My rooster was getting frostbite regularly until I started rubbing vaseline on his comb and wattles and bought the heat lamp bulb. It's one of those really big red heat lamp bulbs people put in their bathrooms. It's 250 watts and just goes into a regular (but not plastic) socket. It cost me about $10 and has been well worth it. I only run it at night when it's below -15 and the odd day when it is that cold all day. The vaseline helps a lot too. He struggled fiercly until I started stroking his comb with the vaseline. Then he got really still and just stood quietly though the whole procedure. I think he likes it. I've done it a few times. It's necessary anyway, whether he likes it or not. I laughed the first time, as one of the lead hens came up really close, watching, and asking a quiet question. When she got in his face he gave her a little chirp without moving and she went away. I guess she was worried. It was so cute! I remember that about Thunder Bay. The things that do grow well there get HUGE due to the extra long daylight. The blackflies and mosquitoes are fierce but only for a very short period of time, then nothing. They get so bad in May they drive the moose out onto the highways. I saw my only real life bald eagle up north and up close. I actually had to use the break to keep from running into him with the car. He was flying down the highway in front of us. HUGE and gorgeous bird with a wingspan much larger than our car. I had no idea they were so big! I never have the camera when I need it!

So the service company came. They did many things to address the rattling door which had no effect: - changed the filter - changed the strainer in the pump - adjusted the air flow next to the pump - blew air through the fuel line back to the oil tank (the burner whined loudly after this then quieted down) - bled oil from the burner - started to remove the flow control from the system then decided it was working fine and put it back Finally they changed the nozzle. They stepped the nozzle down to .75 by 70 degrees and wouldn't you know the furnace is back to its quiet happy self. What a relief! I can sleep again at night. (They did not clean/vacuum the furnace.) The showers have been consistently hot, set at 170, 190, and 15 differential. The tech did not have a tool to test the water temperature. Still need to retest the circulator but much progress!

Do you have any stop valves on your pipes in various places? I'll bet your hot and cold supply pipes are connected together, and exchanging fluids, in a current that goes from the water heater (convection current) out to the pipes where your kitchen taps are and then back to the water heater on another pipe. It's a closed circuit. A loop. Your second paragraph starts off with this: "We had a recirculator at our hot water heater, which I turned off and unplugged, thinking that was the problem. No change. W..." This means (but you can verify this) that the hot water recirculating line used the cold line as the return line (this is one way to route it), and that this current has not been cut. The idea of the pipes exchanging heat just from proximity is not likely. It's impossible to exchange that much energy as to produce scalding hot water in the cold pipe. tress21 i'm having a hard time believing your post because you leave out so much information. For example, what the bathroom faucets are like. There is a lot of other missing information along this "For example,.." kind of thinking. Like, what the GC did, which plumber he hired, or didn't hire, what routing he days he used for the recirculating circuit, or who built the recirculating circuit if it wasn't the GC, and how the "symptoms" of the problem appeared when the recirculating circuit worked, what changed, etc, a whole lot more.... I really mean it. Seriously. Also, you wrote that it takes 20 minutes to get cold water. Is this what you intended to write? Here is a link that might be useful: same post in the kitchen forum

There's a lot of things involved with laundry. There's no perfect solution for all situations. These websites that claim to tell you what things cost are seldom accurate for more than the one or two instances they show. You CANNOT say it will cost you $___ to do a load of clothes since there's all the variables. Let's start with water temperatures. How much heating will depend on the temperature of the water in the first place. Anyone who lives in a northern climate knows that the water temperature from the tap is far different on Christmas Eve than on the 4th of July! Then comes the issue of terminology. "Hot", "warm" and "cold" are relative terms. Some laundry is fine to wash in "cold" water, but not in nearly ice water! "Cold" water in laundry terms (check your detergent specs) should be 70 - 80° so many times to get "cold" water, you would need to heat it! Plus keep in mind that detergents do work anywhere near as well in temperatures below 60°. Powders especially, don't dissolve as well in truly cold water and even liquids don't dissolve as well. If they don't dissolve, they don't do the job as well. And then there's the issue of cost of heating. If you use steam, natural gas, propane, electric, wood or your mother-in-law's flaming breath, it'll have a different cost to heat it and many of them will vary from time of year. So be careful getting sucked in by these websites. They can be used as a guideline for educating yourself but don't take everything as gospel. Some other things here that are interesting: I'm always amused with people using bluing. Why? Do you know what bluing is? It's not "whiting"! Bluing dyes your clothes blue and it's an optical illusion to make you think your clothes are more white. Similar in concept to different lighting making things look different. Bluing washes out and has to be replaced to continue the illusion. As far as hot water shrinking clothes, well, that's seldom true. "Hot" water to many people in laundry is only 95°-120°! Your dryer gets much hotter than that so how can body-temperatures shrink clothes? Now if you boil your clothes, that's different but I doubt many here use near-boiling water temperatures. I think most would be surprised how cold their water temps are. I haven't even addressed heat losses in the pipes and the machines yet. Many people have their water heaters set too low. Only some washers have built-in heaters. So if you use a frontload, have your water heater set at only 120° or less, and factor in the pipe losses, then the loss in the machine since the colder machine tub will cool the water and since FLs use less water it'll cool more than a toploader, you can have some really cold washing temps. Take a thermometer and measure the water in the drum sometime. Some washers have a warm rinse option but they're fewer and fewer with the regulations now mandating energy efficiency. Mine doesn't have a warm rinse option. Occasionally I run a short wash cycle to fill the tub, then switch to rinse and spin. And my machine does a spin drain. I'm skeptical about the debate over neutral drain vs spin drain allegedly putting dirt back into clothes. After all, in a spin drain (like front loaders) you're essentially forcing the dirty water back through or into the clothes again too, instead of letting it settle on them. This is part of rinsing clothes IMO. And part of the detergent's job to lift and suspend the dirt. I'm also skeptical when people say they use so much less detergent in a front load. Look at any HE detergent and you get the same number of loads from a bottle or box. And by the comments of the laundramaniacs in the laundry forums, you need to use enough detergent to get the maximum effect from a front loader. Insufficient detergent, too much softener (which I don't use anyway), too cold a water are all contributing factors to smelly washers and mold buildup. Warmer water cleans better. That's been proven. Now there's an issue of how dirty do your clothes get as to how much cleaning do they need. Some people don't get their clothes dirty and really a rinse would "clean" the clothes sufficiently. I used to use cold water washes under the theory of saving money but after reading the science in laundry, the truth about temps and realizing hot, warm and cold are ambiguous and undefined terms, I was most things now in 130°-140° water and use a tap cold rinse (since I don't have another option) most of the time and occasionally will warm rinse things if I feel it necessary. Saving money? I laugh when I see people spend upward of $1.50 per load on imported detergents and then quibble about a few pennies to heat some water. I tend to save money on detergent and not feel bad about spending a few cents to clean bacteria out of the clothes a little better. I use Tide Free & Sensitive detergent and pay only a few cents per load for detergent. I refuse to use softener, another saving and no dryer sheets, savings again. Plus the reality is I can't really see a difference since going to warmer wash temps in my bills, but I see an improvement in my laundry.