Boilers & Hydronic Heating

It depends on what you value. Hydronic heat is quieter, doesn’t blow dust around, and holds rooms at a steadier temperature, and a well-kept boiler often outlasts a furnace. Forced air heats up faster and can share ductwork with central air. Many homes with boilers add ductless mini-splits for cooling instead of installing ducts. If you already have a boiler and radiators, keeping hydronic heat is usually better value than tearing it out. We’ll walk you through the options for your house, with a written price for each.

Yes. Adding a zone lets a second floor, an addition, or a finished basement run on its own thermostat. We add zone valves or circulators, run new piping, and add radiators, baseboard, or radiant tubing where you need heat. Before adding anything, we check that the boiler has enough capacity and that the expansion tank and piping can handle the extra load, so the new zone heats well without shortchanging the rest of the house. You get a written price before any work starts, and we schedule around your renovation.

Sometimes, but it is a much bigger job than swapping the boiler. Steam radiators and piping are sized and pitched for steam, and many older pipes and radiators can’t hold the pressure of a hot-water system without leaking. A conversion usually means a new boiler plus new or rebuilt piping, and sometimes new radiators. For most homes, keeping steam and having it repaired and tuned properly is the better value. Our steam boiler team will tell you honestly which makes sense for your house.

Yes. Radiant floor heating runs warm water through tubing under the floor, usually fed by a boiler or a combi boiler. We find and fix cold spots and leaks, replace mixing valves, circulators, and manifold parts, and service the boiler that feeds the system so the floors heat evenly again. Older radiant systems in Philadelphia-area homes sometimes need their tubing checked for leaks and sludge before anything else. See our radiant heating repair page for the details.