I use Comtesse du Cayla for a hedge at my house. ONE plant makes a considerable impact - about six feet tall and eight feet wide, I don't trim for height but keep it cut back from the path (sort of). I don't water very much and the blooms get a crispy edge in the summer heat - in the cemetery, in a plot that floods when we do the weekly irrigation, the blooms hold up well. It's rarely out of bloom Mar-Dec, gorgeous red new foliage, lovely plant. I have Perle d'Or next to this rose. It's nice, too, but I like the look of CdC as a plant more. You can keep Mutabilis shorter, but it's a big, big rose. Biggest of all that we're disussing, and I wouldn't plant it any place that you want to control its size. I'm seriously considering taking mine out, and most people I know who planted one in limited space do so. You can see these roses at the Sacramento cemetery, and we are selling some of them at our Open Garden on April 17. Be in line at 930 if there's something you really want. If you just want to look at roses, come any day but Wed and Thurs (closed for budgetary reasons). If you let me know you're coming, I'll try to meet you there and talk roses (my favorite thing to do). Anita

The thing about tracking hardware is that it is so expensive that for the say, 15% or so reduction you get due to sun angle you can buy enough extra panels to offset the loss, assuming you have the space. CA new title 24 states that on a new building you must provide an unobstructed roof area of 250 sq ft(no vents, chimneys, or roof penetrations). Those panels must be at least 3'below the peak to provide access for the fire dept. It pains me to say it but solar thermal is about dead in the current American market. I was in the solar and alternative energy business in CA back in the late 70's-early 80's and did hundreds of hot water and other types of solar systems. They work great, but a dhw system today is around $10,000. That money is much better spent on a PV system today. Much better return on that investment. Ground mount systems are fairly common up here in the foothills. My house is shaded by a Sequoia and a few 4' dia Black Walnuts. My only PV option will be ground mount out in the side yard or a new garage roof, I suppose, but then again I spent the garage on the house re-model;). I've seen several up here where they put the array up on a 15' or so tall post. There are, finally, initiatives underway now to establish better specification guidelines for DC power. Snidely, I think you and I would get along great in person, but boy, we sure don't agree on much here. That is in no way a critical statement, quiet the opposite in fact. I'm a fitter/welder in an early life and worked on gas lines from 1/4"-36". I am very comfortable with it, but I understand the process of pipe design and installation. I do think that as we have codes that require smoke detectors that every home should also have CO detectors and, if supplied with gas, have a combustible gas detector. I am surprised that the insurance industry hasn't pulled that off yet. I guess not enough houses/people have been lost that way. Anyway, looking forward to meeting you on the next post;)

