Healy Plumbing & Heating Inc.
Syracuse, N.Y.
Sundman Residence
Marty McMahon's company, Healy Plumbing and Heating, in Syracuse, N.Y., consists of seven plumbers and two office staff. They have been installing radiant for about six years. About one-third of their $800,000 business is radiant and that share is growing. At first, they only installed radiant heat in commercial buildings, but more and more, the market is demanding they move toward residential. Healy Plumbing and Heating has been around for nearly 80 years and prides itself on the quality of its work.When a local builder, Kevin Stack, needed someone he could count on to install a radiant system, he called McMahon. Stack knew the owners of this house would be quite pleased with a radiant system -- even though they didn't know radiant heat was an option. They had never experienced it. According to McMahon, "Luckily, the owners were open-minded. We are young guys, and they didn't hold that against us. From their point of view, they were going out on a limb and taking a chance with a bunch of young guys installing this 'radiant' in their home."
McMahon didn't disappoint the owners. The homeowners loved it and even called after the job was completed to ask McMahon if he could install a snowmelt system for the whole driveway, but it was too late -- the driveway was already in and it would be too expensive to re-do it.
The 9,500-sq. ft. house located on Skaneateles Lake in upstate New York is completely heated by radiant in 16 zones. The zones are controlled by a Taco PC 705 outdoor reset and injection control. Two of the zones for snowmelting and the garage and bedrooms are on the glycol side of the flat plate heat exchanger - controlled by an individual manual switch with timers and thermostats.
The system is heated by two Weil-McLain boilers that put out 175,000 Btu/hr. The boilers are controlled by a Taco PC 702 that resets water temperature in stages while alternating boilers.
For the domestic hot water supply, there is an 80-gallon indirect fired hot water heater.
McMahon is exceptionally proud of his entry to the RPA Showcase this year. "It really shows how a spectacular crew can get spectacular results," says McMahon. "This was a team effort the whole way through. We did a great job and the credit for that goes to the guys working on it. I want to thank them and make sure they get recognition for the job they did."
Second Place:
Andy Stack & Sons
Avon, Ohio
Third Place:
American Heating
Hailey, Idaho
