Looking at the soil soup website, it's not that it's just an aeration pump. Their "bioblender" both stirs and aerates the mixture. They are definitely not the only company making suitable equipment, but they're probably right that a fish tank bubbler is not as effective. Oxygen transfer to water is all about how much surface area exists between the water and the air relative to the total volume of water. If you're able to produce twice as many bubbles of the same size with pump a v. pump b, you get a higher dissolved oxygen concentration with pump a. (There is an upper limit to this enhancement, but you likely won't reach it with a fish tank bubbler.) If you include stirring in addition to just aeration, you likely increase the number of bubbles and foam (and dissolved oxygen) compared to what you get with aeration alone because there are chemicals dissolved from the compost and released by the bacteria that act to stabilize the foam. If you think of the tank with just a bubbler, most of the liquid in the tank is not in contact with a bubble surface at any given instant in time. The mixing improves that. You have several options: 1) Add a mixer to David's idea. 2) Pump the soup continuously from the bucket with the compost "tea bag" over a nearly vertical flat surface so that it flows down the flat surface in a thin film and back into the bucket like those "zen mood fountains." If the film is thin enough and if it covers a sufficiently large surface area, you'll get good aeration of the water. Evaporation will be a concern, though, so you'll need to either have it in an enclosed space to control the humidity or watch the water level. 3) Pump the soup continuously through a piece of window screen so that the soup is in droplets. Now at any given instand in time, the distance between the water molecules furthest away from the air-water interface will be much shorter than it is in the bubbler-aerated system, so the oxygen has a shorter distance to travel. Same idea as thin film above, with same concerns about evaporation.

akchicago, thanks for the recommendation. I see that Abt gets very favorable reviews. Harriet, I'm glad you had a better experience. I would wish this misery on no one! DH is not well. This has taken such a toll on him. Yesterday AM I received an e-mail from AJ Madison's customer service dept. stating they would contact me immediately after their technician checked the range. The technician filed a report by phone in our presence before 3 PM yesterday stating that the range frame was "bent, warped, or twisted" and COULD NOT be repaired. He found, and reported problems we did not know the range had. By 4:30 PM today, we STILL had not heard from AJM or their service dept nor had we heard from Fisher Paykel. I sent an e-mail to AJM asking when we could expect the range to be picked up, and when we could expect a credit on our charge card. Response was that I should "be patient." AJM and Fisher Paykel seem to be at odds over whose responsibility this is. We refuse to postpone our move again. We have given AJ Madison until 5 PM tomorrow to tell us what their intentions are. If no satisfactory course is set in motion by then, we will begin legal action Thursday AM. Inexcusable that it should come to that. Thanks to all of you for listening and for the crossed fingers, John. Venting sometimes keeps you sane.

The child on respirator that she mentioned was the one most of the news agencies did the story on. To this day, I'm still in contact with his parents. He's off the respirator now, but this was a 14 year old kid that was big into playing sports. He was an up and coming jock at his new high school, and now it's all he can do to walk out to get the mail from the mailbox at the end of his driveway. He IS getting better, but it's a slow slow process, and while sports is out of the question, hopefully he'll regain enough use of his lungs where he can live a somewhat normal life.

I worked for an American Standard dealer before going into business for myself 10 years ago. During my tenure for that dealer there were a lot of changes that transpired for the American Standard & Trane branded products. A little history if you will: American Standard owned Trane as well as the plumbing side of things with the American Standard plumbing line of products. They were the only manufacturer at the time that made their own compressors here in USA. First step to selling a company: cut costs, They relocated the compressor making part of the company to Mexico and China. This happened in 2003. This resulted in a loss of 350 jobs, very low figure and no one seemed to notice. Then 2007 came and the selling of the plumbing business line and the renaming of the company to Trane. At this time Trane was #1 in commercial equipment world wide. Ingersol Rand acquired Trane in 2008. It has been rumored that the only reason they wanted Trane was for the commercial part of the company. It's not the same company it once was. With that said: There is no such thing as a 'perfect' brand of HVAC equipment. We like to believe there is... the installation, service and repair a service company offers should be considered top of the list, not the brand of equipment. There is nothing wrong with Trane, American Standard except for the pedestal they 'try' to put themselves on as being better.... when in fact they are no better than other options. Choose a HVAC company for service. At the end of the day, that is what a service company should be about. I service the Katy, Texas area.