my son and family lived in germany where the boys were in love with kindereggs. they have a two piece plastic container that is kind of the shape of a c-battery but shorter. they are hard as the dickens to open! inside is a tiny toy that you construct using an instruction sheet, also inside and written in german. they are very intricate and wheels turn, etc. some series are whole items like clowns or animals or cars. there are collectors who pay good money for the toys. i still have a bag full of them and some are smaller than any toy parts i have seen here other than polly pocket dolls. the cylinder is contained inside a thin shell of two lays of chocolate...white and brown. it is a high quality candy and easily breaks into small pieces. you can also buy the candy by itself and my grandsons still get it from my daughter who now lives in germany. years ago i was able to buy kindereggs from a man in canada who sold them on ebay. the last time i tried, about 4 years ago, he no longer shipped to the us although the ban had been in effect prior to then. they just made the punishment harsher. so there, everything you need to know about them from someone with over 10 years experience.....lol.

Hello, Make sure you have the right sized equipment. Using efficiency to calculate output of furnace is the first step. Don't let someone downsize you to the point of stupid. Yes new equipment is probably more efficient than your 50 year old furnace, but not necessarly. You can check the efficiency by dividing output by input and multiplying by 100. Many older systems were more efficient than people want to believe. Newer higher efficient equipment is smaller than older equipment, but the higher efficiency it is, the quicker it will fail. Heat exchangers are a common problem. As far as I know Heil is middle of the road good equipment. It is not popular in Texas, but never the less probably equal to most brands seen here. Installation of an AC system, usually requires larger ducts to cool the same sized romm as to heating the room. With this said, just admiring the existing duct, does not tell if it is large enough for the layman. Using rigid pipe is probably best with custom designed duct the top of the list. This just don't happen in Texas. Most homes are ducted with flex duct. It is cheap to install, and low labor. Air flow is quite with flex duct, but it has it's problems. If animals get into the attic, they can easily damage the duct looking for fun. I have some unwanted visitors in my attic. Since the duct is steel, the only damage was to the insulation last winter. I will reinsulate a couple of small areas and all will be good. Using round duct with insulation on the outside is a good comprimise for quality and durability. It cost about double of flew in material costs, and labor is probably triple, over using flex duct. Some areas of the country require metal duct. Just not Texas. if the unit is in a closet, it needs to be installed to local code. Proper exhaust venting and attic sealing. Fibre board is expected in some installations, but metal plenums are preferable. I recently saw a plenum make of 1/2 inch insulation foam board as found at Home Depot. I told the owner of the dangers of fire, but he was very cheap. This is not adequate and should not be used. Metal tape to seal joints at a minimum, and mastic joint sealer is prefered. If the registers whistle, they are either too small or the system is operating at too high air flow. If you use a variable speed blower you will never know you are screwed until the cooling does not keep up. IMO current practices are kinda overrated. I do not use nitrogen, I don't evac the system to 500 microns, but I also do not do 410. These practices are necessary with puron. Even then, the systems fail quicker than 22 systems. I have nitrogen, but do not see the need to purge with it. If I purge, I use 22 and recover it. I believe in filters.

Me? A procrastinator? Just because I put off until now reading this? I started to read it on Thursday, but after just a few words I saw a bad word! EXERCISE! So I didn't read any more. So here I am. So far today I have: read the paper, had my oatmeal and tea, made the bed, fussed at the cat for getting on the new chair, checked on Eagle Cam, Africam, Gorilla Cam, and lucked out on Djuma Cam and spent a lot of time there, had a banana and more tea, watched a few minutes of 20/20 that I taped last night (will finish that later) played around on photoshop, started a letter to a friend (I'll finish that later) and now here I am back at the KT. And it is time to fix some dinner, or I could do that later. Oh, well, guilty as charged. Think I'll watch the news. Sue

Sounds like you have some good guys on the job...always thinking and keeping their cool! Maybe your good karma will rub off on others. It will be fun to see your finished kitchen! Congrats on the resolution of your floor problems.