Does anybody have any experience with Russ at Thermabuilt in northern AZ. http://www.thermabuilt.com/ 6 months ago I decided to build my home and began the planning process and researched lots of different building materials and techniques. Russ used to post in this forum and I e-mailed him directly with several questions and he responded promptly and was very helpful. At the time he was the only plant near me that manufactured fiber cement SIPs. I had the plans drawn up went through a huge process to convince my county to let me build with cement SIPs (they have never seen it before). As I got closer to the build date Russ seemed less and less responsive. He would take weeks to respond to an e-mail or phone call even if I left a message every other day. I sent him a $10,000 check to get started and begged him on his voice mail to cash it and start producing my panels. Never hear a thing from him. I was working with an draftsman that has done quite a bit of work for Russ and asked him if he spoke with him recently. The draftsman confirmed that he was having the same problem over the past several months. I was already committed to cement panels and Thermabuilt was my only real option. It would delay the house for months and would have to resubmit my building plans to the county to change panels to OSB SIPs. I then looked up Thermasave.us website again and found that they had added a plant in Texas. I called him up (Dennis) and he said he would honor the bid and wouldn't charge any extra for shipping. He didn't have much time but he has always responded to me within a half day and is working hard to get me my SIPs in time for my framers I scheduled. I put a hold on the check but no attempt has been made to cash it. I'm not calling Russ dis-honest but working with him has been a disaster. Even if he was going through a divorce or had a family death or some emergency that kept him from responding immediately I would understand. But he has dropped off the face of the planet and has made no attempt to return my calls for 2 months. Has anybody else worked with him? Mark Los Alamos, NM

Well I finally found out why he dropped off the face of the planet. I spoke with a draftsman that he uses a lot again and he told me that he had two other customers in CA that he dropped to without any effort to call back and explain. Apparently he made a contract with a spec home builder locally and is solely focused on building panels for them. That is fine and I understand that business is business, but he should have the common courtesy to call and explain he won't be able to supply me panels. Even a ten second e-mail would have sufficed.

Mark