johnnyq, I'm not much help, since I've been shamelessly kicking the can down the road for years now. Made it through the last two winters with a layer of 6 mil greenhouse plastic sheeting over my own badly damaged polycarbonate roof. We've replaced the roof panels once already, and I only get about three years in the HFGH panels before small holes start showing up in the outside layer of the roof poly panels (even with shadecloth in place all year.) I'm lucky we didn't have a wet heavy snow this winter, or we would have been out there rigging up emergency interior bracing! All of my wall panels are still original, and are now about ten years old. They've finally yellowed and developed small holes too, so I'm looking at a sizeable investment to replace all the roof and wall panels. To be honest I'm doing some soul searching about keeping the greenhouse, but I probably will go ahead with the replacement, since all is fine except for the panels. And I'm not sure I want to give up the hobby quite yet. My plan is to buy 4mm twinwall poly elsewhere (not Harbor Freight, as I'm just getting too old to deal with the work of replacing the roof so often.) Last time I checked, FarmTek seemed to be my best source price wise. Did you mean that HF is offering 6mm panels with a warranty now? One (potential?) heads up is there might be a slight glitch with getting 6mm thick panels to slip into the aluminum framing at the roof peak - as you know the panels slide into a channel up there - and there has been past discussion that anything thicker than 4mm might not slide into the channel easily. I don't know if this is a problem with the kits that are newer than mine, though, and it might not be an insurmountable problem. Maybe others will chime in with panel replacement updates.

I don't think the "perfect" GH is out there unless one has $8,000 to $10,000 or more to spend. The Rion roof "design" is horrible. It will take some caulking to fill these gaps and make them airtight. What the heck was the engineer thinking when he/she designed it? How did it pass any kind of inspection and examination? Did anyone from the Company bother to look before it went into production? The other problem is the HAF fans for air circulation. The roof is so low there is nowhere to hang them above your head. If it weren't for the plant benches I'd be walking into them constantly. And we have to contact the place we bought it from because one of the auto-lifters is already failing. Once these problems are taken care of it should work out fine.

bren sorry I am late to the party here - i just stumbled onto this thread. I live in N VA and just finished a custom build - starting with a set of on-line plans. Here are a few things i learned: 1) The local code can be very different that the code where the architect who drew those plans is located. In my case, the architect was well known in Texas - but if I tried to build to that exact plan I would have had problems. The live and dead loads are very different in regions where you get snow - just as one example. In Texas they dont normally do basements - we wanted one. That drove a lot of structural changes. Not very high in cost - but something that had to be done. Unless you are lucky enough to be in the same area where that the on-line plan was made for - you will need someone to make the mods. The cost for this should not be excessive if the mods are minor. 2) Before you purchase the plans, make sure you speak with the designer first. Most of these on-line sites are just store fronts. You should find out if the person who drew them is a licensed architect (and who it is - then you can search about them for them on-line). Also find out what plans are included in the set - is it just a floor plan or does it have roofing, framing, foundation, elevations, electrical, plans etc.). You want detailed plans - and ones that have been used before in a real build (they should have pictures they can show you). You can also typically buy a review set of these plans for a smaller fee which will be applied to the total cost when you purchase the final plans. I recommend getting those first. 3) Even though a plan may look great and have all the detail, you can't assume that you can build the house within some cost per square foot or other ball park estimate. One of the biggest mods our architect made to our plan was the roof. Our builder studied the roof design and told us that it would significantly drive up the cost of the home. We were changing the outside elevation anyway, so re-doing the roofline and pitch was fine with us. When the architect re-designed the roof, he actually gave us more square footage on the second floor so that we could add another bathroom - a nice bonus. 3) I would not assume that you canÂt afford an architect or architecture services . And I also donÂt think it has to cost 10% of the house. We made a lot of changes to our plan and it cost $15K, around 2% of the total cost. It was worth every penny. 4) When you start looking for an architect donÂt get discouraged. I ran into a lot of pompous pre-MadonnaÂs who tried to feed me a load of crap on what I needed to do to the plan and it was going to cost me out the wazoo. Be prepared when you deal with this species . But if you look hard enough, you can find what you need. 5) We found are architect through our builder - someone who he has worked with extensively. If you use a custom builder, you might want to see if they can provide the design services you need. In the end it helps you both because you know that the plan is done to code. Good luck!

I have had a Bertazzoni 36" gas range with 5 burners for about 7 years now and I absolutely hate it. It replaced a 5 year old Thermador which kept breaking down. When it worked, the Thermador oven was fantastic and the temperature incredibly accurate. My Bertazzoni is quite the opposite: the oven temperature is not calibrated, unless I have a thermometer in the oven, I have no clue what the temp is, I cannot rely on the outside knob, it's inaccurate. My cakes are often burned on the outside and raw on the inside. The bottom of the oven has been curling up, it seems quite flimsy. The igniter broke twice and now, I cannot use the broil setting because it will not ignite. The top burners are ok, the largest one (2 part) is practical for very large pots (we are a large family, we often utilize larger pasta pots) but it still takes for ever for water to boil. Cleaning the burners is quite challenging, especially if liquids boil over. One of my oven lights burnt 2 years ago and no one was able to help me purchase a new one. Customer service at Bertazzoni suggested I go to a lighting shop for a bulb, they were not able to sell me a replacement one. I did just that and was told by 3 shops that they do not carry this type of light bulb. All in all, I would not recommend this gas range. I am now in the market for a new one, does anyone have any recommendations?