Radiant & Hydronics

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The age-old question of function versus form has confounded experts in every field for countless decades.

Jeff Sweenor, president and CEO of Sweenor Builders in Wakefield, Rhode Island, looks at it differently. He asks, why not both? Function certainly comes first, but when the dust settles, his projects look as good as they work.

Aside from the fact that they are all used in hydronic heating systems, what do the following items have in common?

A heating pro is asked to retrofit a pellet-fired boiler to an existing distribution system consisting of older cast iron radiators, iron piping and an oil-fired boiler.

Frozen steam coils always seem to happen at the worst of times, don’t they? You’re busy because it’s cold enough to freeze coils. The place with the frozen coil contains people who are doing things that are so important they can’t possibly be without that particular coil. Not even for a minute. They’re on the phone, and they’re not being reasonable.

As interest and incentives build to transition space heating and domestic water heating systems away from fossil fuels and toward electricity, a somewhat predictable but only marginally quantified problem is developing. Two words describe it: Peak demand.

An installer is asked to add a monobloc-style air-to-water heat pump to an existing hydronic system that is supplied by a mod/con boiler.

A homeowner posted a question on The Wall at HeatingHelp.com about a drumroll sound that was coming from his brand-new steam boiler. What could it be? He included a video so all could hear, and sure enough, it sounded like a snare drum.

A technician encounters a system installed in the 1980s when radiant floor heating was relatively new in North America.