The two wall units cool the entire first floor, about 800 to 850 sq. ft., very efficiently. I can feel the difference within a few minutes of turning the a/c on when I get home from work and it's 90 outside. I find setting the thermostat at 70 deg. is usually fine. I don't leave the a/c on when I'm not at home. The window a/c in the upstairs bedrooms are fine. Installing a mini-split to cool them would have meant putting another unit on the other side of the house. The ductwork would have been on the outside of the house to each bedwoom. Additional expense ($$$) and the window a/c's work just fine. On the first floor, the ductwork in the kitchen is inside the wall, since it was demo'd down the the studs. However, the ductwork leading to the living room wall unit is on the outside side wall of the house: runs along the ground from the outside unit to where the living room is, and then straight up to where it connects to the wall unit. It's on the side of the house and not very obtrusive. I can't tell you what a difference it has made. Prior to getting this I had a big window unit in the LR that actually did a good job of cooling, but was so noisy that it drowned out the TV sound. Now, all is cool and quiet.

Dh and I have lived in our current house for our entire marriage, 17 years. Truthfully, it was being built when we got married, so we lived in an apt for 2 months, then my parents for a month then it was ready. We live on the outskirts of a waterfront tourist town. We were supposed to be here for 3 years. Dh was in the Navy and this was not supposed to be our forever home as we anticipated being transferred by the Navy. However, dh realized the Navy was not meant to be his career as he didn't want to constantly move once we had kids. We wanted to live close to one of our families, but unfortunately, they live on opposite coasts. He is from the San Francisco Bay Area, and I am from the Wash DC area. Since it was the height of the tech boom at the time dh was getting out of the Navy, and we simply could not afford a home in the Silicon Valley, he got a job here, which fortunately is only 25 minutes from my parents. And here we've stayed. It is NOT my dream home. I don't even really like it. It was small when we moved in, and even smaller after having four kids! We looked around at moving to a different home, but absolutely love our neighbors and our community so finding a home that fit our needs was very difficult. We live in a high COL so home prices made it hard to find something that fit our desires while still being affordable. 10 years ago, we added on and while the space has helped, it hasn't changed the fact that our floorplan isn't desirable to us. We live in a waterfront community with very strict building codes, so we worked within that and have maxed out what we can do w/o completely gutting the house and starting over. With four kids in private school and one off to college in four years, I've pretty much resigned myself that we won't be moving anytime soon, nor can we really afford at this point to do any major changes that would help. I am constantly looking at houses for sale in the area, but the only affordable ones are in tract home subdivisions and that's not type of community we desire. So we make do with what we have. And it's not that my house is bad, but it's not set up well for entertaining, something I'd love to do more often, we had to give up our fabulous screened porch when we added on and cannot add another due to space constraints. I miss that terribly. On the bright side, we have wonderful neighbors, live in a waterfront neighborhood so the kids can fish, swim, kayak, ride their bikes freely (community is a peninsula w/no through traffic), etc. My dream is to move into the historic district in our tourist town where we can walk and bike everywhere. We live 5 miles from there now, but not on bike-friendly roads (though dh is an avid biker and rides them, no way my kids can). There are some really fabulous Arts & Crafts cottages, as well as many other architecturally interesting homes that date back to the 1700s. My hope is to move into one of them some day and have that be our forever home, with a second home in another climate. I wish I could love this home and think of it as my forever home, but it is not ideal for aging. We have three floors, with bedrooms all on the third floor as the garage/rec room are "under" the main living level. My parents still live in the house I grew up - they are going on 50 years there. They will stay until it's too much for them as it's perfect for aging, a rancher. All that said, as much as I want to move, the idea of moving is dreadful to me, which is probably one of the reasons I haven't really pushed for it. The thought of trying to keep my home in "show" condition with four kids, a huge dog that sheds, well, not fun. So perhaps a small part of me continues to find something undesirable about any of the houses I'm always looking at. I figure if I'm going to go through the hassle, the house has to be pretty close to what I want! Love all the interesting stories!

Most of the standalone icemakers have short lives for some bizarre reason. I went through two ulines over the years (the company even gave me the second so I'd stop bitching about how bad they were). Perlick comes highly recommended so that's what I'm trying now. I have other Perlick stuff in my outdoor kitchen, so I do believe they are more of "commercial" quality.

My comments were in response to edlincoln. I think it's kind of simple to be a good neighbor and I do agree this is why the op asked the original question...trying to be a good neighbor. I do not agree with the people who tell the op to just plant whatever, that it doesn't matter how big a tree gets, if it hangs over into neighboring yards, or shades them, and I do not agree that the eventual size of whatever is planted is irrelevant just because the tree might grow slowly. I don't agree that it's okay to just make it someone else's problem in the future. I also don't agree that it's okay to plant trees that will affect what your neighbors do with their property. When you shop for a house, if the lot is already shaded by neighboring trees and you don't like that, you shouldn't buy the house. End of story. I don't think you should be able to force your neighbor to cut down a large tree that pre-dates the purchase. But, when you buy a house, you buy it with future plans for that house/yard. Your neighbors are not being good neighbors if they then plant huge trees that prevent you from enjoying your property in the manner that you originally bought it for. One of my neighbors has this problem. She bought her house first, with a sunny backyard and she put in a pool, a vegetable garden, and planted roses and a small fruit tree (where it would not drop into her pool). Neighbors then planted a tree that grew fairly rapidly. It now hangs into her yard, drops tons of stuff into her pool all the time, and shades most of her back yard. She can no longer have her vegetable garden, her fruit tree is barely hanging on due to the shade and her house is pretty dark now inside. She never wanted a dark home or a shaded backyard. Trimming that tree back to the property line would do nothing to prevent the problems she's having with it, due to lot orientation, pool location, tree location, etc. Does this seem okay to you that her inconsiderate neighbor has done this to her and she no longer gets to do the things she enjoys with her own property? No, she cannot afford to just move (and why should she have to?). If I put up solar panels, which cost a lot of money, do you think it's okay if my neighbor then plants a tree that grows up and shades my panels? Do you think it would be okay if I had a bunch of sun loving plants in my back yard that I grew and carefully tended over several years and a neighbor then decided to plant a row of huge shade trees that then transformed my yard into a place where only shade loving plants would grow?