milocrab, you have got me all over the globe - Hong Kong, Asia, Australia! About your seedlings; the growing medium appears too heavy for a tiny mustard seed and you may have compounded the problem by your watering program. A seed needs to be in a moist environment to imbibe moisture in its own sweet time. If the medium is too wet the seed will rot. As the seed germinates it uses up its stored energy to produce a root and shoot. These are necessarily small, definitely immature and very sensitive to the environment. Application of fertilizer and exposure to (sun)light must be done carefully and gradually or the seedling can easily die. All of the leaves in the photographs show a nutritional problem; either a shortage of elements or else a problem with uptake if the elements are present. Overwatering can prevent uptake by displacing oxygen at root level The bleached areas on some leaves can be caused by sudden and perhaps extreme exposure to (sun)light; or damage due to the activity of the "blotch" (as opposed to the "serpentine") leafminer. 91ðF "even for one hour" to us can mean "for an entire hour?" to a seedling as it pulls on all of its meagre reserves to cope with this environmental stress. Allow me to reproduce from memory, a poem by Kate Brown from my kindergarten school days. "In the heart of a seed, buried deep, so deep; A dear little plant lay fast asleep. "Wake!" said the sunshine, "and creep to the light". "Wake!" said the voice of the raindrops bright. The little plant heard it And rose to see. What the wonderful Outside world might be." We had to mime as we recited and it is a pleasamt memory.

While your grand 2 story windows are pretty, you do realize that there will be practical problems? I don't want to beat a dead horse about heating that room... ok well I will. Obviously the r-3 wall (what it will be with windows and the pack of studs in between, is going to be a huge heat loss. Combined with the heat rising, it will be a room that will take the majority of your heating needs. And it isn't just an energy use problem, but it becomes an issue with vastly different loads between this room and the rest of the house. Second, I know that Washington is not sunny NC, but it surely gets sunny at times. A SW facing wall of windows that you can't cover is going to be frustrating from the glare. I have a view wall facing SE and we need sunglasses inside at times but we can close the blinds. It isn't 2 stories either - just 10 ft ceilings with 14 ft wide window bank. Third, again while it isn't as sunny there, when it does get hot and is sunny, you will have a cooling problem. And mind you, it isn't just the energy use, it is the differential in the rooms. You may be turning the stat on 75 but have some rooms at 70 and freezing just to keep that room comfortable. It is very difficult to design a HVAC that can handle such different gains in different rooms. I have a study with a wall of west windows and have planted a tree to deal with the 4-6pm heat up. I rent mountain houses fairly often in the Asheville area and this type of wall is common. But it can be frustrating even just for a few day stay. The last one had tinted the windows and installed an electric awning outside. Blinds and drapes just don't fit well with these walls in the mountains. Honestly - they could be installed but no one wants to because it doesn't fit the "mountain" style. In that house, we had to sleep in double beds downstairs because the king upstairs was too hot from all the gain in the afternoon - and yes the house had a/c. Obviously not the best designed system and you will do better but the challenges are there. I have an oceanfront house (vacation rental) - I understand the need for view without compromise. But the 2 story huge windows you don't really see anything out of except sky and for a large portion of the time you are there, you might be staring at the sun. Yes - they look dramatic. But drama's appeal wears out and practicality does not.

First... Manhattan...Thanks for the help. That site is great and I now have the actual approximately 300 page UPC available. Thank You Davidro...Thank you. I could not agree more with your principles and thoughts. Unfortunately with regard to your advice to hire a master plumber, that comes with a significant cost factor that is difficult to overcome in this economy. (The costs that Ca have piled on a homeowner wanting to improve their property, (eg: special epoxy inspectors, special concrete inspectors, special backfill inspectors etc etc etc, make it prohibative for the financially modest homeowner to make improvements, and hire professionals at a reasonable cost. Furthermore there is a matter of principle involved here. I think we as tax payers and honest citizens wanting to do a project correctly, deserve valid and competant advice and answers from our public BO officials who we are paying with our taxes and are drinking from the publc funds. Sorry for the departure. I have reviewed the hard UPC code and can still not find justificaion for the BO position. However, we all know that we don't want to anger a BO official because we all know that no matter how hard we try to do things correctly, we will make honest minor errors in a code that is over 1500 pages and has some nebulous interpetations to it. Regardless of my predicament, THANK YOU both for the assistrance. Peter

Unfortunately, in my experience, FedEx is the best of the "big three." USPS is the worst by a mile. I often have late, damaged boxes arrive. We have one of those community mailboxes and if a box does not fit inside, they will NOT try to ring your bell to leave it at your house. They will simply put a note in your box telling you to pick it up at the post office. Kind of defeats the point of delivery to me. UPS is mostly OK for me. More damaged boxes than FedEx, but typically reliable service. FedEx packages arrive intact and on time, IME.