I don't understand the last post to this thread? Thermasol offers a 5-year replacement warranty on all their controllers. Why would you pay to replace it? Maybe you had it more than 5 years? If so, then it's too bad it failed but how long do you expect it to last? I doubt you could expect a car to last reliably with no problems longer than 5 years, so why expect that of your steam shower. I have a PRO-395 that I installed 14 months ago. It just failed tonight. Not sure if it is the controller board or the heating element, but it stopped producing steam. Called tech support and they are shipping me a new replacement unit tomorrow and paying for the install, all at no cost. I am going to call them tomorrow to talk to them about the fact that it failed so soon. They are supposedly the best and charge a premium for their product. I am curious how they will explain that it failed so soon. Will update this post if they say anything interesting. Update: Spoke to them this morning and they are sending me a new unit, and pay for installation charge. One other thing. Someone in the tread above talked about making their shower with a 10 ft ceiling. Don't do that! That is just dumb, and will affect the experience of a good steam. If you ever want to make your steam shower bigger, do it in the length or width but never in the height. My house has 10 ft. ceilings, but my shower has a 7.5 ft up to an 8 ft. ceiling and that is plenty high enough. The 7.5 ft part is over the bench so the fact that it is lower there makes no difference because you are sitting down.

We use American National for everything - home, auto and umbrella. (Our umbrella policy is under $300/year, iirc -- and there's no $500K deductible, though we do have to keep the limits on our auto and home higher than the minimum since those pay first-- I suspect that is what the scenario above is saying -- the $500K "deductible" on the umbrella is actually the $500K that the auto policy pays, then the umbrella kicks in for anything over that. So the mimimum auto liability has to be $500K even though the state only requires $100K) At any rate, I've not had to file a claim but when I was rear-ended, they were helpful in dealing with the other guy's insurance. However, like someone above said, I really do think you need to switch often to get the best rates -- they have steadily jacked my rates every year in spite of not having any claims. I shop once in a while but they make it hard to compare because they give you a cash-back rebate of 20% of your premium every year after you've been claim-free for 3 years. After the cash back is taken into account, they are always the cheapest....but if we ever file a claim, we lose the cash back for 3 years. It's actually genius on their part because it discourages us from filing little claims -- we get anywhere from $700-800 back every year so losing 3 years of that would cost us around $2400 in lost cash back -- ergo we wouldn't file a claim for anything under that. That said, we are going to be adding a new teen driver to our policy soon so I fear our claim-free streak may come to an end. Anyone have any good experiences with insurance companies that don't eat you alive when you add a teenage driver????

I have figured out a budget for getting the house into good rental condition, and I think we can do that for $17K. We are going to proceed with getting a loan from Kevin's credit union (after I get my credit unfrozen) for $100K, $19K will go toward the price above what we want to pay in cash, and then $17K to perhaps $20K will go toward renovations. Whatever we have left over we will pay back to the credit union, but they are giving us a good rate at 3.7%. Whatever we pay off will decrease the amount of time we have to pay back the loan, but not the monthly payments. One repair we will need to make ourselves is the heater for the pool/spa. I estimate this at $3K, but it will be worth it because people have already told me that they are willing to pay the $40-$50 per day charge for heating the pool when they rent in the winter. In May through October, there will be no need to heat the pool, but we need to have that option to offer. The main renovation we will do will be to change the bathtubs to walk-in showers. That's what we want for ourselves, and people have told me that they do not take baths in rental properties and prefer the walk-in showers. Anyway, to answer my original question, it looks like we are going to use my brother's credit union (from Sony) for our loan, and I will be meeting with him tomorrow at 11:00 AM with the loan officer. Tomorrow morning Kevin will do the wire transfer for the escrow from his bank on the Sony lot, and I will meet him after that.

Weather sites available on the Web are going to be way off the actual temperature outside your house where your heat pump is sitting. Accuweather temp vs your actual outdoor temperature could be wrong by over 10 Deg. F at times. This means you won't be switching from Gas to Heat Pump at the correct times and you won't get the savings in heating fuel costs. Further if the Accuweather is wrong in the wrong direction (telling your stat it is 40 DegF when it is actually 30 DegF at your location) then you run the chance of frying your compressor due to starting when it is too cold and if it does start you won't get much heat so your house won't heat up. Further what if you internet is down (WIFI router / ISP modem locks up or you ISP is doing service) You know this happens all the time and of course it will happen when you need it most. I would stay away from any thermostat that wants to use some website to switch between heating fuels. If the stat doesn't have a real hardwired outdoor sensor then don't buy it. All this fancy smart thermostat stuff is cool but I will take reliability over fancy technology any day. After all its only a thermostat do you really need to look at your indoor temp on your phone? Maybe smart stat is practical if you have some cabin up north you want to turn the heat on remotely the day before you arrive. But then again hopefully someone doesn't hack in and turn your heat up 90 for the entire month of Jan as that would be an expensive bill for not even being there.