Ask Dave, he’ll know.” I had just walked into the inside sales area to give our salesman a list to quote. A friendly competitor was looking for answers and one of the salesmen told him to ask me for my thoughts. He had recently installed a new boiler with five zones of radiant heating in an old farmhouse.

“When any three out of five zones run, no problem, but have the fourth and/or fifth zone(s) come on and there’s not enough heat to satisfy any of the thermostats.”

Since all of the radiant zones work if only three are operating at the same time, I said, “You need a bigger boiler.” A voice in the corner loudly proclaimed that to be wrong, and I asked him why.

“Because I sized the job,” he said.