IâÂÂm sorry for my text! I have 2 pipes elevating my wood off the floor w/o any breathing once that area is filled with ash/coals. The added expanded metal on the pipe has added breathing and separating of ash and coal. I also have 1 yr old Red Oak I feel this breathing will allow to burn with this cold front coming into North TX tomorrow. Wish Us Well On These Small Old Lots and large trees that are barely clean from the last front approx a week ago. The freezing moisture before leaves have fallen or thinning is a major issue. The wood is becoming plentiful but the hazards are the major issue. Our Live Oak needs more thinning since our 2010 Ice Storm. The Silver Leaf Maple 2 door away is not worth burning but it had to come down for the neighborâÂÂs safety. I did get some Pecan with more and Red Oak coming in a similar situation.

Buy a BP monitor. As soon as your face feels flushed and hot, get off the treadmill and take your blood pressure. That way you will know how your BP is at the moment your face feels flushed. On the other hand, if you have just recently started an exercise routine you may be going too hard and fast at first. Do you take your pulse? There is a healthy range at which your heart rate should be during exercise, depending on your age. For example if you are 45, your pulse after 10 seconds should be about 17. If it is too high, you are exercising too hard. A good way to monitor your pace is by talking. If you can say a long sentence without having to take a breath, your pace is too slow. If you can't talk without gasping after a few words, you are exercising too hard. If you can talk comfortably while breathing deeply -- and if you feel comfortable enough that you would like to continue -- then you're in the right range... assuming you're in good health. I have low blood pressure and my face gets flushed and hot when I exercise too. Jen

Scyrn, Are you talkin' about my house? Our basement is just like yours and we have 4 Stairmaster machines down there in the winter. In the summer we haul them up (it takes a tractor and a chain-hoist to do so) and put them in the middle bay of the hay barn. It would be cooler (temps, not style) to keep them in the basement year round, but the view and fresh air are better in the barn. We move them in in October and out in May, as they need to be at least at 50F for the lubrication to work. I'm not going to tell you to paint anything (we haven't), but there are a couple of issues, primarily moisture and potential radon to think about. The radon you can test for. Keep in mind that when you are exercising you are spending more time there and also breathing more, so I wouldn't do this in any marginal situation, unless the radon was below the danger point. The moisture is another issue. Even if you have a poured concrete floor, if wasn't installed with a vapor barrier, you're still going to have rising soil moisture issues, in addition to the moisture from the undoubtedly unsealed basement walls. Moisture/humidity can be hard on the machines and also breeds its own problems with molds and mildews, which again, when you're exercising you'll be more exposed to by time and by the fact that you're breathing more. We have no vapor barrier under our concrete (yet), so we park the machines on rubber-backed mats (HD or Lowes, they look like that curly polypropolene doormat stuff, but are larger than door mats and have rubber --or more likely plastic -- backing), which protects their feet from rising moisture. It does nothing for the rest of the floor, though. We're in far northern NY, so we also have to heat the basement a bit to keep the machines happy in the deepest winter. We use quartz heaters or small box heaters. We figure the heat rises to the underside of the floor anyway (what isn't shed through the side of the exposed foundation, of course), so it's not too bad. Now, for the human experience: it's really great to have ex. machines so convenient to the living space. My husband works out on them before anything elese in the am, and all he has to do to go to the gym is walk down a flight of stairs. Beats getting in the car any day. If we kept the machines there year-round I would want to look into installing some of those tricky light wells to capture daylight and throw it around the room so it isn't so cavern-like. He has a TV and VCR there so that's what he watches. The other thing, is that even if we had the space, I would not want the tremendous weight of the machines upstairs. They're happier down on the concrete or out on the barn floor, which is made of hand-hewn oak 4 X 16 's that don't even shiver when we plunk the Gravitron down. If we ever did get good concrete down, I would consider painting that surface a light color, though. You also can buy snap together grids of a subfloor material which would allow a vapor barrier to be laid on top of the concrete, and in turn support the substrate for a finished floor of something like vinyl sheeting. We've considered it, but are still planning on removing the old concrete and having a modern floor poured, perhaps with radiant tubes to handle the heat needs of the machines. HTH, Molly~

Hi guys, thanks for asking! I'm waiting, too. I haven't a clue about the outcome of the test. Usually, if a test looks fine, the technician will at least give me a hint. But this one, who seemed to be in a rather irritated mood even before the test, said, "That's for your doctor to tell you. We're not allowed." So all I know is that I couldn't have done any better with it. During the treadmill part I focused on pleasant, relaxing thoughts to eliminate the possibility of tension skewing the results. (The author Norman Cousins taught me to do this many years ago.) The guy manning the treadmill and EKG readouts (or whatever they were) said, "You did awesome." Now I can only hope my doctor says the same thing. I appreciate you thinking of me! Susan