Artful and orderly mechanical rooms are a hallmark of Montano Plumbing & Heating’s retrofit installations. Photo courtesy of Montano Plumbing & Heating, Inc.

Almost everybody, that's who.
    This story's headline is a common misperception held by some our friends and neighbors who live in that great wasteland of “fly-over” territory we Westerners vaguely dismiss as, “Back East.”
    This mistaken perception of the Western climate—probably perpetuated by various television commercials featuring toothily grinning, swimsuit-clad hardbodies frolicking on the sunny, golden beach at Malibu—is the kind of thing that makes Larry Montano laugh.
    Montano is the president of Montano Plumbing & Heating, Inc., in Santa Cruz, Calif.--a company he said does primarily residential radiant installations.
    “I go to a lot of RPA meetings and seminars across the country. Most of them are held on the East coast, but I always try and attend those,” Montano said. “Everybody back there says, ‘You live out in California? Well you don’t need heat’. Actually, we need heat for more of the year than they do. Our heating season is quite a bit longer than in the Midwest because whenever it starts to heat up there they shut their systems off. We have the coastal fog and this and that so we have a very long heating season. It’s really booming out here as far as radiant applications—we’re really getting in tune to it and we obviously enjoy the huge comfort.”
    Montano said his company is seeing quite a few radiant retrofits in and around its location on the north side of the fabulous Monterey Bay. He said many of the homes there are located on “good-sized” lots and a popular thing these days is to build an accessory dwelling unit—an in-law’s house—on the property. And those, Montano said, are perfect for radiant heating. There’s no scarcity of other projects in that particular  market, either.
    “I have, like, eight projects going right now,” he said. “We’ve retrofitted a house [within the past year] in Aptos, Calif., for a gentleman who moved up here from Los Angeles. He bought a $4 million house that had three forced-air heaters in it. That came out and we retrofitted that house to go full radiant floor and combine solar for domestic hot water.”
    He said the longer heating season in areas near the coast—typically from mid-August through mid-June sometimes—is playing a role in attracting both contractors and homeowners to the benefits and efficiencies of radiant heating systems.
    Customers favor it because of the comfort factor and the fact it goes well with common types of flooring materials like stone, tile, hardwood and even carpeting. And, even though it’s still more expensive than forced-air, the pricing is coming down because of an increasing number of products on the market and installers that can put the stuff in. And, Montano said, architects dig radiant because they don’t have to figure out soffits and ductwork on new construction projects. Installers like it for their own set of reasons.
    “Most of the general wholesalers are selling product now and they’re just trying to get into the niche,” Montano said. “I’ve been doing this since the 1980s, and I just wish there were more education available for people. That’s very important. Right now, though, it seems like lots of people are just jumping on the bandwagon—they’re doing the plumbing on it while we’re doing the heating and they see what we do and hear how much a project costs and they want to jump in. Training is important and I encourage a lot of it around here.”
    Montano recommended looking into training through the Radiant Panel Association. Plus there are lots of manufacturer’s reps that have classes, as do the manufacturers themselves. But some contractors are skeptical about attending a manufacturer’s training course because some in the past have left the impression they were nothing but thinly disguised sell jobs for that company’s products instead of an overview of the technology in general.
    “Exactly,” Montano said. “And that’s what I tell them. They have to get into the basics of the zone valve. Why do they use them? Whether it’s theirs or whatever, they have to get into the basics. Or pumps, circulators. But most of it is through the reps and the different lines that they have.”