Update: I finally realized my great house cleaners were not so great after all. The feather duster was not touching the dust and things were rearranged to make it look like they had been cleaned and toilets were black under the rim. One day I had to leave the house for about 45 minutes and when I arrived back the cleaners were gettingin their car to leave. Hmmm....so much for cleaning my house. Yes, they were fired. I now have a truly great one person house cleaner that is very thourough and everything is actually cleaned. It takes her 4-5 hours to clean my 2,500 sq. ft. house.

I have a conventional, top load washing machine. I love, love, love Wisk Deep Clean. Additionally, Consumer Reports just last week put it at the top of their CONVENTIONAL washer detergent list, so my results have been verified. The only thing is, twebbz, I use hot-to-warm water, run an extra washing cycle, but only do 2 rinse cycles because it rinses so much better than any detergent I have ever used. I think the hot water, as mentioned by those above, really makes the difference in cleaning any oils. I will always have a bottle of Wisk in my stash. My sheets and pillowcases are like new every time I wash them with Wisk. And with the sodium citrate, it is supposed to be good for your machine also. Use the hottest water you can and wash as long as you can.

oh oh oh....sounds a lot like my posts of 2012 doesn't it! I can't believe my system is 2 years old. The choices can make your head spin. I had a similar dilemma with my hwh. I eventually chose tankless and since we have a portable generator I don't worry about the power issues (which you will also have with a power vent). Have to say I LOVE the tankless. Sometimes we just seem to need a lot of hot water, with 4 adults in the house. I have a soaker tub that I love and when it's cold it is delightful to fill it and not worry about who might come home and complain I used all the hot water. I think they ripped me about $4k for that puppy. Perhaps you can sway them into a tankless for the price they quoted you. It is the slow season. I used a company starting with an H,here in south jersey, and I got them to drop about $1500 from the price they had quoted in June by waiting until this time of year. The other company would not budge. My oop was $2k, plus the 0% financed amount. I found the 0% to be very attractive as well so as not to spend cash that could be invested. I sometimes wish I'd gotten the next level up in my furnace, to variable speed from multi speed, because I had humidity issues the first summer. I think that was solved by choosing the correct speed setting as this year has been perfect and my heating has been fine as well, I did get 2-stage heat and ac. I just came up against my price limit and decided the luxury of the tankless was how I wanted to go (rather than up the heater another level) The guys here got VERY tired of me (sometimes rightly so!) Perhaps you can find the old threads (novels almost!) that I posted here about the NJ CLEAN ENERGY program. By the way, I did do some reading online and it can be true that if your house is well sealed that a conventional heater may not draft properly causing a risk of carbon monoxide buildup, which is why they talk you into a power vent or tankless. Good luck. Try not to overthink or get too wrapped up in it. Accept that you will save SOME $, but the contractor will get at least half your rebate $ in mark ups. Are you getting insulation added? I think that was a good thing that I wouldn't have done otherwise.

We're in central Oklahoma, zone 7. Our home was built sometime just after the turn of the last century, and was by necessity designed to take advantage of natural heating and cooling. The front door faces East, with the bedrooms on the south. There's no central AC, so all those double windows allow the breeze to cool the bedrooms as you sleep. I'm an early riser anyway, and I enjoy getting up to see the sunrise, but the added benefit is that the bedrooms are warmer in the winter. Thanks to the foresight of the original owners, there are mature deciduous trees on the south east and south west corners, so the house is spared an early heat up as well as the worst of the late afternoon sun. Because the house sits near the bottom of a hill on the north, it stays pleasant in the warm months, (actually about 5 degrees cooler than at the top of the hill), and at night the temperature does drop noticeably; we're generally still using quilts on the beds until late May. OTOH, thanks to the micro climate on the south side of the house, we have roses that never loose their leaves. The living and dining room are on the north side and won't get hot until very late in the evening around August. I suspect it's radiant heat from the attic and insulation would help with that; it's something on our to do list. Other than insulation, I'd like to enlarge the back porch on the west side to extend all the way across the back of the house, and we have plans to add another window in the eating area of the kitchen on the west wall for better cross ventilation. I've been thinking about building a skylight/cupola with operable windows in the kitchen that would bring in light as well as the prevailing southern breeze when it gets too hot, but haven't studied the pros and cons enough to be sure.