The power shutter is the better investment. You just need a second thermostat. Nothing fancy. I set mine 10 degrees lower than my 2 stage exhaust fan. That gives me 3 cooling options. Having that power vent open on a cold sunny winter day will avoid your fan from kicking on and off through the day as much, and cooling the house too fast. It will also reduce the temperature fluctuations to the plants. In the summer I cut my vents off, and prop them open, so they are not using electricity all summer. Another idea would be to get a small vent fan to go in the peak of your house to vent that peak air out before it can buld up and make your big fan turn on. Anything you can do to reduce the time that thing runs will be helpful. Having that second fan will also pay off big when you main fan motor bites the dust one day in the middle of the summer. The house will get pretty hot, but things might have a fighting chance to survive. It is a good idea to have a back up motor and belt on had as well. Greenhouse companies spend some time matching the size of the fan and the vents. It probably makes your fan run much more efficiently. I have a 42 inch Acme fan with 2 4x5(approximate)power vents spaced at plant height. Having that cool air pull over your crop evenly is ideal. One might not be enought to solve your pressure issues, but would be better than nothing. You don't want to have to go prop the door open every morning. Sorry to make so many suggestions of how to spend money. Once you get your house automated it is so much nicer, and you can concentrate on the plants.

I've been running a thread on the Building a Home forum that substantially repeats this thread and refers to our FAQ. The issue of private versus public albums on Photobucket came up (I thought the whole album had to be public to allow you to link to it without a password). aa62579 says that you can link to a specific photo in a private album and that link will be visible. You just can't link to the whole private album and see it without a password. I've never used Photobucket so I'm asking the question of those of you who are familiar with sites such as Photobucket, Picasa, PictureTrail, etc.. Is this a general characteristic of all web-hosting sites? I'd like to add this information to the FAQ. Thanks, Claire

These are the specific comments that were posted on the "A new FAQs for Homebuilding Forum! thread. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted by dekeoboe (My Page) on Sat, Aug 20, 11 at 22:05 Claire, can you include information on how to make it a clickable picture? That would help because many times the picture as posted is too small to be able to read the dimensions of the rooms. My response on that thread: dekeoboe: That's a good point, and the needs of the Building Forum are different from the New England Gardening Forum. The gardeners usually want to post pics that show the subject matter clearly, but not necessarily in great detail, and want the pic to fit into the page view without disrupting the text around and after it. This irritates viewers. The building forum, on the other hand, often needs greater detail (to show dimensions, etc.) so the file size and image size can be much bigger. You can always open a large file in one window and then go back to the original page to discuss it. Thumbnails are probably the best option, but you need an album on a webhosting site like Picasa, Photobucket, etc. to provide thumbnails (a thumbnail is a small pic that is clickable and the click directs you to the full-size pic in the album on the hosting site). If you use TinyPic you can't use thumbnails but you can still determine the size of the file during the uploading process. That size will of course be limited by the size of the file on your computer. Posted by Renovator8 (My Page) on Sat, Aug 20, 11 at 23:04 In TinyPic the acceptable image file types are: jpg, png, gif, base 64 encoded image, or bmp. The "choose file" button is now labeled "Browse". When you choose "Upload Now" you will have to enter the scrambled code, then you only need to click once on the top code (labeled "HTML for websites") and it will automatically be copied to your clipboard so you can paste it. My response here: I've incorporated most of these comments in the above text, except that I still see "Choose File" on the TinyPic.com site, not "Browse". Claire

As requested earlier from Davidro who wanted to understand traffic flow, below is a whole house "sketch" which shows our first floor layout (upstairs is only a loft) and second diagram is where I'm at with regard to kitchen design after input from you guys and after Ikea consultant/designer who was at my home today gave as far as cabinets fitting. Also, from the earlier discussion, I had some confusion about whether I could relocate the washer/dryer to the hall. The contractor who visited today didn't have any problems with the relocation. It helps a lot that our foundation is "pier and beam". Moving plumbing around is a whole lot easier. New location of washer/dryer may be a bit claustrophobic in the hall way outside the bathroom but I only do laundry a couple times a week for short spurts. I'm in the kitchen a whole lot longer and since the relocation of washer/dryer is the only thing keeping me from having the kitchen layout I REALLY wanted from the beginning (barring the fact the pantry has gotten quite a bit smaller), I am a happy camper. I'm going to lie low a while and get our bathroom done and maybe a roof before I come back with any updates on the kitchen. And for anyone who is in doubt, the Ikea prices for all cabinets is half of what price was quoted for Innermost cabinets by Home Depot. And the Ikea quote includes several of the appliances though I'm not sure yet if that is how I will really go. But cabinets -yes - their prices are too good to pass up. The money we save can go for the bathroom we're getting that has a curbless shower, and several other expensive details which Ikea can't help us out on. I'll still be listening but hopefully everyone can see the aisles around the island are considerably wider (maybe even too wide with my feet problems). If I need more pantry space, I'm fairly sure that several of the drawers in the main part of the kitchen will not all be used so I can use them for pantry space spill over if there is any. THANKS AGAIN (though I will definitely be back - still need to pick out countertop/backsplash/flooring/hoodOverCooktop and make decisions about appliances..) And since I haven't marked it well, let me explain that there are upper cabinets on either side of the cooktop and also to the left of the fridge. No uppercabinets on the sides of the "cleanup sink" with the large 6 foot wide window. Think I may wait until kitchen is done and probably install some open floating shelves on either side of cleanup sink - more for esthetics than function but I think I can wait until the last minute for that. (Maybe even some art work...)