With your help, I am almost done framing a 1050 sq ft walk-out basement. There are 2 bedrooms (about 250 sq ft), a sitting area with fireplace, space for a ping-pong table and a new bathroom (I built it last summer). I used 2x4s 1" away from the cinderblock walls for framing. That way I can insulate and run electrical easily. I plan to hire an electrician to add breakers as needed, but will run 12-2 myself. Now it's time to make some decisions about lighting and heating. Any suggestions for lights? It seems most people use cans. The ceiling will be sheetrocked. I tend to like bright rooms. There are two sliding glass doors (one in a bedroom, one in the sitting room). and an egress window in the other bedroom. What lighting is best over the ping-pong table? What about m heating needs? We live in NC and have an electric heat pump for our main floor. When we had it installed, we were told it would be able to handle the additional square footage of the basement. Now we're getting a different story in the $4,000 price range. The basement is always very cool, so we really need heating, not cooling. Is a second heat pump our best choice?

My ridge vent is letting water into the attic, so I need to get it replaced. The cost to redo the ridge vent is the same as the cost to install a power vent. Is there a reason to prefer one system to the other? The house is an 1850 sq ft box (2 floors over a garage) -- the point being that I have a fairly small attic on a tall house, which you'd think would be a pretty good place for a ridge vent. It does get awfully hot in the summer, though (I don't know how hot). I've asked several people (the roofing guy, an architecht) but nobody seems to have an opinion. Does anybody else?