Since I had over a hundred seeds from various lots of lotus pods I decided to try every method I could think of. I used twenty tumbler sized plastic glasses with five seeds per tumbler.I soaked the seeds to soften the shell and then carefully cut them with the Dremel. They were soaked for several days in a half and half solution of hydrogen peroxide and aged tap water. Once the seeds began to swell I distributed them to the tumblers. Several tumblers were placed in a south facing window. Several were placed under grow lights and the remainder; about half were under grow lights angled toward reflective Mylar behind the tumblers. All were on electric grow mats to maintain temperature except the ones under Mylar since there were fluorescent tubes lit under that rack. Two in each smaller group had two inches of clay kitty litter in the tumbler. The larger group of ten had five with the two inches of kitty litter because I expected better results with the Mylar. The ones that had the least difficulty putting up a stem were the ones that had the softened shell completely removed after a few days of swelling. Some that had the shell left on never lost it and eventually stopped growing. I decided once the seed was swollen, the shell was no longer needed and only hindered growth. I removed the shells from all but one tumbler in each group. Those that had the shell remaining never did put down a proper root whether there was soil or not. I removed the shell but those seedlings did not develop very well. I decided to put a dark cover around half of the tumblers. The stems did not twist as much in the uncovered tumblers so I removed them. II think I should have left them covered longer. I expected problems with tap water so I allowed it to age. I had been aware of the problems the chemicals used to purify tap water caused. I do use unaged tap water sometimes but for the lotus seeds I let the fresh water sit overnight to allow those chemicals to dissipate and the water to reach room temperature. I added water to most glasses by allowing it to overflow the rim of the tumbler. This seemed to be most successful as the stems did not twist round each other and tangle as did the ones where I tried to empty the water first. I added two tbs. of fresh hydrogen peroxide each time I changed the water which was every two days. I rotated the tumblers 180o each time I changed the water. After this length of time I don't remember how long it took the groups to develop but the ones in natural sun were the slowest and least stocky, the ones under grow lights somewhat faster and the ones with Mylar were much faster. Those had stronger, more substantial stems and the floating leaves were much larger under Mylar than the other groups. Root development followed the same track with the ones having kitty litter in the bottom developing best. Since things seemed to be stalled at that point, I added soaked kitty litter to all the tumblers. It took some gentle agitation and nudging with a straw to cover the least developed roots and I had to remove an inch or so of water from the tumbler to keep the roots in the clay. I had to spritz the leaves to flush off the sediment. The next time I will try some sandy silt. The plants in the Southern window with only natural light were the least developed when I put them out. There was a fairly wide roof line. The ones that had the Mylar reflector were by far the best of the lot. Over all I had lost about 15% of the seedlings, most in the smaller groups. I placed them all in a preformed 4 foot wide 14 inch deep pond after decanting them. There was 6 inches of soil and stone in the bottom. I used a stone on top of the roots to hold them in place. They stressed for a few days although a cover of floating row cover at night helped. I lost 5 more seedlings apparently from stress. They seemed to be doing quite well at that point with the leaves rising above the water. Then the raccoon visited and totally destroyed all of them. I tried to salvage a few but had no luck. I hope this memory will be some help. The end proved to be very frustrating. I will try again someday and have been collecting seeds. This was my third attempt although I had never used that many seeds before.

I see you are in Canada, must be new to country living or spend winters down south. Not knowing if you are on city water or a well or cistern the first thing I would do is change to ABS with inline heating, ABS is less likely to split as well. Since you are talking -31 temps, C or F, that's cold. A 1500w heater will do nothing in an open space with subzero temps. The heat must be local to the water lines unless the crawlspace is airtight and insulated, then a small heater will do. Heat wrap is not a fire hazard, 7 watts per foot and they are used in millions of homes. And it sure is much more cost effective than a space heater. Go to your local HomeHardware or Canadian Tire store and check out your options.

Well, I would like to see what you posted steve-va. You have my curiosity up. Others have posted links to other sites and they didn't disappear. Apparently folks can contact the administrators and have a post deleted if they don't like it. I think that shouldn't be so easy to do. Some of these forums have a bit of politics going and if you don't agree with the majority your post disappears. I think this is a disservice, because all opinions should be posted. I second what bud wi says, I have dial up and thank goodness I read to the bottom of this post so I wasn't wasting my time and effort too. Not everyone has broadband or wireless service.

Thanks for all your comments everyone :) Marylut i dont think the wall is actually blocking any light really, its just that with the door closed (even though the room is light enough) its really quite obvious that there is a closed door (if that makes any sense!), we thought maybe with the wall taken out it would just open it up some more. Jan, yes an exterior balcony. The balcony you can see from the pictures wraps around to behind the wall behind the fire place and meets up to a sliding door which opens into the dining area. Elizabeth, it would be amazing if it were a lake! But its actually just the view of the valley and houses below us. The lounge connects back to the entry way. So if you look at the first photo "View from the front door" just to the left is the door into the lounge (that goes down a few steps to meet the dining room again. There isn't anything under the floor, its a stilt home so underneath is dead space where we store our fire wood :) gnu36- If we swapped the dining room and lounge then the area where the dining room is now will have two lounges as in the picture you can see little stairs going up and that goes into what is to become a formal sitting room. Sonni1- thank you, we absolutely love it and are so excited at all the possibilities of improving it! Zmith- thank you too, as above we do love it! Thank you for your opinion, we would definitely need a balustrade otherwise I dont see how we would make the stairs safe from the dining room side. So all in all, i think the question has been answered- we will not be consulting a pro as it seems unlikely it would make as huge a difference as we hoped and its probably better to spend our money in other areas. Thanks again for everyones comments, despite feeling some of them were pretty rude and too abrupt than necessary i will definitely be posting again if i need some more help with other areas. Thanks all.