mkiker...."boil in your own sweat" is such a good way to put it! I'm in TN and I always have on long pants and long sleeves. People think I'm nuts but it keeps the sun and bugs off me and I'm no hotter than I would be nekid. hopefulauthor...As far as the bugs I referred to....you name it I've got it. I'm referring to a wide range of plant eaters and people eaters both. I'm one of those people that a bug will travel miles to bite, passing up hundreds of less desirable dinners, so I particularly loathe anything that is capable of biting or stinging me. Spiders would be at the top of my hate list. I have an across the board range of plants. Large foliage, succulents, gesnariads, orchids. My biggest concern with any plant-eaters are my streptocarpus. I collect them and have about 60 different hybrids. And they are very suseptable to all kinds of bugs. If I bring a bug in on some hardier plant that might not even notice it, it's going to move on to my streps and cause major issues. I do a lot of outdoor gardening (food to flowers) and try to stay as non-toxic as possible, but it only works out to a certain point. Seems like every summer it comes down to me or the bugs. I just don't know how people stay organic. I've read a lot about it and try every year. But the bugs just take over. Sorry, I sort of get on a rant when I talk about my arch enemies. As for the heat... electric heat is less drying. The air never blows as hot. I haven't had gas heat in a long time, but when I did I thought it gave off toxic fumes that might effect the plants. It gives off a smell and electric doesn't. Maybe a new more efficient gas heater would be better. When I had it, I lived in older houses with older heating systems, and mostly up north where the heat ran a lot more than it would here in TN.

Wow, kind of strange to be getting responses four years later! I ended up with a 2012 Ford Edge, which I absolutely love. I bought it in August 2012, and have had no problems whatsoever, except for a couple of flat tires - no fault of the vehicle! Alas, it only seats 5 and there is no 3rd row seating. I got only the base model, FWD only. Thinking about buying another one, this time I'll look at AWD and more options. Replacing my wife's 2005 Taurus, which has also been a very reliable car. All I've replaced on that is one ball joint and of course tires, battery, belt, etc. Ford quality has really improved, IMO. I had a 1986 Bronco, which I bought new. I loved the vehicle because it was my first NEW vehicle, but in retrospect it was a turd. In the 8 years I owned it, aside from normal maintenance, there were constant carburetor problems, vacuum leaks, a cracked exhaust manifold, broken rear drive shaft, the gas tank and tailgate rotted out, several alternators and the ignition computer failed, the windshield cracked several times for no apparent reason (but those were covered by insurance,) replaced rear end pinion bearings twice, and the air pump failed. There were also chronic problems with chassis components and the alignment seemed to be always off. Gee, I think a shorter list would be what DIDN'T go wrong: The transmission worked perfectly! Ultimately, the engine threw a rod in 1994 at 112K miles, less than 8 years after I bought it. I'm pretty sure I spent more on unexpected repairs than the vehicle cost. I sold it to a friend who replaced the engine. Less than a year later, the Bronco caught fire in his driveway and was destroyed.

Any time the flow of air (or part of the air) has to change its velocity vector (direction and/or speed), even slightly, work is done on the air, and this requires either heating or force times distance. Pressure is force over area. Velocity change occurs not only when a duct bends, but when there is turbulence in the duct or at the duct walls, or when the air is forced through a filter, around baffles, etc. Thus, there are many ways that pressure drops occur along a flow path. If not, one could blow through a straw without having to build up pressure in one's mouth. I use a large (three-foot-square) vaned ceiling diffuser to introduce MUA into a hallway adjunct to the kitchen. The diffuser is about 18 feet from the edge of the hood. This configuration was the best option relative to where I could take the air from the roof area. It is my expectation that by the time the air gets to the vicinity of the hood it is flowing relatively smoothly and low in velocity due to the size and length of the hall. Certainly other approaches would work for other kitchens depending on where the air is taken from and how a house is architected. Test kitchens use a porous diffuser panel in an adjacent wall to the hood under test. I am sure that from a functional point of view, MUA flowing out from enough toe-kick area would also work, so long as it wasn't somehow directed at the stove. For example, if a cooktop were on an island, and the entire toe-kick area were grilled using a set of registers, the MUA would flow out and then up in a way that did not disturb the rising effluent from the pans. Even down flow behind a refrigerator can work if the path behind and underneath the refrigerator is relatively open (several times the area of the supplying duct.) Never forget that perfect is the enemy of good enough, and what we are trying to accomplish is good enough capture of grease, moisture, and odor. Good enough is also user dependent, so not everyone needs to put up with the compromises that a nearly perfect MUA system would impose on a house. So, my best advice is to find a way to introduce the air that doesn't blow at the cooking zone and disturb the natural rise of the cooking effluent. kas

Well, I really don't want to get into all the details of kw/hours. Why? Because I know very little about it! I just pay the bills! But here's an article about the high cost SDGE charges for their "tiers". This story says rates go to 48cents/kwh. I'm not going to research it. But I can vouch that with this many people living in one home, that cutting usage down to baseline (even before we had the pool) was never achieved, even without AC, and by the way, we are more coastal than the people in this story. . https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/sd-fi-sdge-highbills-20180913-story.html In defense of the poster who mentioned Californians feel "guilty" about the non-greenness of using AC, yes I know a few people who say stuff like that. Sometimes on Nextdoor people say things like that. We put in solar a couple years ago, so have some relief from high bills, but our solar doesn't cover the whole electricty bill. We have a home with 7 people living in it. Also a large pool and the pool filter takes a lot of juice. Edited to add: in fact, the mayor of Los Angeles (not where I live) has famously said that he feels guilty running his air conditioner, a sound bite that is replayed over and over again on a certain local radio station. So there are plenty of folks who feel it's not green to run AC. (I wouldn't feel guilty, but then again, I haven't researched the environmental effects-- and I don't have AC).