As the North American hydronics industry has grown, so has the complexity of its systems. Many installations that are now featured as award-winning examples of hydronic heating contain hundreds — sometimes thousands — of parts and pieces. They can be so complex that only the person who designed and installed them understands how they operate, or can fix them when they don’t.
Although there are some buildings, perhaps even some single-family homes, that benefit from having a dozen or more heating zones as well as a wide mixture of heat emitters, they do not represent the mass market in which hydronics still only holds single-digit market share. Promoting the concept of hydronic heating with photos of elaborate systems containing lots of hardware can easily send the wrong marketing message. Instead of comfort combined with peace-of-mind reliability, the average consumer may be thinking — expensive, complex and what happens when it breaks?