Radiant Heating Installation, Done Right.
Radiant floor heat is the comfort people never stop talking about once they have lived on it: silent, even, dust-free warmth rising from the floor itself, no vents blowing, no equipment humming, just rooms that feel gently right. Installing it is design work executed at construction pace, and the design is where we start.
Installation · Burnet & Central Texas
The Comfort That Ruins You for Forced Air
Radiant converts the floor into the heater, warm water circulating through tubing in the slab or underfloor, and the physics of that choice produces its famous feel: heat delivered where people live rather than pooled at the ceiling, no drafts, no blower noise, no dust highway, and thermostats satisfied at lower air temperatures because warm floors change how warmth is experienced. Hill Country stone-and-slab construction takes to it naturally, and the recurring pattern in our radiant work is the second project, the client who heated one bathroom or one shop floor and came back wanting the whole next build on it.
Radiant is unforgiving of design laziness precisely because everything ends up buried: loop lengths and spacing determine whether floors heat evenly or stripe, zones must match how rooms are used, water temperatures must fit floor coverings, tile, wood, and polished concrete each with their own rules, and manifold placement decides thirty years of serviceability. The design work happens at drawings-and-load-math stage, and the install week is execution: tubing laid and pressure-tested before any pour, staple-up systems fastened and plated correctly underfloor, manifolds set accessibly, and everything documented with photos before concrete makes it permanent.
The heat source completes it, condensing boilers running low radiant temperatures at their happiest efficiency, occasionally water-heater-based systems for modest single zones, and commissioning proves every loop: flows balanced at the manifold, floors verified warming evenly, controls explained until they are yours.
Local conditions shape this work more than most homeowners expect. Our summers stack week after week of hundred-degree afternoons, which means long compressor runtimes, drain lines moving gallons of condensate a day, and electrical components living near their limits from June through September. Lake humidity keeps the corrosion clock running even in mild months, and spring pollen packs filters fast enough to choke airflow in weeks. A tech who works this exact hundred miles every day builds all of that into the radiant installation call: what to check first, which parts fail early here, and which settings survive a Texas cooling season instead of merely a laboratory one.
Installation
Radiant Projects We Build
Where in-floor heat earns its devotion around the Hill Country, project by project.
- Whole-home new constructionThe full experience: every room designed, zoned, and warmed from the slab up. The flagship radiant project.
- Shop and garage floorsWinter projects on a warm slab change everything. A favorite among the ranch and workshop crowd.
- Bathroom floorsThe gateway radiant: tile that never shocks bare feet, done during remodels at friendly scale.
- Additions and casitasNew square footage warmed radiantly while construction makes it easy, often outclassing the main house.
- Staple-up retrofitsUnderfloor radiant beneath accessible wood floors, bringing the feel to existing rooms without demolition.
- Snow-melt and specialtyThe occasional heated walkway or specialty slab, engineered honestly for the rare Texas ice week.
Not sure this is your problem?
Call anyway. We name the likely cause on the phone for free, and if it turns out to be something small you can handle yourself, we say exactly that and save you the visit.
Why Off Duty
Buried Work Deserves Paranoid Craft
Everything in radiant gets entombed, in concrete, under floors, behind finish work, which is why our installation habits run paranoid on purpose. Tubing gets pressure-tested before the pour and stays pressurized during it, so any construction damage announces itself while repair is trivial. Loop layouts get photographed against reference points before concrete, creating the map every future renovation will thank us for. Manifolds get placed for human access, never buried in closets behind water heaters. Fasteners, spacing, and coverage follow the design rather than the installer’s lunch schedule. Buried mistakes are forever; buried craft is too, and the difference costs one careful week.
The efficiency story deserves its telling: radiant floors run on water in the nineties and low hundreds, exactly the temperatures where condensing boilers achieve their best numbers, and the whole assembly heats living space with less energy than air systems spend fighting ceilings and duct losses. Zoned properly, rooms heat by use, bedrooms warm for mornings, the shop only when occupied, and the operating bills reflect it. Radiant costs more to install than ductwork and repays in comfort daily and efficiency monthly, an honest trade we will price plainly for your project.
Here is how the visit goes. A call to (512) 925-3090 reaches a real tech, not a call center, at any hour. On site, the diagnosis runs on instruments until the cause is certain, and then everything gets laid out in plain English: what failed, what fixes it, and exactly what it costs, before work begins. When the radiant installation work is done, it gets verified under load instead of switched on and waved at. If the pattern sounds simple, it is. It is also rare enough in this trade that people write reviews about it.
On pricing, the policy is the same as everything else here: out loud and up front. The visit cost gets stated on the phone before anyone drives anywhere. The repair price gets stated after diagnosis and before work. No packages with hidden contents, no commission-driven upsell in the truck, and no number on the invoice you did not already hear.
One honest note about timing. Problems in this category rarely improve on their own, and the price of waiting is usually a bigger bill: the weak part takes a healthy one with it, the small leak becomes a stain on a ceiling, the strange noise becomes a seized motor. Calling early is almost always the cheaper version of the same repair, and the phone consult costs nothing: describe what you are seeing and we will tell you honestly whether it can wait.
