The NEW website is up (and sorry, yes, part of it is still under construction - I do have a life, of sorts). AS members provide photos, we're adding GARDEN GALLERIES - the name of each gallery will include the County - so you can see exactly what's growing in 'them thar hills' (ooh! Dahlia Double Entendre) At our March Meeting we'll have a slide show of the NEWEST Dahlias to be introduced. (ItÂs also a chance to start learning about Dahlias before you try to pick out tubers! At each of our Meetings, we have a short discussion about what you should be doing, at that time, in your Dahlia patch.) The TUBER SALE is slated for Saturday, May 13th 2006 at the Arboretum. (shhh: The Members Only Sale IS held the Saturday before, at a secret location. But anyone at the March or April Meetings will know where!) And we're offering a special deal: 12 bucks will get you into the Members' Only Sale, a box with those yellow wooden tags & a marker, some reference materials, AND get you a Mentor for a year. Think about it - somebody who knows what they're doing, at your beck & call! AND THERE WILL BE OTHER TIMES & LOCATIONS to get Tubers or cuttings. (Check out the website  if the info isnÂt there, itÂs Âcause we donÂt have the specifics yet, so keep checking back). Our ANNUAL SHOW is always the 2nd Saturday of September - this year, Sep 9 & 10, at the Arboretum, Noon til 5 pm - CAUTION: We can't open the doors on Saturday until the Judging is completed, even if it's after 12 noon. But in the lobby of the Arboretum, the winners are brought out and placed in the Court of Honor as theyÂre identified. NEW this year: a YOUTH competitive division & an UNJUDGED division (for older flowers that perhaps canÂt compete fairly but are still beautiful, or just for Dahlia growers to show off their favorites) SPEAKERS this year: WeÂre trying for a nationally recognized Floral Designer and a Photographer. Our goal is to increase participation in Artistic Divisions of Arranging and Photography. THE SHOW IS NOT LIMITED TO MEMBERS ONLY! And we sell cut flowers. And we have educational opportunities! We encourage our members (& other Dahlia growers) to participate not only in our show but in the NC Mountain State Fair competition as well. Our members are also available to talk about Dahlias and the Society - at our Show and at the Fair. And at your gardening club. Here is a link that might be useful: CarolinasDahliaSociety

nc I just finished building a home in N. VA, Blueridge Mtn area - similar climate to yours. We live on the main level of the house - second level is just for guests like you plan. We have heat pumps (it's geothermal but still a heat pump) with electric auxilliary heat (what I call toaster mode). Here are some things we did and learned - hope they help: The new heat pump system works great but only because we were nuts about making sure the house was well insulated and sealed properly. We used 2x6 framing, blown cellulose insulation in attic & walls, added extra insulation in attic (R40), used high quality windows & doors. Pick an exterior door type that is designed to provide a tight seal all the way around the door - with 3 point latching. Caulk every nook and cranny on the inside of the house including at the floor and ceiling along the stud top and bottom plates and between butted wall studs where large air gaps are common. Use foam in areas where cellulose won't stick too well. Personally inspect every inch of the house after the insulatimg company says they are "done" - you will find holes that need to be plugged. I had an old lenox heat pump in the first home i bought and the emergency heat always came on - and the bills were out of sight AND the house was never comfortable. After I replaced the lenox with a high efficiency Amana heat pump, it was a huge improvement in both comfort and reduction of toaster mode. Heat pumps have come a long way and you are in a great climate to consider them. In my new home the toaster mode only comes on when a) it is below zero outside, or b) the heat breaks - both cases are rare. It is nice if you go with a second stage gas burner, but probably not needed if you do the insulation right. The main reason I wish I had seond stage gas heat is that you can run it off a backup power generator. Both my main and Aux Heat is electric and would need a massive generator to run it. So my backup heat is wood burning and gas firpelaces. If I could do it all over again, I would go with the second stage gas heater. If you go with that make sure that the second stage and the blower fan can be operated off a backup generator if the main power goes out and stage 1 heat is out and wire it that way, even if you don't do a generator right away. It takes a lot of power to start a compressor used in stage 1 but almost nothing to run the HVAC contols and start the second stage gas burners. We have separate heat pumps for the main level and the second story and I do recommend that. But I also zoned the second floor system because in my past homes, the second floor bedroom temps varried quite a bit depending on sun angle and season. Plus - when my parents come to town my dad likes to create his own tropical environment - and so I really put the zones in so he could do whatever he wanted in that 1 room and not mess up the rest of my house:) I have been doing a lot of experimenting with the tstats ans found that when I set the upstairs tstats to 62 and the downstairs to 65 - the upstairs HVAC system almost never turns on. In summer I set the second floor to 81, downstairs to 78, and again second floor HVAC almost never on. So that saves us money and we like that feature. Soon after we moved in, I added humidifiers to my heat pumps in the basement (but not on second floor unit). I had thought that with a heat pump I would not need these, but I was wrong. Bypass humidifiers are not expensive and well worth the money and effort to put them on. When you are planning out your plumbing, have them add a hot water pipe and valve near each of your your units. It won't cost much to do this and using hot water in the humidifier is better than cold, especially with a heat pump. With humidification, the house will feel warmer at a given temp than a dry house will. A few months after we moved in to our newly built, energy efficient humidified home - we started to sense a musty smell around the June time frame. Turns out that since our house was so tight, we had mositure building up in our basement on humid days and it had no place to go. Learned that I needed a whole house de-humidifier to fix that problem and so far that has worked great. You live in a humid area so you may want to have one of these incorporated into your system, or at least plan for one. We found that when we contolled the humifity level to within 45 to 55%, the house feels cooler and it allowed us to keep the tstat at 78 where we might have to run it at 76 to get the same level of comfort we like. I have also discovered that since my home is so tightly sealed, I need to add in an Energy Recovery Ventilator that will periodically bring fresh air into the home and exhaust stale air. You might want to think about the ventilation part of HVAC - it is important. There are a lot of good posts on this forum about how ERV's work and the benefits. As far as hot water, I have two LP Rinnai tankless units that are connected in series. Normally only 1 unit fires, the second is only for when the demand is higher than normal like when we have guests. I like the Rinnai's for a lot of reasons - but my favorite is that I can run them off my backup generator so we can have hot water when the power goes out (which it does quite a bit where we live). Placement of tankless generators is key, and you have to be very careful since the venting requirements for these things may limit where you can put them. If you are planning to use tankless, you need to think about placement very early in the design - especially if you are thinking about a finished basement. We chose to put our units in the basement, directly under the master bathroom so we get instant hot water there. However, the kitchen and several other sinks are on the other side of the house - 88 feet away. We discovered that it was taking almost 5 minutes to get hot water at those distant sinks (88 feet of pipe holds many gallons of water which takes about 5 minutes to bleed out of a standard sink running at 1.5 GPM). Unfortunately, we could not place a tankless unit in the basement at the other end of the house due to venting issues. I would have prefered a smaller thrid tankless system at the distant end but instead wound up putting in small hot water recirculating system to eliminate that 5 minute delay at those sinks. I recommend pre-wiring the house so that you can add in a small backup generator later - even if you don't plan to have one initially. Have the electricians install a sub-panel in the basement near the location where you would likely put the generator - preferably on a side of the house down wind and away from the master bedroom. Have them wire your heat pumps, refigerators, well pump, septic pump, tankelss hot water, TV, Internet, some lights and outlets, freplace contoles etc. - whatever else you need to survive in an extended outage off that sub-panel. The delta cost for them to wire it this way during construction is very small and you will love it later if you decide to put a generator in since the wiring will be much easier. Best of luck in your new build!

