I'm a typical skeptical homeowner. Most sales people want to know if I'm from Missouri. I have to explain to them that my Father was from Missouri, hence my dire need to know and be shown.

I haven't quite figured our why, but I tend to ask a lot of questions and love to see lots of pictures. If at all possible, I also love to touch the "real thing" before I make a decision to purchase. My mother still talks about how many questions I used to ask as a small child. Color me a skeptic, but color me a Radiant Confirmed skeptic. I now live in a radiant heated home, and I can tell you from personal experience that is without a doubt, the most comfortable heating system I've ever experienced.

Let me take you back in time… Close your eyes and let your memory roam.

Remember going to your grandmas house and feeling the magnificent energy coming from her old pot belly stove, or even better yet, her kitchen oven/stove combination, which really was the center of activity? The smell of baking bread and the radiant comfort coming from her stove. Ah yes, those were the good old days.

In essence, the family has been gathering around the comfort of a central heating/cooking system since shortly after abandoning the drafty tendencies of a campfire. The radiant heat from the campfire was great, but you had to keep rotating your body in order to get an even tan. This was not the best of conditions. But it was better than no heat at all.

Time moved on. Man advanced from stick fires in the middle of the woods, to a cave environment. Shortly after he moved his fire inside to stay warm, he realized there was a definite need for removal of the combustion products in "the home", and he also realized he needed the help of a professional, and he called out for a "heating expert". This guy, (a long time suspected capitalistic pig), heeded the call and became the first Hydronician. (Hydronician. noun; One who makes a living out of providing great comfort to others in the form of warmth.) The first hydronicians were rumored to love the science of hydrology and favored keeping the rest of the world comfortable.

Then came the industrial revolution. We owe our very existence to the industrial revolution. If it weren't for the industrial revolution, we wouldn't have a need for machines to control our lives. We also owe a lot of our comfort to money. Because, if it weren't for comfort, we wouldn't have a need for money! If we were all that comfortable at 50 degrees, what are we going to feel like at 70 degrees.

My dad's house had hydronic heat. Clumsy as they may have been, my fathers house was very comfortably heated with finned tube baseboard convectors. We originally had a forced air (pronounced forced error) heating system, but my younger brothers' allergies proved near fatal before my father installed our Hydronic heating system. It was Earth shattering to save a young persons' life due to changing the heating system from forced air to hydronic heating back in those days. The net effect in some cases were phenomenal. They still are today. If it had not been for my fathers taking the initiative to rid our house of the forced error furnace, my brother might not have survived his child hood bouts with Asthma.

My father was a master plumber. He had a "grip" on everything living. He used to tell me, "Son the most important thing you need to learn, is that the customer is always right! Even when they're wrong, they're right. Because, without the customer, "We" don't exist…" He'd also tell me that we weren't in the plumbing and heating business, that we were in the "Human Comfort" business. Back when I was a kid, I don't think I fully understood this philosophy like I do now. I still respect his views today…

That memory and many other good thoughts continue about my father, he was good man. He introduced many of the feelings of comfort and learning into my life. I used to ask him what "comfort" really was. He said his idea of comfort was not being aware that you were either hot or cold. "That" he'd say, "will cause you to lead a more productive life because you aren't concentrating on your immediate environs. It allows you to do a better job while you were at work, and it allows you to enjoy your time away from work more because, you are comfortable."

The first house I owned was heated with forced air. As soon as I moved in, I immediately started thinking about how I could convert this dwelling to hydronic heat. There seemed to be a pattern here. I wasn't sure where it was leading to, but I was very interested. I was in search of comfort.

I gained a deep interest in Hydronics… I entrusted all my beliefs into this one arena. Hydronic heating at that time was the most comfortable method of heating in the world. That was confirmed by my study of the Earth's surface. It was 75% covered with water! How could I go wrong? I asked myself. "The Earth is 75% covered with water. It makes sense to heat a home with Hydronics." And so it was and so it has been since man discovered heating with Hydronics.

Back when I was growing up, radiant floors was not a real popular method of heating. It was used in some very forward thinking architects and engineers homes, and a few housing tracts back east gave it a big boost, but by and large, radiant floor heating systems were not readily available. The big thing before baseboard convectors was large cast iron radiators. Although they were even more cumbersome than today's baseboard convectors, they distributed the utmost in comfort. Walking into a room that was radiantly heated with these beauties always brings back memories of stepping into my grandmothers kitchen and snuggling up to her pot bellied stove. You are enveloped with a feeling of immediate comfort.

After having been in the comfort business for over 25 years, I had seen just about every type of comfort system there is to be had. I've seen good ones, and not so good ones. I've seen big ones and little ones. Regardless of what I saw, there was a common thread with all of the people who owned these radiant heating systems. They were comfortable and healthy, and in many cases, wealthy in their own right. This brings back full circle, what my father used to tell me about what he thought comfort was. These people are comfortable, healthy and having a good time in life.

It was time for me to make myself comfortable. Most (2/3's) of my children had grown up and "flown the coop". God bless them. They know I still love them. But now it was time for me to make a decision on my own for myself and my wife. I had lived with the infamous "Scorched Error" beast for as long as I could. I couldn't hold my anger back any more. I also couldn't bear another heating season with dry, bleeding sinus passages. It was time to make the switch. I thought to myself, "2/3's of the Earth is covered by water,…2/3's of my kids are out of the nest, and the last one is wildly flapping her wings, what am I waiting for?" When I first conceived the idea of converting my own house to Hydronics' I met with very little resistance. "Fer sure!" my remaining daughter exclaimed! , "Sounds like a leap forward to the past to me, but what the hay, let's go for it!" We made the switch!

Being in the Hydronics business, I've had the opportunity to actually "experience" the comfort factor that many of my clients got to experience on a daily basis. I decided that Hydronic radiant heat was the way I wanted to go. I wanted radiant everything. I'm a firm believer in the prophesy that "anything and everything that can be radiant, should be radiant".

Not many weeks before the annual "big frost" hits, I decided that it was time to extricate the hot air belching beast and install something a little more environmentally friendly. Naturally, I decided to go with a combination of radiant floors, some of those sexy European style steel panel radiators, some rather unique recycled ceiling radiators, and then I threw in a few tricks I'd learned over the years, like a radiant bath tub and hydronic towel warmer.

Then, just to keep things interesting, I decided to mix some of the old methods of piping with some of the new. What I finally ended up with is a piping distribution system that produces a negligible visual impact on the interior of my home and a control logic that varies the speed of the miniature circulator that moves the always changing warm water around my home.

In the process of utilizing my comfort system, I have discovered the real meaning of comfort. I can neither hear nor feel my comfort system when it is on. I am never aware of whether it is on or off, and since I've installed it, I've not been uncomfortable. Since installing my comfort system, the incidence of upper respiratory distress in our family has decreased by better than half. That in and of itself has made the conversion more than worthwhile.

Now, I start every day with an endless hot shower in a radiantly heated bathtub. I then step out of the heated tub onto a warm floor and grab for a warm towel. What a great way to start the day! At the end of the day, after a long hard days work, I come home, walk in the front door, kick off my boots and I'm immediately wrapped in comfort. Life is good.

In order to understand what radiant heat feels like, you must experience it. Once you do experience it, you will never want to heat your home with any other system.

Trust me on this one, I will never live in another forced air home as long as I live. Radiant Heat Rules!

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