Hello sdetweil,
Unfortunately new houses bring new electrical environments. You may have the same electrical appliances and TV's as your old home, but if they are distributed differently on the new electrical system they can produce problems.
1. I have the phase coupler installed in the dryer outlet, which worked great in the old house, doesn't seem to work here at all..
Need a bit more information here. Is this a passive phase coupler or active repeater? What leads you to believe that it isn't working?
2. the metal building garage is 150' away, and I'd like to control lights there too.. no transformer between here and there, haven't tested yet, but other than circuit bridge and transformer should there be any other issue?
Well, 150' is a good distance. X10 signal strength will be degraded over this distance. The amount of degradation depends on where your transmitter is in the house (close to the electrical panel?) and what type of loads you have in your garage. Run some "ad hoc" tests with your garage loads operating (fluorescents, air compressors, etc) to determine the system reliability. You may need a active repeater at the electrical panel in your house to drive the distance (and load) to the garage.
3, and this is the biggie.. I bought the insteon ICON relay switches (up is on, down is off), (non-dim).. the places I want to put them seem to have 3 ways already installed.
I don't want to put icons switches everywhere, just one place. how do you wire an icon in a circuit with the 3 way switch? (the icons are 2876s)
Rather common question - unfortunately you can't combine an Icon switch with a mechanical 3-way. The Icon units are both Insteon and X10 2-way (transmitter/receivers). 3 way circuits constructed with these units "virtual". The master (connected to the load) is not physically connected to the slave unit. Instead the slave communicates over the powerline and "instructs" the master (load connected) switch to turn on.
The positive is that you can create 3-way circuits anywhere - between your bathroom and your garage if you wished. The negative is that if you are replacing an existing 3-way install, you need 2 Icon switches - One load connected, one simply connected to the powerline with the controlled output capped.
Another alternative, if you are converting multiple 3-way installs, would be to use a Keypadlinc controller as the slave for multiple circuits. I've used this approach in my Kitchen/Dinette where I had a gang of 4 3-way circuits in one box. I replaced the 4 mechanical switches with a single Keypadlinc with communicated with 4 Icons at the other end of the 3-way circuits. The KPL is more expensive than the Icon, but still less expensive than 4 units.
As a side note - If you are using your Icon units in X10 compatibility mode, your repeaters/couplers should work fine. X10 repeaters will not amplify Insteon signals. Insteon devices also absorb more signal that standard X10 devices since they are transmitter/receivers. You may find that you have problems with X10 communication on circuits that have a lot of Insteon devices installed.
Boiler
