If I could just comment her and maybe get some feedback on this topic. I have a somewhat related issue. I hade my master bath toilet and the cold water feed for the washer in the adjacent laundry room freeze up twice last year. The master bathroom bumps out 18" from the rest of the house. These pipes run up the outside wall and thru the subfloor of that 18" bumpout section. FOr whatever stupid reason, the builder's design didn't put the piping on an interior wall. The attempted fixes last year included adding more insulation inside the soffit of that bumpout, and then adding an second wall vent in the laundry room behind the washer so that warm air could circulate behind the wall, and that was supplemented by encasing the pipes behind there with insluated foam board of some kind. Anyway,the same pipes froze again last night. BY the time my wife got the builder's site foreman over to the house, the pipes thawed out. Toilet bowl filled back up and the cold water runs again on the washer. How that happened overnight is beyond me. It had to be in the teens during the overnight, if not colder. Well, he first tried to blame the frozen pipe situation on the fact that he says we leave our garage door open for great periods of time. ThatÂs crap, IM! How can that seriously be a contributing factor to the pipes in question?? My master bedroom is fully above the garage space (it's not abnormally cold and the proper insulation is in the garage ceiling, according to code), and adjacent is the master bath, and adjacent is the laundry room. The feed pipes for the toilet and washer are located about 14 feet to the side of the garage area on the backside of the house and in the area of the first floor ceiling/second floor subflooring. And he's claiming that cold air from the garage is causing or contributing to these pipes freezing? It's not like we leave the garage open for extended periods of time in freezing weather, and we certainly don't leave it open overnight! The master shower and jacuzzi tub don't freeze up, and they are phjysically closer to the garage than the toilet. GIVE ME A BREAK!!! In addition to that, IÂd also point out the fact that the toilet area of the master bath is directly above the first floor pantry, which is extremely warm, with a floor vent in there and the pantry door closed most all the time. All that warm air in the ceiling of the pantry. What a real jerk this guy is, trying to peddle this lame excuse as the contributing factor to the pipes freezing!! Two different plumbing contractors that have worked for the home builder in the past year, they both said the piping didn't belong on the outside wall. But the foreman says they aren't going to tear up the tile flooring and walls to move the pipes. They want the issue to be shored up via insulating methods. Any comments? The garage excuseby the foreman is bull$hit, right?

Thank you for the response! from what I read, heating the floors will be a lot more expensive with electric radiant heat as you stated. I also thought that it would only really heat the floor and not solve my situation but I wanted to hear that first hand and not make my own assumptions. I think the reason my kitchen is so cold is that when we built our addition, we built it over a crawl space in 1996. My husband built it with the help of his brothers. We don't have heat going into the crawl space itself and at the time, he only put the pink insulation inside. Since then, we had someone blow the insulation onto the walls of the crawl space. I don't think insulation can really do the trick. I remember hearing on one of the home improvement shows on TV that the crawl space should be heated to help with a similar situation (I think I heard that correctly). In order to do that, I would have to go through the finished side of my basement to reach the crawl space. Not desirable. I do have a friend that has put in radiant heat using the tubes with water running through it heated by a boiler. It was worth the investment for her because she lives in a quad and was basically trying to heat her lower levels of the house. She also used this type of heat to heat up a patio/sunroom that doesn't have any other form of heat in it. It really works. I, on the other hand, have small area but I'm so uncomfortable in the winter. I guess I can get a quote with heating with water and a boiler to see how expensive it will be. It still is strange that a 200 sq. foot addition would be that tough to heat

Our French doors are double-glazed and have three-point locking systems and good insulation around them. These are wood with vinyl exteriors. I *thought* I wanted all 'active' doors, but realize that I could have saved money with having only one half of a set 'active'. Mine are 92 inches tall, and I can't easily reach the standard latch on the 'other half' of my pairs. (I know I could get latch extensions, but have not needed to open these often enough to care.) I feel NO drafts, etc. from either the doors or my casement windows. These are 14 year old Pella Architecture Series, and I live near Chicago.

Insulation in a basement or unvented crawl space belongs on the walls, not the ceiling, so start with that in any case. Besides the other steps mentioned above, check the ductwork, sealing the joints with metal tape--no, not duct tape--and be sure that there are no disconnected ducts. If your master bed is at the end of a long run, a booster fan may help. Also, check the attic for proper insulation. Old style potlights are massive cold spots.