The cold, wet Pacific Northwest is a radiant heating hotbed. Olympic Radiant Heating Inc. has tapped into a thriving market for hydronic systems in average-sized homes and waterfront mansions, in mini-storage buildings and aircraft hangars.

Based in Gig Harbor, Wash., on the southern end of Puget Sound, Olympic Radiant designs and installs residential and commercial radiant systems within a 100-mile radius of metropolitan Seattle.

When owner Craig Coble took over the business five years ago, he took on a laundry list of challenges. Contractors, architects and customers knew little about boilers and radiant systems. Materials required to do installations weren''''t readily available and there was a shortage of skilled labor. Today, Olympic Radiant has a streamlined system in place to sell, design and install.

Coble was introduced to radiant systems as a sales rep for plumbing and heating products. He took a series of technical classes on radiant heating from a Canadian company, offered because there was a dearth of skilled professionals in the field.

"With a basic understanding of roughing in the tubing and putting the tubing in the concrete, I started doing heat loss analysis for homeowners who wanted radiant," Coble said. "Soon, I found myself out on job sites, teaching plumbers the basics of radiant."

To learn radiant inside and out, Coble went to work for an area plumbing/heating contractor. Within six months he was radiant operations manager. He partnered with the head boiler technician to purchase the radiant heating division of the business in 2001. Coble bought out his partner in January 2006 and incorporated as Olympic Radiant Heating Inc. Operations manager Matt Taylor, who joined the company in late 2002, recently became a minority shareholder.

 Olympic''''s staff started and stayed small. In addition to Coble and Taylor, there is a boiler piper and rough-in crew, with additional labor called in as needed.

"Because we''''ve streamlined the way we operate, we can do twice as much work with the same amount of personnel as when we started," Coble said. "We will work with a lead guy making the bends and turns and have day crew tie down the tubes. For the boiler piper, it''''s the same job whether it''''s a smaller residential job or that 80,000 square foot storage building."

There are always 20 to 25 projects on the board, due to the varying construction time lines. The company does both residential and commercial work, its bread-and-butter being new residential and retrofit. It''''s not unusual for high-end projects-10,000 square feet or more-to take two years to build. Olympic will visit the site at various phases of construction from rough-in to setting the final thermostats.

"We can do an average house in a few days-rough in, all the tubing, the supply and returns, setting the manifolds and air-testing, boiler work and wiring," Coble said. "We prefabricate all of our control panels in our shop and take them out to the job site." Olympic also changes out older boilers in functioning systems.

Olympic Radiant Heating has installed systems heated by natural gas, propane, oil, wood, geothermal energy and solar-assisted. "What we sell is health, comfort, efficiency and built-green technology."

A 5,500-square foot, $4 million home on Bainbridge Island used geothermal heat. "Ground source heat pumps extract heat from the earth and supply a storage tank of hot water at the perfect temperature for radiant heat which is pumped through the floors-super efficient," Coble said. "Run into a booster tank, it preheats domestic hot water."

Passive solar panels were used to preheat the water supply to a water heater in another residential waterfront project. On overcast or rainy days, the boiler will kick in to heat the domestic hot water.

"A single boiler is the primary for the radiant heating system and the backup for the water heating system. We are still working on a solar radiant heating system with boiler backup," he said.

A customer who built a house out in the woods chose a free-standing wood stove to heat a 500-gallon insulated storage tank for his radiant system. Typically, wood-fired boilers are installed with a gas or oil backup, Coble explained. For unusual projects, the company has the customer select and buy the boiler and Olympic Radiant installs it and hooks it up to the radiant system.

 Another project used radiant floors downstairs and multiple heat pumps generating full-air-conditioning and heating upstairs.

"We used the Tekmar TN4 system which handles both air conditioning and heating," he said. "The client, a computer guy from Seattle, wanted full automation."

They''''ve installed radiant tubing in concrete-rimmed jetted tubs and 10-foot square walk-in-in showers. Area homeowners also want radiant in their garage floors.

Olympic also has installed radiant systems at airports in aircraft hangars up to 10,000 square feet: "The theory is that aircraft technicians can work harder and longer if they''''re not lying on a freezing cold slab," Coble said. A system installed in a 5,000-square-foot aircraft hangar in Port Townsend is fueled by a waste oil boiler. "Waste oil boilers can use a variety of waste oil products as fuel, so used oil can be burned rather than collected and disposed of," he said. "We see a growing market for these systems at auto repair and lube shops."

Radiant heating also is increasingly popular in mini-storage complexes to keep contents dry and free of mold. Olympic Radiant has piped several warehouses and storage facilities up to 100,000 square feet.

