Macgyvers, ACR copper is clean, dry and capped. There are no impurities inside of the pipe. Just look down a length of it and a length of pipe used for regular plumbing. Good piping practice dictates that you leave the ends capped while you are installing it and when you are "brazing" the pipe you should have dry nitrogen with only about 2 or 3 pounds of pressure flowing through the pipe. That means special tools, regulators etc. to do it right. You know that black stuff you get on the outside of pipe when you solder? Well you get it on the inside of the pipe too when you braze, and the inside of a refrigeration system just does not like that stuff flowing along with the nice clean, pure freon. Incidentally, the difference between soldering and brazing is about a thousand degrees. Whereas some solders flow at 3 to 4 hundred degrees sil-fos flows at around 12 or 14 hundred degrees, (correct me if thats off guys)depending on the percentage of silver in the stick. Brazing is the strongest joint you can make with copper, the drawback is you tend to leave tiny pinholes in the joints. Even someone who has brazed miles of pipe and hundreds of joints will occasionally end up with a pinhole leak. It could be a tricky joint to braze, close to flammable surfaces, over confidence, not enough heat, or a number of reasons, but it happens. Now, you have intentions of doing these lines up yourself then have someone come in and pressurize, leak check and charge the system. If you're not holding pressure and you have to look for that pinhole that could be time consuming. And all the while this guy is gonna be standing there watching (AND BILLING) you because fixing leaks wasn't part of the deal. But you're paying for his time. Looking and fixing a couple of leaks can cost you some pretty decent but wasted cash. But on the other hand if you pay this guy to do the work you should be able to agree on a price before he even starts. Now if the guy has leaks and it takes him all night to find and fix then, what the hell do you care? He's dipping into his own pocket now not yours. Bottom line, if refrigeration piping isn't done right I and every other knowledgeable tech in this forum will guarantee you that you will definately shorten the life of your system. Just my opinion.

So yesterday buddy comes over to look over things with the a/c system and I think we've got things nailed down properly now. The superheat for the given ambient temperature and heat loading from the indoor coil was way off (5F) vs. the 14-15F that it was supposed to be so he had to remove some of the refrigerant (I was quite surprised how little he had to remove to get the superheat up) and we even went as far as measuring the furnace's CFM flow rating using a differential manometer. I'm pushing roughly 1000CFM across a 2 ton coil so which is a tad bit on the high side but my colleauge says it's a margin of safety for the a/c to not freeze over as we have relatively little humidity in the air would means that on the cooler days we wouldn't be heat loading the coil enough which could lead to freeze up. I personally would like to try running my furnace on the lowest speed to get the 855 CFM but I'm not sure how that will affect the superheat. Presumably I would imagine that if a system is charged properly using the superheat method for fixed orifice systems that blower speed shouldn't dramatically impact the superheat values to the point where they're completely out of whack. I would guess that superheat would rise but isn't that sort of a given? I mean hotter days for example would increase loading so therefore superheat should rise no? For the record the pressure reading on the manometer with the furnace on medium low with a 3M 1500 series filter installed has a -0.44 in wg static pressure difference. With no filter the static pressure diff changes to -0.55. Humidity was still somewhat of an issue yesterday night when it was raining but it was quite cool outside. I had to drop the tstat to 21C to force start the a/c on but after just 20 minutes the house was nice and dry and less stuffy. Just for the sake of my understanding does TXV technically do any better or worse job of temperature/humidity control over a fixed orifice system IF both systems were installed properly and charged to near perfection? I have a friend that is looking to install a/c and his contractor insists on having TXV and says that fixed orifice is evil and should never be used. I find that rather extreme to make a claim like that. I've tried to do my own research online and although it's a given that TXV is the way to go I think it has a lot to do with the fact that it will better protect the compressor from liquid flooding + it's more forgiving for techs that do an incorrect charge on the system - critical charge isn't nearly as important on a TXV system vs. fixed orifice. Thanks,

Follow-up: We decided to go the heat pump route. I realize it's slightly cheaper to heat with natural gas right now, but also remember the days not too long ago (2005, 2008) when natural gas was 3x more expensive. In the end, for less than $200 we added the flexibility to switch over if the pricing warrants. Cheap insurance against future (inevitable) spikes, IMO. I was thinking of initially setting things up so that the HP & furnace each run about 6 months a year (thinking that will maximize the lifespan of the system with a minimal energy cost increase.) Good idea? Maybe we should just always heat with whatever the lowest cost option is and not worry about how many months each piece of equipment is working? Anyway, I didn't want to leave without thanking everyone (especially tigerdunes and neohioheatpump, both very active & helpful participants in this thread.) This forum has been an excellent resource, not only for the comments related to our specific situation, but for the wealth of information on virtually any HVAC topic!

Get a root irrigator and flood the heck out of the root zone through to the surface. If you can turn it all to mud, then the mud will settle into the pockets and the air will bubble up. If you just stomp it down the the surface compacts and becomes more resistant to water penetration, and the lower pockets remain. Since it is a new planting, digging it up and putting it in a pot is a good idea also. Make sure that it is well watered and in the shade for a week or two. I just did that with a rose that I planted in March. It was declining despite pampering in the ground. Within 3 days it has burst forth with growth. I'm breathing a sigh of relief. Also possible is that there is not a pocket, but that there is just preferential drainage, so that the water just runs past the dry spots. It's like when you put water on dry peat moss, it is hard to re-wet. I'm having that problem in my bigger pots, and I had to rework those pots. Good luck! Gotta save Abe!