I moved here from Chicago (and have also lived in LA) and you really, really should rent first. Housing prices are not going to zoom up anytime soon. The banks have a large shadow inventory and CA is one of the three worst states for foreclosures. It is very time-consuming to buy a foreclosure. Figure it will take 4x longer than to buy normally. Homes in foreclosure are often in bad shape; quality of construction in CA is often very low. Labor costs are high and skillful workers harder to find than they should be. Do not assume you can remodel a not-so-perfect house into what you want. The NIMBY-ism here is hideous and in all the major cities it is extraordinarily difficult and expensive to enlarge a home's footprint. You are legally constrained from covering more than 40% of your lot anyway, I believe, and with our small lots that's not a big footprint. Permits are expensive to obtain and if you make structural changes, it will be required that you bring everything up to current building code. Since every year brings in stricter earthquake building codes, this can add so much to the cost that remodeling projects become impossible. For example, our neighbor wanted to turn their downstairs into a legal in-law: adding a second bathroom, building a single-story, one-room addition. They had $75K in cash as their budget (we live in the Oakland foothills, nice older area, starter homes). It took them over $12K and almost two years to go through the permit process. Eventually they were told they had to apply for a waiver because they were taking 2' from the single-car garage which was already minimum size allowed, so they had to have the architect re-draw the plans and resubmit them. Permit cost, BTW, is 10% of the cost estimate in our city. The City of Oakland does the engineering study for all projects. As we live on a hill (great east-facing hillside views), they were told to stabilize their lot, it would be necessary to sink 40 piers, each 37' deep to bedrock, filled with steel rebar and concrete. 25 of the piers would be for the single-room addition (which was only going to be about 17x25') and the remaining 15 would be placed all along the north side of the existing house. The cost for the pier work alone? $65,000. Needless to say, they did something else with their remaining $63K. You might be surprised what you pay for utilities here. PG&E is one of the most expensive utilities in the country, and most older homes aren't insulated well. Our home is insulated with double-pane windows, we live in a warmer microclimate than Berkeley, I keep my home fairly cool, yet we pay on average $170/mo for gas (furnace/dryer/stove) and electricity. No one can place any dependency on PG&E absorbing all the costs for their unmapped leaking gas mains (a neighborhood in San Bruno saw its gas main blow up and 8 people died); we ratepayers will almost certainly see our rates rise yet again. Water isn't that expensive, but earthquake-proofing our EBMUD water reservoirs is. Our bi-monthly water bill for a large garden (1/6 acre) and 3 people runs $45 for water and $100 for earthquake work. We do have earthquake insurance. There is a fault that runs right through Alameda County and it's overdue for another major quake. Homeowners insurance is fairly low - less than $1K, and umbrella liability is around $200/yr. Earthquake insurance with a $100K deductible costs us almost $4000/yr. However, we have no mortgage so we are carrying all the risk on our home. It made sense for us to purchase risk mitigation. To be afraid of all of Oakland is ridiculous. There are some very good neighborhoods here, just as there are some bad neighborhoods in Berkeley. If I were buying for the first time, I'd look in El Cerrito on the east side of San Pablo Ave. Good, stable neighborhoods, nice weather, easier city traffic, great services/shops. I like Alameda, but access is limited to the bridges, and traffic is easily snarled at commute times. Traffic is the huge issue in the Bay Area. If you are still working, you need to really see how the traffic patterns work, not just when things go right but when things go wrong. Public transit is pathetic compared to Chicago, NY and Boston. Cars are a necessity in the East Bay; you can get around without one but it will take forever and making transfers between systems is a pain. Don't ignore the sales tax. The first time you pay sales tax on a new car, you will definitely feel the pain! Food is a conundrum: you can spend less and get higher quality, but on average Bay Area residents eat out more often than anyone else except New Yorkers, over 4x/week. I don't mean to sound discouraging. We love living here but there is no denying CA is an extremely expensive state. State income taxes are high and services are dwindling. You will find politics very different here than back East.

First, IMHO a 44" high interior stool height for the only window in a room is not acceptable in terms of comfort and should be changed. The real problem here is the brick veneer cladding which is why I don't work on brick houses (I know that doesn't help you). In the jurisdictions where I usually practice, you are allowed to propose a "compliance equivalent/alternative" if it is stamped by an architect or engineer. I've proposed many of these and have never been turned down. What the inspector is looking for is a way to shed responsibility for the decision. The reason a step is not allowed is that it is too easily removed later. But what puzzles me is how the building department would have the authority to make you meet the new code when the existing window openings meet the old code. Replacing a window "in kind" is not the same as adding a new window. In my state grandfathering is only prohibited in the case of a "means of egress" and an "emergency escape and rescue window" is not a part of a means of egress even though many inspectors and window manufacturers use the word "egress" without realizing it is inappropriate. That is partially due to the fact that "egress" was a general term covering both exits and escape openings in the early CABO codes and when the ICC was formed out of CABO, the 2000 IRC, in order to be consistent with the basic (commercial) IBC, separated the "emergency escape & rescue opening" and "means of egress" sections but, unfortunately, used the term "egress" by mistake in one sentence of the rescue opening section. "Egress" was not corrected to "escape" until the 2009 IRC. I faced this same problem last year but was not allowed to lower the sills because zoning the ordinance prohibited any changes to the wall because the side yard was existing-non-conforming. Apparently zoning came ahead of life safety. That's all I can tell you without knowing want code applies.