Michael Short, Insurance Agent South Bay Great questions and answers. Before this life I was in the Mechanical Contracting business large commercial. There are some great answers in the threads above. 1. Know why you are getting the insurance and what it is you are protecting ( for all lines, but for the sake of discussion keep on homes you live in although most people auto is their largest liability). 2. As you are doing now find out the rebuild price per sqft. in your area 3. All fires are not equal. Your home burns down you can take bids negotiate, prices remain what they are. All of the homes in your area burn down forget it. Like my dad used to say ... son the price of poker just went up, right before he would take all my money :). Not enough contractors to go around highest bid wins. 4.How much would a vacant lot or a burned down house sell for. In Willow Glen I saw a burned down home sell roughly $800k .... 5.Prices go up they don't go down especially in these times... sheets of plywood last year home depot 7-10 dollars each now 50-60 dollars!!! Your insurance agent should give you price/s on per sqft cost to rebuild In the end its your home and your decision. Your agents job is to give you the information to assist you If your looking to save money go with a high deductible and do the math 10k vs 20k ded. Remember you don't come out of pocket on your home owners insurance claim. Whatever the "approved claim" is they take that ded amount and pay you the difference. Like one person said know what you need to rebuild and know what you need to walk away with and not be sick to your stomach. New home owners that put down 1.5% may be in a much different situation then someone with 50-100% equity. Hope this helps You can shoot me an email if you have any questions. mshort@farmersagent.com

I didn't fully address this question: "Am I right that the MUA can actually suck external air anywhere into the house that we deem it convenient to do so as long as it starts when the range hood starts? If so, perhaps we could just do this in our laundry room, which is at the edge of the house and where the noise will not bother anyone." Short answer is yes. If the MUA system is passive (no blower), then incoming MUA will indeed be pulled into the house due to the hood system. The pressure drop will depend on the flow rate, the size of the "hole" to the outside, and filter pressure drop. (Will you design to block sparrows, or bugs, or dust?) Note that a silencer, such as Fantech makes, can be used on the MUA system just as one can and should, where room exists, be used in the hood system. In the former it would be located downstream of the MUA blower, while for the latter is would be located between hood and blower. In the passive case, the air flow automatically begins when the hood system starts. For active (with blower) MUA, a means of sensing need is needed to turn on the MUA system and to regulate its flow rate. One method is to sense current to the hood blower. Another is to sense airflow in the hood ducting. A third is to measure the difference between the inside and outside air pressure. So long as one cannot block the flow between laundry room and kitchen, then MUA intake there is OK. In such a case, it may be simpler to add heating capacity to the room as an alternative to controlled duct heating. In SF, the amount of heating required might be minimal most of the time. (Click to enlarge.)

This is one is about half mile northwest of the other modern house you posted in Golden Gate Heights. The views from this part of the hill are amazing - you can see the ocean, Golden Gate Bridge, Marin Headlands, Presidio, and GG Park. Lots of beautiful hawks in the area. It's already under contract so no open house this weekend. Too bad, I would love to see it in person.

Carrie - we originally thought we would go with quartz, but all the quartz slabs we looked at in the local warehouses have veins that didn't look natural to us. We didn't want to settle with all/mostly white but rather have some patterns in the stone. Then we saw the porcelain slabs where they took a high-res photo of natural stone and "imprinted" it onto the slab along with the glossy layer to lock it in. Looks beautiful just like marble, but with the same high hardness as regular tiles, is non-porous (doesn't stain), super heat resistant (I can put a 500-degree pan on the countertop right after pulling from the oven; this would "burn" quartz as quartz has plastic resins in it). The drawback is that fabricating porcelain slabs is more difficult (thus more expensive) as the edges can more easily chip while being cut; thus the necessity to find a reputable fabricator who has worked on porcelain slabs a ton before and has all the proper equipment designed to handle porcelain. Insist that you go see examples of their work and then evaluate.