This house is heated two ways and cooled two ways, and all of it is about ten years old. The quiet warmth in winter comes from a Lochinvar Knight WHN199 condensing boiler in the basement mechanical room, pushing hot water through a Taco six-zone panel, three Taco circulators and three Taco zone valves, with an Amtrol Extrol tank taking up the expansion. The same boiler fires the eighty-two gallon Lochinvar Squire indirect tank beside it, so your showers and your radiators share one flame, and both stop if it does. Upstairs in the attic, two Comfortmaker air handlers, one north and one south, move cooled air from a pair of International Comfort Products condensers in the side yard, the machines that earn their keep in August when the air off the bay sits heavy and wet. A Mitsubishi mini-split runs its own room, and two Aprilaire 800 steam humidifiers put moisture back into the air once the heating side wakes up in mid-October.

Water comes in past a Watts pressure-reducing valve holding sixty pounds and a standard ten-inch whole-house filter, with a Zoeller sump in the northwest corner doing what every basement here does after a nor'easter. Everything on the comfort side is mid-life and running, though nothing here has a service visit on record yet, which is the clause that matters most. The two condensers are the oldest in dog years and will be the first to go; the boiler and the tank have years left if the burner gets its annual cleaning and the anode rod gets pulled.