ok... this is starting to be a pain in the ars... im trying to use the sky as a visblocker, but i can pretty well see right through the darned thing. i can see most things through it, so its pretty well pointless to have in the map. is there anything else i should be doing other than just a a sky brush where i ned it?

have a look at some hint brush tutorials

i did, but where would they go? inside the skybrush?

My guess is you're not sealing the area properly either via tight skyboxes or via brush-work. If you screw up either no amount of hinting is going to help. Some questions though:

1) Did you do a full compile? If you did a fast compile you'll not optimize the map properly. Do a full then check.
2) If you did run a full compile then run around in the map and take screens with wireframe on at the bad parts and post them...also post a overhead shot.

Also remember if you haven't done any of that yet that areaportals are your best friends.

Sky is sometimes poor for blocking epoly ie models and such. If it's done properly it should block wpoly no prob. Try splitting your sky brushes and putting a solid textured brush between just to test if its the sky thats a problem or you aren't properly sealed. Hint brushes are tricky, sometimes they don't help much.

my advice would be trying not to use hint brushes unless you absolutely need them. a good way of using skybrush to visblock would be setting the roof of the house to a func_wall and having the skybox going down to the top of the block, or ceiling, or whatever the case may be thus blocking perfectly while not making the house look funny. don't over use this technique though because it can cause lag if you have too many func_walls.