Tree Clearing - for Electrical Pole

Bill Henry Tree Service came today and cut down a bunch of trees. Someday NYSEG will put up a telephone pole in the spot they marked off. But all trees between that spot and the preceding pole needed to be trimmed or cut down. Cost me $1000. No bargain, but I guess not that bad of a price either. Ed would have done it slightly cheaper, but he is not available right now. I want to get them cut down quickly so I can let NYSEG know immediately, that I'm ready for the pole. Not that they will actually put it up anytime soon, but who knows, hopefully I'll get lucky.

Hallowell Arcadia - cold weather heat pump

OK so I've been researching like crazy, trying to find the best way to heat my dream house. This is probably my biggest worry in this whole project. Oil heat is just going to be too expensive. I've been thinking that geothermal is my only reasonable long-term option. So I e-mailed a whole bunch of geothermal installers in my area, and one of them came back to me with a much cheaper, but almost as efficient system: the Hallowell Acadia cold weather heat pump.

I sort of ignored this suggestion, but then a week later I Google'd the thing. Well I almost crapped myself. It seems to good to be true, and you know what they say about things like that. The cost would be less than the combined cost of a Hydro-Air cooling system plus an oil burner heating system.

Does anybody know if this is real, or just a scam/scheme??? Please, pass along any information you have about this system.

And I'm going to collect links about this system. I'm sure you could find these same links yourself with a Google search...

The company website:
http://www.gotohallowell.com/

Some dudes named Kevin and John seem to have installed Hallowell Acadias in their own homes:
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6142_102-0.html?forumID=50&threadID=301971&start=30&tag=forum-w;forums06
You can also find other references to the Hallowell Arcadia if you search the CNET forums.

A story with a video of the Acadia system:
http://www.necn.com/Boston/Business/Acadia-heating-beats-the-cost-of-oil-/1216432211.html

McGuire Air Force Base, Fort Dix and Marlboro NJ residents Phyllis and Seymour Garr install Acadias:
http://tritown.gmnews.com/news/2008/0724/front_page/003.html

WCVB TV Boston (ABC channel 5) runs a story on the Acadia:
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/asseenon5/16831616/detail.html

Architect Ed Nilsson of Marblehead MA, installs an Acadia:
http://www.dailynewstribune.com/state/x1542098757/Home-features-two-energy-saving-systems

Yup, even on Bob Villa's website:
http://www.bobvila.com/OnTheLevel/Big-Energy-Savings-for-the-DoD-2982.html

CNET green news article:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9859871-54.html?tag=cd.blog

An article in the Architectural Record:
http://archrecord.construction.com/resources/conteduc/archives/0603edit-1.asp

An article from the Reuters newswire:
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS127072+10-Mar-2008+PRN20080310

Not sure who the lazy environmentalist is:
http://www.lazyenvironmentalist.com/pages/2008/01/efficiency_and.php

Last but not least, a thread I started on heatinghelp.com:
http://forums.invision.net/Index.cfm?CFApp=2&Message_ID=412460

Installing Foundation Drainage panels

Today my brother-in-law Justin and I installed the foundation drainage panels on the foundation. There are a lot of different products for this, but I chose one that I liked, and could get locally for a reasonable price:

Carlisle CCW MiraDRAIN 2000

Purchased at Masonry Depot for about 0.45 per square foot, I got 5 rolls, each roll is 4 feet by 50 feet.