As for who shows up: this is an owner-operated shop, so the tech at your door is usually Bryce himself, a second-generation HVAC man with ten years on the tools, licensed, insured, and photographed doing exactly this kind of work in the job gallery. No commissioned salesman rides along, and nobody at this company earns a bonus for talking you into more than you need.
This service runs wherever our trucks do: home base in Burnet, the Highland Lakes from Granite Shoals to Buchanan Dam, down the corridor to Round Rock and Austin, north to Killeen and Temple, and out to the sixteen-county edge at Waco, Boerne, and Fredericksburg. The whole map lives on the service areas page, with drive-time honesty built into every window we quote.
Diamond Contractor
Mitsubishi’s top ductless credential, earned with factory training.
Second Generation
Raised in the trade, ten years on the tools before the name went on a truck.
Warranty Authorized
JB and Mitsubishi warranty work: we file the claim, you skip the fight.
Open 24 Hours
A real person answers the phone at any hour, every day of the year.
The Standard
How This Work Gets Done Here
Every trade job carries an invisible line item: the standard it was done to. On radiant installation work, ours reads like this. The diagnosis is proven with instruments, because guessing is expensive and it is your money on the table. The parts that go in are parts we would put in our own house, matched to spec instead of whatever was cheapest on the shelf. The workmanship follows the manufacturer’s book and the Texas code book both, because shortcuts hide for exactly one season and then bill you with interest.
When the work is finished, it gets tested the way it will actually be used: under load, at temperature, with the readings written down. Then the area gets left the way we found it or cleaner, the old parts get shown to you on request, and the invoice matches the number you already heard. If anything acts up afterward, you call the same number and the same person answers. That is the entire warranty conversation most customers ever need, and it is why the reviews keep saying the same three things: honest, fair, showed up.
Radiant Heating Installation Questions
Asked Before We Roll a Truck
The ones the phone line hears most for this service, with the answers given at full length instead of sales-brochure length.
How much does radiant floor heating cost to install?
New-construction radiant, designed in from the plans, prices as a premium over ducted heating that varies with zones, floor coverings, and boiler scope, modest for shop slabs, more for whole-home multi-zone systems, and the free design consultation produces real numbers from your actual drawings. Retrofit pricing forks by access: staple-up under open crawl or basement floors is genuinely reasonable, while finished-slab retrofits carry surgery costs we quote honestly or advise against. The operating side partially repays the premium through condensing efficiency. Comfort repays the rest, ask anyone who owns it.
Does radiant heat work under wood floors and tile?
Both, with design respect for each. Tile and stone are radiant’s natural partners, conductive, tolerant, and delicious barefoot. Engineered wood works well within manufacturer temperature limits our designs honor; solid hardwood asks for more care, moderate water temperatures, proper acclimation, and species-aware limits, all manageable with honest planning. Carpet insulates against the very heat you paid for and gets a frank conversation. Polished concrete, the Hill Country favorite, is simply the ideal: the slab is the emitter. Whatever the covering, the design sets water temperatures and spacing to suit it, which is exactly the kind of buried decision that must be right the first time.
Can radiant heat my whole house, or is it just for floors-feel-nice?
Whole houses, absolutely, properly designed radiant is a complete heating system, sized to the building’s full heat loss, and its owners ride out Texas cold snaps in the most comfortable rooms in the county. The honest asterisk is cooling: radiant heats, and summer still needs an air system, so whole-home radiant builds pair the floors with cooling designed separately, often ductless zones or a right-sized ducted system that only has to cool. That pairing is standard in our radiant designs and gets priced together from the start, one comfort plan, both seasons, no surprises in August.
What happens if a radiant loop ever leaks under the slab?
First, context: properly installed PEX in a slab is remarkably durable, continuous runs with no buried joints, pressure-tested before and during the pour, and slab leaks in quality installations are genuinely rare across decades. If one ever occurs, modern diagnosis is surgical rather than exploratory: zone isolation identifies the loop, thermal imaging locates the spot through the floor, and repair opens a small targeted section. Our installation habits stack the odds further, photographed layouts, no joints in the pour, protective sleeves at slab penetrations. It is the question everyone asks and the problem almost nobody with a well-built system ever has.
How long does radiant installation take during construction?
The site time is modest and the coordination is everything: tubing and manifold rough-in typically takes a few days per slab phase, scheduled tightly with the concrete calendar, insulation and fastening one day, tubing layout and pressure test the next, pour-ready on the builder’s date. Boiler room fit-out and controls come later in the build, off the critical path. Staple-up retrofits run by room count, usually days rather than weeks. The design work up front is the real timeline item, worth weeks of unhurried planning, because execution is quick and permanence is absolute. We fold into construction schedules cleanly; slabs wait for no one, and we know it.
Related work: Boiler Installation · Radiant Heating Repair · New Construction HVAC · see real jobs in the gallery
Warmth From the Floor Up
Design-first radiant from drawings to warm slab, with every loop mapped and proven. Prefer to write it out? Send the form and we call you back.
(512) 925-3090 Book a Free Look
