A couple of years ago, my husband was offered a significant promotion at work. The new position significantly increased his salary but also required us to relocate. We’d always lived in the south, where the temperature never dropped below fifty degrees. Moving to the far north was a huge transition. The kids were excited to experience snow firsthand and were anxious to learn to ski, play hockey and build snowmen. I wasn’t happy about buying heavy boots, wool coats, snow shovels and ice scrapers. The house we bought is equipped with a boiler heating system. I’d never lived in a house with any type of heating system, so I knew nothing about how to manage a boiler. I’ve since realized that we got really lucky because the boiler is the best feature of the whole house. With the horrible weather for the majority of the year, I spend most of my time hiding in the house. Fortunately, the boiler has no trouble handling temperatures down to twenty below zero. We have compact baseboard heaters throughout the house and each room includes an independent thermostat. We’re able to customize the temperature room-by-room. This allows us to only heat occupied rooms and cater to personal preference. I like to keep warm, so it’s a good thing that the boiler is wonderfully energy efficient. The boiler is a hydronic heating system meaning that it uses water rather than air to move heat energy. The advantage of a hydronic system is that it’s exceptionally clean, quiet and gentle. It maintains very even temperature between floor and ceiling and doesn’t dry out the air.
