Wow this is an incredibly awesome and incredibly long thread!! I like this idea of yours, I wanted to try PM but didn't want to have to make the cooler contraptions. I was a little confused by this statement though. Partial boil means you don't boil the full volume of water with your wort right? and the reason you don't get as good of hop utilization is because you use less water, and the hop oils don't solute in water very well, therefor you need larger volumes of water to get good hop utilization?
yes, you have the right idea...increasing the concentration of the wort (more sugars, smaller volume) decreases hop utilization. beersmith can help determine how this will affect the IBUs.