OHW

The answer to the "secret" question is "wavy" (no quotes). Capitalization shouldn't matter.

I checked over the logs - an activation email was sent. Assuming your email address is correct, try checking your spam folder; it might have landed there.

I can't analyze your financial situation, but I'd say that it's worth it. With my limited experience with hydronics (our system is a single zone plus the combi DHW), I've been impressed with the possibilities. Water is a much better than air for moving heat around. The comfort of hydronic cast iron ...

I'd definitely recommend getting a PEX tool - from what I've heard, it's not too hard to do, and doing it yourself would pay for the cost of the tool many times over. I'm uneasy with the idea of connecting the water heater to the radiant system, even for testing - connecting potable and non-potable ...

Hydronics certainly offer a lot of options (and a lot of expense). The forums at heatinghelp.com have a lot of knowledgeable people - that'd be a good place to learn more.

Original cast iron. The front half of the house is tremendously over-radiated. The back half is a little cold (especially the dining room and kitchen) because we took out two radiators when we changed the kitchen layout. We're considering putting in a floor loop in the kitchen to even things out.

Our mod-con runs great with our over-radiated system: With today's very cold temperatures (around 0°F), our water temp got up the way up to the high 130's, when the system was recovering from nighttime setback. Our most recent gas bill was $170 - just a tad higher than our previous house (less then ...

We recently spent $15k to upgrade our boiler (though we did go with a premium brand [Viessman]), so I think $12-14k is probably too low for a new system, even one on the smaller side. There's a lot of labor involved in fitting all of those pipes. In addition to increased comfort over a forced air sy...

I was at the Old House Expo as well - I volunteered (which involved sitting in on two sessions and helping the presenters as needed), so I got in free. :-) I was especially impressed by the sample windows at one exhibitor's booth (can't remember the name; from Kalamazoo; the booth was facing the doo...

What's really sad is that preventing all of this spam only involves a few configuration changes in the forum software - for someone with the proper admin rights.