New Construction

Water heater rough-in is the foundation of new-construction water work. We size the unit to the home's hot-water demand (not to a generic 50-gallon spec), spec the gas line for full BTU input, plan the venting route end to end, and integrate the unit with the rest of the water-side rough-in — recirculation pumps, expansion tank, mixing valve, and isolation valves at every relevant junction.

On gas-fueled installs, we coordinate gas line sizing for the whole house from the utility meter (or LP tank) through every appliance demand. Undersized gas lines are the most common new-construction failure we see when we get called in to fix someone else's work — a tankless in particular wants a fat gas line that the original installer often skimped on. We size for diversified peak demand, not nameplate sum.

For tankless and hybrid heat-pump installs in new construction, the placement matters as much as the unit. We coordinate with the framer and HVAC sub on space allocation in the utility room, with the electrician on the dedicated circuit (hybrid) or condensate-side outlet (tankless), and with the GC on access for the eventual annual descale. A tankless installed in a closet that no one can reach for service is a 5-year asset, not a 20-year one.

If your build includes hydronic heat — radiant floors, baseboards, snow-melt, or a combination — we design and install the entire system from the blueprint stage through commissioning. That means running heat-loss calculations per room, sizing the boiler for diversified design load, laying out the radiant tubing for even floor coverage, designing the zoning strategy (whole-house master zoning vs. room-by-room, motorized zone valves vs. variable-speed circulators), specifying the manifold and mixing valves, and selecting controls that the homeowner can actually operate.

We work from architectural and mechanical drawings in CAD or PDF. We can produce a hydronic plan set if the architect did not include one (most local custom architects do not), or we can value-engineer an existing mechanical engineer's design to actually be installable for the price the GC committed to. Either way, the end product is a written design, a written quote, and a written commissioning report.

On the install side, we tube the radiant slabs at the right stage of the framing schedule (after framing, before sheathing on staple-up; before slab pour on in-slab), pressure-test before any covering goes down, install the boiler and indirect tank during mechanical rough-in, run the manifold and zone valves, wire and program controls, and commission the system with the customer present so they understand what they own.

Production builders do not want a one-off custom design on every home. They want a repeatable, code-compliant, value-engineered package that hits the price and the spec sheet across an entire development. We build those — typically a 50-gallon Bradford White gas tank or a Navien NPE-A2 tankless paired with a standard expansion tank, mixing valve, and isolation kit, sized to the floor plan and priced flat per home.

Builder pricing rewards predictability. We hold price for a season, hold the same install team across the development, and document everything for the closing packet — permit numbers, inspection sign-offs, warranty registrations. Buyers like seeing a documented WHU install in their disclosure docs because it transfers when they sell.

Custom homes and lake-house projects are some of our favorite work. They usually involve hydronic radiant heat in multiple zones, a snow-melt slab, an indirect tank for domestic hot water, a recirculation pump for instant hot at the far fixtures, whole-home filtration with UV and softener, and a primary boiler or pair of cascaded boilers in lead-lag — sometimes all in one project.

What makes custom work different from production is that every system interacts. Domestic hot water comes off the boiler via an indirect, the boiler also runs the radiant zones, the radiant manifold gets recirculation logic for the master bath, the filtration is plumbed before the entire stack so soft conditioned water hits every system, and the controls have to expose all of it without overwhelming the homeowner. We design the integration, and we commission it together — not as separate sub-systems handed off in pieces.

We work directly with custom builders, architects, and interior designers when their decisions affect water-side scope (heated floor in the master bath, towel warmer off the boiler loop, chef-grade faucet that demands recirculation, etc.). Late-stage scope creep is fine; we just need it written down so it goes on the permit and the warranty.