Olympic set up a 310,000 BTU high-efficiency Weil-McLain Ultra boiler to meet the high ventilation demands of Harmony Hills, a cancer patient retreat supported by neighbors Bill Gates and the owners of Nordstroms in the exclusive Alderbrook area.

On one retrofit, which had existing electric radiant heat installed in the ''''70s, Olympic had to fish tubing to every radiator in a 4,500 square foot home. "We used a boiler system not only to heat all the radiators, but ran heat exchangers to the basement pool and hot tub," Coble said.

The company has worked in small homes to multi-million-dollar waterfront mansions. "We do lots of 3,000 square foot and under homes and we try to make it affordable," Coble said. "We value-engineer every job. We''''re not the most expensive people out there and we''''re not the cheapest."

"Our business philosophy is simple: Get in. Get out. Make sure it works. These systems can get as complicated as you want to make them, but we still have to keep an eye on the bottom line. I try to steer away from things until they are really proven," he said. "We believe it doesn''''t have to be a piece of art. It needs to be an operational system. This is where value-engineering comes in, designing an up-to-date system that meets the unique needs of each project."

The education process for architects, builders, general contractors and consumers is ongoing, Coble said. "It''''s amazing the number of things that come up that are construction-related and not radiant heating-related. I tell them what they need to know because I don''''t want them to get frustrated with the process and decide not to do radiant because it''''s too complicated."

Consumers get schooled in radiant at two or three home shows each year. "We build boards with piping and control panels on mirrored glass, stainless steel backgrounds," he said. "I recently added a plasma TV that displays a slide show of company projects with a soundtrack. People come up and say ''''Wow! That''''s incredible! How do you learn to do this?''''"

 To help grow the business, a small business computer server has replaced the old white dry-erase board for scheduling projects.

"My brother, who works for Microsoft, urged me to computerize," Coble said. "We now have synchronized calendars, computerized scheduling and task lists for operations, sales and marketing. Now we can run the company from anywhere."

The server allows Coble to keep things running smoothly with a limited amount of people. Like all businesses, Coble said Olympic has turnover in personnel. But the company can ride that out because of the efficiencies they''ve built in.

"Matt and I wrote our own bidding program that allows us to bid residential jobs more quickly and efficiently," Coble said. "We can type in the square footage, type of boiler and number of zones, overhead costs and labor. We can tell a customer in five minutes the cost of the job. It''s critical to know exactly what my profit margin is on jobs rather than have pricing all over the board."

The system helps manage every step of the process from design to bidding to material pricing and tracking. Employees have GPS trackers on their phones and clients can e-mail plans to the company. "I track inventory so we don''t have a lot of expensive stuff sitting here. We used to constantly be driving around to pick up parts and material. Now we do complete materials lists for each project and have vendors deliver to us," Coble said.

Olympic Radiant documented the streamlined, step-by-step process so that it doesn''t have to be rethought for each new project. "The idea is to create a prototype and operate your business like a franchise," Coble said. "Everything is written down. Like McDonald''s, you want the product to be the same every day."

"As a result of our efforts to streamline our operation, we developed a business system that could be easily duplicated and expanded to multiple locations," operations manager Matt Taylor said. "With our process, the installs have become the widgets that spit out of the end of the machine," Coble added.

Challenges for the business include availability of materials for high-volume installations, customers unfamiliar with radiant systems and how they work and finding skilled labor.

"There are not many tradesmen in our area with skills in radiant, and those that have the skills are quickly snatched up," Taylor said. Olympic Radiant sends employees to Wirsbo for training and the company also assists with systems design.

Olympic also teamed with regional distributors to ensure materials needed for radiant projects were stocked and available, something that''s become more refined as the business has grown. "Because of my past as a sales rep, my connection with wholesalers has always been strong."

There''s always room for improvement, Coble said: "We try to look beyond dealing with day-to-day issues at the bigger picture. ''What can we do differently? What can we do better? How can we make the process smoother? Where can the business go? What direction can we take?''"

If you want to stay in business, grow and make a profit, "you need to get aware and stay aware of what''s happening in the marketplace today," Coble said. "You have to take care of the business side of the business along with the technical side."

Networking in the industry also matters. Coble is the proposed Washington State local area chapter president of the Radiant Panel Association. "Being a part of an association is really more about sharing your success with other contractors to keep the standards up."

Coble expects Washington State''s radiant market to continue to grow. Baby Boomers who haven''t built their retirement homes are expected to drive radiant sales in the next two decades, he said. And, he''s already succeeded where predictions were less than positive.

"I was told many times by almost everyone in the plumbing and heating industry that I would never make it as a solely radiant heating business, that there as not enough business out there to survive," He said. "We''ve proved them wrong-because that''s all we do."