Highlights

• Located in the Beverly Grove district of Los Angeles, this Mission Revival-style home “marries old Hollywood architecture with bold modern interiors,” according to its host, Cottage Living magazine.
• The 3,600-square-foot residence features wood and stone floors throughout. To keep these surfaces warm and comfortable on chilly mornings, the builder equipped the home’s four bathrooms with an Uponor Quik Trak® radiant floor heating system.
• The 432 feet of Quik Trak, containing approximately 1,000 feet of Wirsbo hePEX™ tubing, proved a cost-effective way to improve the home’s livability without having to heat the entire house.

Background

With its cement-stucco walls and clay-tile roof, the Cottage Living Idea Home blends seamlessly with its surroundings, notes general contractor Rick Spann of R.J. Spann in Santa Barbara. “The house looks like it has been there for years.”

But as the magazine’s editors note, “mission revival meets modern” in the 3,600-square-foot concept home, which has a rooftop 16-collector-panel solar system to generate electrical power. Inside, an Uponor radiant floor heating system, featuring Quik Trak® panels and roughly 1,000 feet of 5/16" hePEX™ plus tubing, warms the home’s four full bathrooms, including the master bath as well as smaller facilities off the den, the kitchen and another bedroom.

The need to take the edge off a chilly winter morning is no small matter during the winter months, even in sunny Southern California. “We rarely drop below freezing here, but we do get rainy and damp, which feels cold,” says Nancy Lee, co-owner with her husband John of John E. Lee Air Conditioning and Heating, which installed the Uponor system.

The four bathrooms in the home use 108 Quik Trak panels, heated with 115°F water generated by a 75-gallon, tank-type water heater. When a bathroom calls for heat, warm water circulates from the water heater through a 12" x 15" heat exchanger to a closed loop of tubing. The heated fluid is then distributed through a manifold to tubing imbedded in the Quik Trak panels to warm the zone in need of heat.

Because the bath areas are relatively small, the heat exchanger was a more cost-effective solution than using a dedicated, conventional boiler as the hot-water source.

“I have always felt that radiant floor heating is the most efficient and comfortable way to heat a home,” Spann comments. “It’s a proven approach that’s been around for a very long time.”