Honestly, stop with the pesticides. Our school system has been saying for years that _one_ pesticide treatment on the hair followed by fine combing, laundering bedclothes and towels as normal, and disinfecting hats will do it. You don't have to sterilise the whole house. The lice can't live long off a host anyway. All those pesticides are going to make you sick. Also, if your knees are itching it's definitely not lice, as lice are site-specific having adapted to live in particular kinds of hair. So head lice are different to pubic lice, aka "crabs", for instance. Unless you have head hair growing from your knees, you can be sure they are cootie free :-)

Cesar, I have 122 year old ducts in my home (I have seen the original bill of sale for the furnace and know the brick ducts are original--the only thing that has been replaced is the feeder ducts in the basement that were replaced when the original gravity furnace was replaced. I now have a heat pump with A/C (I didn't install it, bought it with it installed). We have one room upstairs that doesn't have a duct, and we put a window unit in there (my bedroom, I like it cold, so it's great). The only problem we have is that there is a 10 degree difference between downstairs and upstairs (I think this has to do more with hot air rising than the PUSH of the system though)...and we have no return from the 2nd floor, just on the landing of the stairs. It can get a little warm in the summer as we try to go light on the A/C for $$ reasons but since we put in the blown-in insulation in the attic, it's been good. We've been here 2.5 years and are comfortable. I'm glad we didn't have to install it. I don't know if just because it works for us it works for everyone... our ducts are large, probably 8-10 inches square, with large louvered grates, and the longest run is probably 40 feet.

I will answer this one in 2 parts. 1) If you have plaster walls, then your home was most likely built prior to 1978. It depends on the area, I suppose, but the majority of homes built Pre-1978 have dangerous amounts of lead in the paint. Because of this, I highly recommend either getting a lead test before DIY-ing it, or hiring a professional company that's certified to do lead abatement and lead maintenance repainting. If you scrape/sand/etc over lead paint with children in the house, then unfortunately, asthma and allergies will be the least of your worries. Lead has been shown to cause severe birth defects in fetuses of pregnant women, as well as learning deficits, lowered IQ, organ damage, ADHD, and other serious problems in children. It also affects adults, although to a lesser extent. Lead dust/chips, when inhaled or swallowed, stays in the bone marrow for decades and slowly releases into the bloodstream, where it damages organs including the brain, liver, heart, etc. ================================= 2) If by plaster you really meant to say "drywall", then unfortunately, the only way to hide this defect is by applying joint compound, sanding, oil priming and painting. If your son has asthma, a way to counter this is, ironically, doing the same thing a lead abatement company would do: Quarantine the area off with plastic and painters tape (they use duct tape and 6mm plastic for lead, but you dont need all that), turn off the AC/Heat and plastic the vents and return system, and completely box in the area sealed tight. Then, once he is done, have him do the "TSP sandwich"- clean the dust up with TSP mixed with water (8 parts water, 1 part TSP), then have him use a HEPA vacuum to vacuum all of the area, then wet-wipe again with the TSP/water combo. At this point, have the area air scrubbed with a HEPA filter (air scrubber preferably, but a lower strength one will do), then remove the plastic and immediately bag it. Problem solved. ALSO, one more thing:Even if a self-leveling paint could cover this ridge(which it wont, self leveling doesnt work over obvious ridges like that), then you would still need to clean the walls with TSP and water and then apply an oil primer before doing the self-leveling paint, in order to clean and then prime over any remnants of, the wallpaper glue. If you just put the paint over the ridge as it currently is, it would probably start to peel due to the wallpaper glue or glue remnants.

Before the asthma got so bad to become an emergency NIna had a series of respiratory infections all that were treated successfully with antibiotics. At first the vet and I thought it was a herpes virus in the lungs, tried lysine with no better effect, She then had the bad asthma attack and we took her to a different ER vet who preformed X-rays which revealed doughnuts and severe inflammation of her aveoli. Additionally, she responded to albuterol and inject able steroids along with the O2 chamber at the vet, which pretty much confirmed that diagnoses. Everything else on the X Ray was beautiful, heart liver she is in perfect health besides that. We started with oral prednilisone (sp?) and she instantly contracted a URI which was again successfully treated with antibiotics the vet and I guessed it was due to poor immune response because of the steroids. It has been remarkably worse since the ER visit she coughed like this before but not as much at all since. I am lucky to live in Colorado close the Colorado University that has a wonderful veterinary program I will give them a call!