If the unheated portion is in a place where I'd place my bare foot as part of my normal traffic pattern as I make my way around the room? To me that'd be something to gripe about. If it was in front of a vanity, a place where's I'd typically be stationary? That'd be completely unacceptable. I've refused to short cut mat or cable coverage, even when the homeowner has insisted that it'd be okay to do so. Because it never will be okay. They might accept the poorly heated floor with cold spots because they insisted on and agreed to it. But they'll never, ever be happy with it. If I were ever to shortcut a mat...which I won't...I'd not do it without the homeowner signing off on a very detailed "heated versus unheated" floor plan. In your original post you wrote that there is no heat on the floor within 18" of the vanity, right in front of a sink. To me, and to Suntouch, that's way out of bounds. In front of vanities Suntouch recommends the mat be right up next to the vanity. If there's a toe kick, it goes under the toe kick. So 18"? That's a battle to be fought between you and your sub who installed the mat. In my eyes, the homeowner wins on that one. How this is remedied? You could refund them the amount of the RFH back to the homeowner, perhaps even recouping a part of the money through the sub who installed the mat. That may or may not satisfy. You can keep things as they are and let it slide. You might end up with an ulcer. You can fix it from below.You can eat the cost of the new mat, the tile sub perhaps could compensate you for the cost of opening up and closing up the ceiling below the bathroom. Or you can bring the original tile sub back in and fix it from above. He supplies the labor at no charge. You can work out the materials cost as best as you can with the tile sub. There are options, none of them pleasant. I do feel for you. You sound like someone who builds with good intentions. You wrote that "Many of the issues are self inflicted, and come about in an effort from him trying to save money, which all come back to bite ME. Our profit margin is currently below our overhead costs, and there is no indication of it stopping here." That's a tough spot to be in. But if he's talking you into changing things along the way and you're not executing formal Change Orders as the plans and contract morph away from the original design and budget agreement? Again, I might be reading too much into this and making an erroneous assumption. But when I've had difficult clients, everything goes in writing. Every change to the original plan is a written change order, paid for by the customer before the change is made. If the payment isn't made before the due date specified on the change order, no change is made and for that portion of the project, work goes along per the original plan and the original contract. If the change order results in a cost savings, it gets deducted from the next disbursement notice. There is karma. There are the easy clients. Like the one a few years ago who deposited $900k in an account with my name on it and said "build me a house". Anyhow, I do wish you luck with this. You sound like one of the good guys who's been run over by a freight train. Might be time to put on your engineer's cap, wave a red lantern, and slow this guy down a bit.

With two separate thermostats and two different rooms, I'd prefer to see a setup like the one below. It's certainly not the only way to do it. But it's fairly simple: Hopefully you can sort of reconcile what you have with the bits and pieces in the schematic. Again, you might not have all of them, or you might have more. And the bits and pieces don't have to be in the order or in the locations I have them. I'll start by writing about the shutoff valves. There are several in the schematic. They bracket some of the bits and pieces to allow maintenance on your system. Example, if you have to replace a pump, you can isolate the pump by turning off the shutoff valves on either side of the pump. If you have no shutoff valves, when you pulled the pump out of the loop, you'd lose all the water in your system. I prefer full port valves for shutoff. The photos are just for reference: So you have the water heater. Hot water comes out of the water heater and flows through a check valve. That valve prevents backflow or reverse flow through the water heater. Typical backflow valve: The pressure gauge allows you to monitor the pressure of the water in the system. I usually run closed systems at about 12psi of water pressure. After the pressure gauge is a "fill" hose bib. Just like a garden faucet hose bib, though you can certainly use something better. There's normally a hose connection down low on the water heater. You connect a garden hose to the water heater bib, open the "fill" hose bib, and fill the system with water. Or a water/glycol solution if you need freeze protection. After the fill bib is the expansion tank and the air eliminator. Since it's a closed system and water expands when hot and contracts when cool, the expansion tank allows the system to absorb those changes in water volume while allowing the system pressure to remain constant as 12psi. Expansion tank: Air eliminators have a couple of different looks: or this: To the right of the expansion tank is another "fill" valve that has a cold water supply plumbed into it. That's a pressure compensating valve set at, you guessed it, 12psi. If the system pressure drops below 12psi, that valve automatically opens and recharges the system to 12psi. The little lever on top allows you to add water manually. The valves are usually pressure-adjustable. I just happen to use 12psi as my setting. Why would you need to add water to a closed system? The air eliminator "burps" air from the system. Air in the system can cause turbulence noise when the water flows, a large bubble could cause flow problems or pump problems. So the air eliminator eliminates air. But sometimes water can dribble out too. So if/when you have water loss, the 12psi valve will recharge the loops with water. The "Temp in" gauge shows the water temp as it enters the loops. Usually about 120 degrees. Maybe more or less. Then the system branches off into two zones, one for the bathroom, one for the sunroom. Each zone has its own circulating pump. When the room's thermostat calls for heat, the circulating pump kicks on and circulates hot water through the zone and to the loops in the zone. Typical Taco pump: You can add a Grundfos Alpha pump. Very energy efficient: With two pumps, the rooms can be heated individually or concurrently. When the water returns from the zone(s), it goes through another temperature gauge. You can compare the Delta T or the change in temp of the water to see if the heat is being given up to the rooms. "Temp In" minus "Temp Out" equals Delta T. And there you go. Again, each zone can simply be a single loop of PEX. Small rooms can sometimes be served by a single loop that is on it's own zone. If the room is large and you need more PEX, then you can install a manifold for that zone and you can have several loops on that manifold. Again, each loop should only have about 225' maximum of tubing in the loop. If a room needed 350' of tubing, I'd split it into two loops of 175' each instead of a 225' loop and a 125' loop. Example of a four loop manifold, this manifold has the "temp in" and "temp out" gauges built in: That's a basic system with no real automation.

