I think with an RV you're talking one 20A circuit. For a whole house application, you're looking at a three wire 208V 200A (or more). Comparing apples to rhutabagas. For what you want, you're looking at "around" $10,000 depending on how much of the work you can do yourself. My brother went that route and saved some $$ as we did the work ourselves. Realistically, decide what you absoloutely need and figure the KW generator you need. Buy that. Get some extension cords that will feed your pumps, frig, whatever is critical to you. Arrange a ground wire from your service entrance to where you'll set the gen set. Lots of folks are killed/injured because they use an ungrounded gen set. When you lose power drag the gen set out of storage, Add new gas and plug it in. That's the cheapest way to go. DO NOT research backfeeding your breaker box from the gen set. It can be done and will work, until you kill some lineman who's trying to get your power back. Not to mention it's illegal, you'll go to jail, and things get nasty after that. BTW, if you go the auto transfer route, you'll have to go with a propane storage tank, unless you have access to natural gas. The tank is probably gonna cost "around" $1200 filled and will sit there year after year with you paying tank rental. Just MHO, retired EE. Good luck, Ev

Yeah, definitely an old discussion. I think it pretty much got torn to shreds by the rather eloquent opposition. But the real question is: how much markup is acceptable, and when should one attempt to bargain with one's mechanic for a slightly lower price when the parts are known to be more than 100% marked up? Of course, the immediate answer to the bargaining question (as discussed above) is to simply find another mechanic who will charge a total amount which is acceptable. However, what if I have come to appreciate a particular mechanic / business to a point where I want to do business with said mech/business as opposed to supporting their competitors? In other words - let's say I am quoted $300 for parts plus $145 for labor (about 1.5 hrs) for a repair. I do the research, and find that a typical supplier will charge $100 for the parts. If I pay the quoted price, the business gets $445 for the ---- In defense of the repair industry: I am a skilled PC (computer) technician, and have worked as such before - both employed and freelance. I, too, had to deal with the issue of mark-up. Doing freelance work, I felt bad about marking-up goods that I did nothing but diagnose the need for and order. As such, I did some research on what is fair in terms of mark-up. The conclusion I reached in the end was that 100% mark-up is typical and thus, fair. Ergo, I would judge that markup in excess of 110% is "gouging" unless some manner of extra effort was required to obtain the parts. However, for a business to be efficient, the employees don't have time to shop around. Therefore, they will most likely use their standard parts dealer, at whatever cost the dealer quotes (they don't care - the customer pays for it). So the only way to really know if mark-up is exceeding a fair amount is to contact the dealer yourself (perhaps under the guise of an employee of the shop you're a patron of ;) ). So, don't expect that your shop always gets parts at the lowest price themselves - they can get gouged as well. --- And to Dr. Farrell, I enjoyed your humorous anecdote about offering independent business to the mechanics. I know _I_ would much rather give my money directly to these people than to give the shop say, $65 an hour just to have the shop pay the mech $8 an hour - I've been on both sides of this situation before. On the other hand, don't get all high-and-mighty because you can put "Dr." in front of your name - even sodas can do that. Agreeably, I doubt pharmacists really work all that hard. However,lawyers DO do a lot of hard work, and are doctors as well - most of them just don't get such big heads about it that they have to _title_ themselves. Furthermore, intelligence isn't measured my how much schooling one has managed to progress through - the mere cost of schooling, for one, has seen to that. That being said, there are some of us who work in certain lower-paying fields because we are, for the time being, happier here. There is a big difference between enjoying one's work and simply enjoying one's paycheck. Which is one reason which we will always have plumbers, mechanics, et al. - I, for one, fully support doing one's own work - when such action is an option, of course - but we can't each do ALL the work which could be done by others. Sure, I can learn how to fix parts in my own vehicle, or I can pay somebody else to do it for me; but paying for it doesn't make me less intelligent. In fact, this do-it-yourself fallacy of logic quickly spirals out of control. Did you mine, refine, form, etc. your own glass, metals, and plastics to use as raw materials for your truck? Did you create each part yourself from these materials, then assemble them into a functioning vehicle, etc., etc.? In our all-too-short lives, we have to pick and choose our battles. For you, education and minor vehicle part replacement seem to be central to your enjoyment of life; but we all find value in different things, sirrah. By the way, what does a physician need a utility truck for? I can only assume it's for "squander[ing] away [your] earnings" as mentioned earlier in the case of the half-hearted mechanic. The enlightened find drinking more rewarding than trying to out-do their neighbors in a worldly possessions contest. (Hey, I can make uneducated assumptions and generalize too, can't I?) Knowledge does not grant education Education does not grant intelligence Intelligence does not grant wisdom

I think this is the one you want (see link). I'm considering it as well, since I have a similar problem with no return line. It goes under the sink in the farthest bathroom. You'll need an outlet for it to plug into. There are similar devices made by Watts and others, but this Laing unit seems to get the best reviews. My only concern is the degree to which you'll be paying a lot more energy costs by forcing the water heater to work more. Of course, that has to be weighed against the lost water (which you once paid to heat) costs and the value of your time/convenience in waiting for hot water. Definitely get a version that includes a mechanical timer so you're not heating water all night. Here is a link that might be useful: autocirc

I guess I'm more ignorant of loans than I thought after 30 years of financing. I didn't "choose" Citizen's Auto Finance - the Ford dealership chose them for us. (Better percentage than what Ford Motor Credit was offering) And what is interesting - this is for a $30k vehicle in which we put down $15k. DH's truck "went up" so we were forced to buy him a vehicle and since I really didn't "want" another car payment we decided to put down enough to make the payment palatible. For every other car purchase I've ever done in my life it's always been just trade with no (or very little) money down. That's why I was so taken aback at all of this. I've just never had any of my other car loan companies call. It isn't one of those side of the road deals. We've got plenty invested that we're not going to lose it. I guess I just thought all dealership car loans were the same.