Ok everyone....I have one packet of Spinach Tyee Hybrid to give away as a bonus. Please let me know asap if you'd like this seed. Folks, at this point..please consider requests for bonus seeds locked in as I have already stuffed the envelopes with the miscellaneous veggie bonus seeds that have were gifted and posted updates in all the forums. Also, I have been gradually stuffing envelopes with items from wish lists, so please consider your wish lists locked down at this point as well. Thanks

When DH & I were first married he was working 90 hours a week. The store itself was open Monday through Saturday and four evenings, 10-9. The other hours he was doing repairs and/or commisions. There were customers who complained about those hours. After his first angiogram, his daughters & I reduced his hours and eventually the store hours. I did a time study and found which hours and days were 'slow'. The one thing I tell anybody who runs a small store is to scheduale time for yourself. You can't please all the customers and if you burn yourself out it's just counter productive. I've noticed as we travel that the hours vary a bit by local. Usually the hours correspond to when the majority of people are able to spend money. Tourist 'trap' areas have wonderful hours during tourist season - 7 days with long hours. By the end of the season the staff is tired. I'm a morning person - up at sunrise. By the time the stores open I've done a days work if I so choose and going out is a break.

I am not an 18 year veteran of the solar attic however I had a PCS3 from 2002 till last year. I have owned a Solar Attic system. I purchased it from solar Attic directly around 2002 I owned rental property so I had the advantage of having the maintenance people to assist me in the Installation. I talked directly with the engineer/owner/designer of the system. He was and has been very helpful over the years. As a matter of fact I emailed with him just a few day ago. OUR INSTALLATION We build a pan 4 inches deep and 6 inches larger than the PCS3 system all the way around. We equipped it with a 2 inch drain which we eventually put a cut off on in that we had a float switch system cutoff that was in parallel with the emergency cut off in side the PCS3. The reason we put a cut off and an additional emergency float switch was that the longer I thought about it having the system pump 25000 gallons of water into the catch pan with a two inch drain would not be able to remove water fast enough than it would be better to just have the system shut down so the issue could be corrected. We mounted the unit about 5 feet off of the attic decking to get it as high and in the hottest area as possible. That installation we did with rigid 2" pvc We had 2 90 degree elbows and a total of 5 joints that got the water out of the attic. In the beginning I had some of the same concerns that have been brought up here about a possible leak however considering the fact that almost all of the water pipes in this house are PVC as are 99% of all of the water pipes in all of the houses built in america are PVC and the fact that the water pressure in the solar attic system is as I understand it less than the pressure that your home water system has a leak is not very likely. OK, so here we go. We had to pump the water up 2 stories. In that this was a close loop system with strategic check valves our concern for the 1.5 HP (up rated) pump being able to move the water was quickly retired as soon as we started the system. No problem. Great flow. The quality of the product was good. The unit was well designed, thought out and put together. The only moving part on the system was a GE electric motor that could be manually adjusted from low to medium to high speed. This would change the flow of the air over the heat exchanger. I came set on medium an after 5 years of messing with the speed it is now set on medium. We used their electronic control system which consisted to a electric control valve and an electronic controller that detected the temperature in the attic and the temperature of the pool water. If the attic got to be 5 to 10 degrees warmer than the pool water the unit would come on and stay on till the water got warmer than the set point. We had system on a time and regardless of how the system was set we turned the pool pump off at 11PM and on at 9AM In 2015 we sold that house and the solar attic system went along with it. Our new home has a slightly smaller pool and an electric heat pump from heat siphon(325Kbtu) system. We are thinking of installing a solar attic PCS3 in conjunction with the electric heat pump. The cost to run the PCS3 is about $10 per month for the GE Fan motor. My electric bill for the Heat Siphon is $300 plus per month. As I am writing this the time is 2:36P EST in Atlanta Georiga. The outside temperature is 73F Degrees and the attic Temperature is 105F. At this rate we would have in our house that had the Solar attic system have turned the system on at this point. This would have started the heating process. Unlike electric or gas systems where the heat will start immediately the solar attic system will raise the temperature however this is over a period of time. If you installed a solar attic system in July and started it up on July 4th you probably would not see the water temperature rise quickly. I would say it would talk a week or more to bring the temperature to its set point. My current pool is a free form pebble tec with about 15,000 gals of water. With a solar attic system if it operates as my last system did I will have the largest hottub in the north Atlanta are. It can and will bring the water temperature to 95 degrees. My wife likes warm water. As I see it the biggest draw back is the price. If the system were priced in the $2000 range, for the basic system and $2500 range for the full electronic system this would be a product everyone would have like a salt system or LED lighting. A $2000 adder to you Aquilink system is small dollars with a great reward.

I have been working on the 4th group and it is looking good. The group name will be Best Friends. Right now it looks like 12 will be in the group which means each person will receive 11 blocks. I will leave it so someone else can join in if they want to before the end of December. It looks like there will be one Jan. birthday and then the next one will not be until March so there will not be a lot to do over the holidays if that is of a concern to someone who is considering joining in. Actually, the birthdays are very nicely spaced. Who would have expected that? LOL I want to send e-mail out to confirm with a few people that they are willing to make 2 blocks or be in 2 groups and then the group will go out by e-mail to the members. I'm so happy this is working out for those who have been waiting for awhile to see if we could form a fourth group! Jeanne (Sorry to have been slow finishing up this last group. My dog is home and doing well. We will not know the results of the biopsy until next week. Obviously, we are spoiling her a lot!)