I know this comment is very much after the fact but I would just like to offer Seattle and the greater Puget Sound area as a wonderful place to retire. I have lived here my entire life and while I have traveled extensively across the country, there is nowhere else I would consider living. First, the area is extremely scenic.......make that drop-dead gorgeous!! Anywhere you might choose to settle will provide views to mountains and natural areas and you are never more than a few miles away from water.........lots of water!! The Sound, many lakes and rivers and streams. Because of the geography (nothing here is really flat), view properties are plentiful. Any outdoor activity you are interested in - skiing and other winter sports, hiking, camping, hunting, boating, etc. - can be easily addressed without any extensive car travel. Second is the weather. Most who have never lived here have huge misconceptions about the weather. IMO, it is excellent. Never too hot, never too cold and contrary to common opinion, it does NOT rain here constantly!! In fact, total average annual rainfall in Seattle is much lower than many other places in the US. Summers are sunny and very dry........winters damp and cool and snow infrequent. Seldom a need for any A/C and no summer humidity. There are 4 distinct seasons and each offers its own attractions. And no strange weather issues that generate ferocious storms.......no hurricanes, no tornadoes and while we do exist on a major fault line, earthquakes are extremely rare. Seattle is a vibrant, active and very cosmopolitan city. Lots of cultural activities, a major sports center and a foodie paradise. Yes, it is expense to live in town but there are scores of smaller communities within easy access of the city that are far less expensive. I live across the Sound, just a quick ferry ride away from downtown Seattle but a world away in terms of a rural feel and reduced cost of living. Puget Sounders for the most part are extremely well educated, entrepreneurial, friendly, and polite and many have a very artistic bent with many smaller communities known for their support of the arts. In short, living in the Puget Sound/greater Seattle area will provide all the advantages of a big city (colleges, employment, superb medical care, museums, theatres, restaurants and shopping) combined with a very strong community feel of the smaller, more rural and very scenically located surrounding towns. What's not to like ??

Thanks so much for the response, belle_va. LOL...I probably should have used the word "conservative" to describe my budget. It's 15K for about 12 linear feet of base cabs, 7 feet of upper cabs, an island, and 2 pantry cabs. I've checked out the big box stores and have a quote for Shuler that meets the budget requirements and I've also looked at Showplace (no quote yet). This is a "forever" home, as they say, so if I have to pull money out of a different area for the kitchen cabinets, I'm willing to. As soon as you walk through the front door, you'll see the kitchen, so the quality is important. I'm currently thinking of natural cherry with quartz countertop, uppers inset, base full overlay. Any thoughts or recommendations are welcome!