Alright, so I got a little sidetracked with the bad weather and the heated discussions, but let’s get back to the brass tacks and copper pipes of getting our new heating system online. Let me just throw a couple of transperancies on the overhead projector* here…

That's what the floorplan looked like back in 1977 – incidentally, the one and only year I saw Andy Gibb in concert. The above is a rough estimate, since I only have a surveyor’s sketches, but the layout is pretty familiar: two small bedrooms, wee kitchen, drive-in garage. Modest, useful, working-class square footage. (Click to enlarge, if you like.)

When we bought the place, in 2004, we got this:


So, between the mid-1980s, when Paul bought the place, and 2004, when we bought it, Paul extended the kitchen and added a deck, an office, a large sunroom, a small sunroom and a half-bathroom, turned the garage into a one-bedroom apartment, and added a new master bedroom with its own bathroom and walk-in closet – and, of course, popped a hole in one wall. The house went from around 1,600 square feet to well over 2,500, some of that now rentable space – a tiny house revolution in reverse.

With each new addition came greater strain on, among other things, the heating system and domestic hot water supply. Our house is heated with a hydronic radiant system: The boiler heats water to upwards of 120 degrees, and that water runs through either baseboard radiators or pipes under our floors, warming the house. I’m not sure when the hydronics went in – probably when Paul built the additions. (Both of them have in-slab radiant heat: pipes laid in concrete then covered with flagstone or terra cotta tiles. Quite delightful on those subzero mornings.)

Paul’s solution to the greater energy load was to add a new, 53-gallon water heater for the new master bedroom sometime around 1997, rerouting the main house’s kitchen and bathroom heating supply and hot water through the new heater as well. Sound complicated? It was. Another transperancy:

Those areas served by the new hot water tank are in red; the old boiler dealt with the blue areas. (Note the total lack of heating in Hil’s office.) The big swaths are in-floor radiant; the blue blocks are baseboard heaters. If you dare venture into our crawlspace, you’ll see the ugly tangle of piping that resulted. As you'll soon read, untangling them would prove to be slightly outside my expertise.

NEXT TIME: Why you shouldn't install a hot-water tank outside your house.

[*Special thanks to the Mother Hernandez School for Girls for the overhead projector and flavor-scented markers.]