Placing the PEX for radiant heating is relatively easy. What's not so easy is determining if this is a waste of money for you. It was for us. 1.)We live in the South, where the cooling season is longer than the heating season. Very little chance of payback unless you operate the system for longer periods. The smart boilers needed to accurately control a system in a temperate climate are pretty spendy and complicated and not very DIYable. 2.)We have wide temperature swings, sometimes daily, which magnifies the slowness of the "thermal mass pendulum." We see this just with our heated bathroom floors (separate system). It's going to be 42° tonight, so turning on the heated floors will feel good. You have to think about that a couple of hours in advance, because it takes that long to warm up. By the time they're warm, they're too warm for most of the timeframe except for that brief period that was 42°. The next day when the swing is back up to 60° and the floors are still 80°, the bathroom is too hot and needs a window opened for comfort. 3.) We insulated the new addition so well that a plain 110 volt 1500 w spaceheater can keep it 60° in the winter, and a 2 ton AC in the summer. If we'd put the money we spent on PEX towards additional insulation (we just used 2x6 construction with "standard" type insulation instead of the new high tech products) then the simple addition of the forced air furnace would have been more than sufficient for truly comfortable heating in the winter. For many people who have a long heating season and awkward spaces that forced air isn't comfortable for, radiant heating can work "miracles". For people in warmer climates, or in climates with great daily temperature fluctuations, a radiant system is very often not the best choice for either comfort or the pocketbook. Do your research well, and don't get caught up in the hype thinking it's a "must have". It isn't. And, it's sometimes even a drawback to comfort. We've never fired up the radiant in the addition. We've never needed to, even in 0° weather. And the bathrooms do work wonderfully well (imagine 6 cats lying on their backs in bliss!) but are also inefficient monetarily and for true comfort when confronted with wide temperature swings in a day. They are great when the temps say in the 40's and below for extended periods of time, but that't not how our winters here operate. It's 40 for a couple of days, then back up to 55°, then down to the high 20's, then 70° (must be Christmas day!) and then you have a 50° drop into the teens and on down to 0°. Radiant isn't very efficient or comfortable with weather like that.

An electric hot water heater typically will not make sound when it runs. I would think this system you have is a closed loop, meaning you fill the tank and loop the incoming water is shut off and the water is moved thru the loop in the floor via a in line water pump, controlled via temp sensor(s). I am only guessing here... Note: just because the circulation pump is off doesn't mean the resistance heating strips within the water heater are off. (The pump you should hear, the strips you will not) Your electricity rate is pretty average, but being on balanced billing it can be upwards of 11 months of usage on your end until you realize the increase. Unless your balanced billing works differently? I had a customer of mine in which it took 11 months of the balanced billing to drop after I installed a new more efficient air conditioner. So if you use a lot of energy in any one month on balanced billing the energy company may rack this up and charge you for it pronto < I can only assume it would be this way because the energy company wants to get paid and possibly alert you to a problem. With all of that said, was this water heater sized properly for the 'heating' load you are putting it under? The colder it is, the heavier the load. At some point, the load 'could' be so great in which the elements that heat the water do not shut off. The only true way to know the heating elements are off in an electric water heat is to hook amp probe around electric lead and see what the amp draw is. If it reads 0 they are off. Because you are in an all electric house, there could be issues with your other systems. While rare this does happen >>> an electric resistance heater the strip breaks and shorts to ground. This causes the strip to remain on indefinitely, only turning off due to heat limiting controls of the appliance in question. The other outcome, even more rare than above besides this is an electrical fire. We all know these occur as well.