$99, thus securing myself from most unexpected expenses associated with the machine, an option I no longer had for the old machine. What happens with the old machine? It gets taken away by the delivery guys and delivered to an appliance reconditioning center that will look at whether it can be repaired and resold economically. Since this occurs at their timetable rather than as a call out, they can do this rather cheaply. Maybe it gets fixed up, maybe it gets broken down for parts to fix other washers, maybe they pull all the stuff that can be sold as scrap out of it and junk the rest. I would prefer that the expected lifespan of a major appliance was ten years or more, but that's just not how things are any more.

Rather than get gouged by the only company around that does the new technology maybe the old fashioned way is a more cost effective choice. I'm not a plumber, don't play one on TV, and didn't stay at a Holiday Inn last night, but it seems to me that you can get an awful lot done with a backhoe and a couple plumbers and helpers for a whole lot less than $25k. It cost me $4k to replace a septic tank and add a second 400 ft leach field and included the cost of the tank. That seems a lot more work than replacing a 50 ft sewer line and it took two days and included sitting around and waiting for two inspections. This post was edited by justalurker on Wed, Jul 16, 14 at 16:30