I'm just about 140 miles north of Portland, and the weather patterns are about the same. You get a bit more snow and overall a bit colder in the winter (from my experience spending a lot of time in Portland.) My Vue has only been up since late December, but so far I have had ZERO problems with the sensor-suite. It is mounted about 6-feet above my ridge, at a total height of about 30-feet with nothing else very close around, like trees that will dump junk in there. I haven't checked it yet for spiders (I'll do it after the first freeze) but my rain accuracy seems ok, so I'm hoping that means it is ok. I'll still check it this first season just to get an idea of what ends up in there.
There are some tall cedars and maples on my property about 100-feet south (Vue is mounted on south-side) and dense stands of still-tallish maples and alders about 100-150-feet to the east and north. Scattered tall maples to the west at about 75-feet and to the NW is effectively open (scattered maples at a greater distance). When the wind is blowing hard (especially from southish) my windspeed has to be low, and is definately lower than the running speeds at the airport, which is of course in the wide-open. With breezes and "neighborhood" winds (and gusts) below 10-15mph, I think it is probably quite accurate. The CWOP vector charts show that there must be a lot of buffetting on my station, because the "area average" always shows a much different direction and strength. But as I learned here at wxforum, it is most definately accurate at it's fixed location. IE, it's not the 60mph winds at the tree-tops that are knocking over my potted shrubs, it's the 20mph ones at the ground (when it's probably blowing harder way up there).
As for the non-aspirated temperature station, I find it to besufficient (imho) for our area. The high-temp recoreded this summer (87 a few weeks ago) is pretty much as high as it gets unless there is a heatwave, and that temp agreed with all of the neighboring stations and was close-enough to the airport, which is 20 miles away anyway, with all of the PNW micro-climates.
I have only two complaints about the VUE. Reliability of the USB version of the logger (fixable, or buy the serial version) and when I purchased it, I had no idea how quickly I would outgrow it's scalability limits. But then again, I'm a tech-freak, and the Davis was so easy to set up (both physically and getting data online) that it left me immediately wanting more. If I had it to do over again (and had a couple of hundred extra bucks at the time) I would have got the Pro2 instead. But that's just me.
As for positioning, with the VUE it's a trade-off between which sensor you want the accuracy, based on optimum placement of such a sensor. IE, wind readings are better 33-feet above the ground (standard, if you can do it) but rain accuracy suffers up where wind-speed is higher (and more accurate) but placing an integrated suite near the ground will kill your wind readings in your smallish lot. The temp/humidity is also built-in and can be influsenced by drievways, roof-tops, etc when placed in "available" locations. I don't think I would be too worried about your neighbor's dryer vent unless you are in an apartment and it is only a few feet away. Between convection, diffusion and a light breeze, there are other things that would probably influence your readings more dramatically.
Do us all a favor and keep us posted on your decision process. Many "shoppers" find it helpful to anyalyze someone else's decision/reasons too.
