My daughter Erin — whose work appears in Plumbing Mechanical and other trade journals from time to time — along with her three sisters grew up listening to me talk nonstop about hydronic heating. Erin recently bought a house with a furnace.

This house is located in a hilly, wooded neighborhood near Silver Spring, Maryland. The house was a foreclosure and was even featured on one of those reality TV shows where they try to dress an old house up to make it look delicious to potential buyers. The husband on the show was a general contractor, and we got to see how lovely the place looked before he ripped out most of the kitchen cabinets and other worthwhile objects. He then stopped paying the mortgage and declared bankruptcy. Reality can be rough.