2200 square feet in SF with ICF and all the rest of the overkill? Those numbers are not at all shocking to me. Your tile and wood allowances are low, as is the millwork. Especially if that includes your kitchens and bath tilework, cabinets, and any built ins.

In the end, with doing a teardown, in that location with all of the paperwork and seismic requirements, and all of your very expensive construction choices, you probably need at least a 30% contingency on top of the likely over your budget build.

If you want to cut, ditch the ICF and radiant heat. It's complete overkill for the climate and not giving yu much payback for the costs. Radiant has a long lag time, and doesn't respond well to rapid daily temperature changes. ICF has zero gain in anything in that climate as well. It's great for a much colder climate, but wasted in a temprate location. You're paying all of that premium for bragging rights and poor real world benefits.

How much extra does radiant heat cost? My parents keep saying it's wonderful and it does have a lot of advantages.

Sure, it's great somewhere it actually gets cold. And stays cold. It takes a couple of hours to do a 5 degree temperature change though. If you're at 40 in the am and 60 by noon, then radiant is a very poor choice for your home heating.

ICF seems like madness in this climate. The weather here is so mild. Why not go with 2x6 framing and good insulation instead? ICF is so far out of the norm here I doubt you'll see any return on that investment come sale time.

Standard I'm not a structural engineer disclaimer, but I've always heard in an earthquake zone buildings that are a bit more flexible tend to fare better. Hard to beat wood framing in that respect. I'm sure you can engineer a concrete box such that it won't suffer any damage, but at what cost? Compare against the cost of an earthquake insurance policy and the strong likelihood that your wood framed house won't be leveled, and at most will need repairs for broken windows and cracked plaster.

Oops, lost the OP.

Ggp, you might consider a strategically placed electric radiant mat in a tiled area. My folks can pretty much heat their entire wing (~900 ft2) just by using their bathroom mat at night, and it is too warm for my liking. I think it was around $800-1000 but the install labor was built into the tile quote so I don't have that number.

This lady in the Bay Area (see link) loves her radiant heating. I find often that my house can be cold even though the sun is shining outside! It probably depends on which direction the house faces and where the windows are, though. My current house isn't so great in that regard - it seems pretty dark.

Here is a link that might be useful: Radiant Heating FTW

Ggp, it looks like that blog entry was being written while construction was still going on? From what I've read, radiant is nice in cold climates like Canada or in drafty Eichlers. If your house is well sealed and insulated in this area, your house might overheat before you get warm toes. But, you definitely should read up on it for yourself. greenbuildingadvisor.com might be a good place to start. Good luck!

Here's a post she wrote a year after moving in, where she says her family loves radiant heating. It's true that I should read more about it though!

Here is a link that might be useful: Radiant Heating

Let me tell you we got the in-floor heating in the master bathroom and it throws off a lot of heat... enough to skew temperatures in the master bedroom by quite a lot! So I can believe it's effective. Energy cost remains to be seen. Preparing for a cold shower when the first PG&E bill comes. If you can believe it the bill for this house pre-remodel was $95/mo during summer (~3300 finished sqft on an acre).

So, why did you delete the original post? And not. Even have the courtesy to respond to those who posted.

This seems to have turned into a radiant floor heat discussion. I have no experience with floor heat in the USA, but we worked/lived in Asia for a few years and had electric floor heat as our only source of heat in the house (I don't know the intricacies of its mechanisms of operation). It was set up to only work at night. We could not make it turn on in the day, but the house had huge whole wall windows on two sides to take in the sun. It had a learning curve because you had to anticipate how cold the next day would be so you could get it warm enough over the night, but we grew to really like it. We didn't turn it on in the bathrooms because it would make the tile hot enough to burn your feet (even at the lowest setting). You would have to keep towels on the floor if you wanted to use it. The rest of the house had wood floor and it would not hurt your feet no matter how hot we set it. We spent the least on energy of anyone we knew there during our stay, but we are also frugal.