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.

Hey jbrig, We're still not in yet. Now we are putting in cabinets and such. It takes us a long time to do anything. Hopefully we will be in by Christmas. We turned on the A/C on the upper floor to keep us cool while we work. That one unit is keeping the whole house cool. I'm really impressed. Not as cool as you would normally have your house but cool enough to work in. Come by any time and we will show you around.

The pricing for the electric radiant heat kind of depends on how many twists and turns you have. The way it works is it comes on a large roll, which gets cut each time a turn is necessary. If you have a lot of turns, you may need more material. Also, you don't have coverage in areas where the cabinets/island are. So I calculate your room as being 238 sq feet, but I have no idea as to how much of the floor space is occupied by cabinets. That needs to be subtracted. I bought ours from warmly*yours.com and they offered a 20% discount for contractors. Figure out from your floor plan how much walking space you have - you can include or exclude the space under the toekick depending on whether your feet ever go there, and enter the area on the estimate tool on the their website. I don't think an estimate of $1000-$1200 would be too far off. Add to that price the cost of the thermostat as well, and the labor for your guy to do the work. It was definitely worth it for us in our bathrooms - one bathroom had two "cold walls" or outside walls, so I wanted maximum warmth.

HandyMac is speaking of one specific brand of (unspecified) ICF, so take his words with a grain of salt. Eg, Foxblocks has webs the same width as reg studs. We built with ICF and had little/no problems with ICF. Our stucco (mesh) was attached with screws and staples, our trim we pneumatic brad nailed into the webs, and it held. We did 6 & 8" icf with extra foam inside to move the thermal mass to the inside. Our block had a very fridgid fit, and you didn't have to stack webs. Yes, you should check framing as you go, but you should in EVERY build! The house is very quiet due to the concrete, and very airtight as well. We love our ICF home! Our drywallers were amazingly fast and didn't even blink at the fact it was ICF, so I cant say it slowed them down! The heat from the sun coming in our south-facing windows keeps us from needing supplementary heat during a lot of the winter (its -30F right now and the heat only turns on when the sun goes down, or someone leaves the front door open too long!) Using similar homes built in our neighborhood (Winnipeg MB Canada), we figure we paid a 20-25% premium over BIG BUILDER STOCK HOMES built to MIN CODE in our area, but since we are a 100% true custom home it was probably much less than that. (I'm sure we paid a pretty premium for true custom)....