Although the crew at Guido Construction hadn’t put in a Viega radiant system before, they got plenty of help along the way, and the project potentially opened the door for many more.
Guido was asked to install radiant heating in an outdoor patio area in an upscale private dining club in the San Antonio area. When the owner wanted to incorporate a heating element, the building’s architectural firm, Don B. McDonald Architect, got involved and landed on Viega as the best choice for radiant.
“I’ve been doing construction for 15 years and this was the first radiant floor heating – except for some really small stuff with electrical mats under tile – that I’d done,” explained Lonnie Knight, Project Manager for Guido. “So we got in touch with [Viega District Manager] Keenan Reed and he’s been a great help to us. We had kind of put something together and started asking questions about what we’d need.
“Viega Design Services gave us a layout of the drawings and the floor plan. We don’t know everything, and we’re more than happy to pick somebody’s brain who knows what they’re doing, so this was really helpful.”
The dining club redid its outdoor patio area, about 1,800 square feet total, to be enclosed on all sides and partially covered overhead. In order to keep patrons warm during the cooler months of the year, radiant was the perfect option.
“Obviously radiant is not something we do much in the warmer climate,” Knight said. “It’s more for specialty builds – high-end custom jobs. We can see this being attractive to some of the clientele who will want to do it at their own houses.”
Work on the project was largely done in the summer. The rapid grid installation has ½” and 5/8” tubing and 14 total zones. The patio area was completed before the boiler room was done, so Knight said the radiant lines were pressured and holding with no issues for a couple of months while they waited.
“Everything went really well,” Knight said. “Keenan was great and came out and helped us with the layout. He was great with questions we had, answering things over the phone or making jobsite visits. Viega was very helpful in getting us what we needed.”
