On a speculative house, the heating and cooling is a line item. On a custom house, it is a system: thirteen or fourteen zones, radiant heat under the floors, variable-speed air handlers, all of it coordinated to disappear into the walls and the slab. You never see it. You only feel that every room, in every season, is right. That difference is one of the largest, and least visible, on the whole project.
Where a custom build quietly spends
Ask Scott Hobbs where the biggest difference lives between a speculative and a custom house and he goes to the mechanicals before anything else. On Boroughs and Burbs, he laid out the gap: a speculative house might carry a heating and cooling package around a hundred thousand dollars with four or five zones. A custom house can reach half a million, with thirteen or fourteen zones, a whole run of radiant, and variable-speed air handlers.
That is not five times the equipment for the sake of it. It is control, one house broken into many small climates, each held where it should be, quietly, on its own.
From five zones to fourteen
4 to 5 zones
About $100,000
Forced air, a handful of zones, sized to a broad market.
13 to 14 zones
Up to $500,000
Radiant heat and variable-speed air handlers, zone by zone. Scott Hobbs’s numbers.
More zones is more control, and more to coordinate
Each zone is a room, or a group of rooms, that can be held at its own temperature on its own schedule. Radiant heat in the floor warms from the feet up and makes almost no sound. Variable-speed air handlers ramp gently instead of banging on and off, so the house stays even and quiet. The payoff is comfort you stop noticing, which is the highest form of it.
The cost is coordination. Fourteen zones, radiant loops, and the ductwork for that many air handlers all have to be routed through the structure before the framing closes, which is exactly the work described in Coordinating Before Construction. Decide the system late and it fights the house. Decide it early and it vanishes into it.
Mechanical systems, in brief
- How much do the mechanical systems cost in a custom home?
- A wide gap from the speculative side. On Boroughs and Burbs, Scott Hobbs put a speculative heating and cooling package near a hundred thousand dollars with four or five zones, and a custom one up toward half a million with thirteen or fourteen zones, radiant, and variable-speed air handlers. See how we work.
- Why does a custom home need so many heating zones?
- Control. Each zone holds a room or group of rooms at its own temperature and schedule, so the house is even everywhere rather than hot in one wing and cold in another. More zones means more comfort, and more that has to be coordinated through the structure.
- What are radiant heat and variable-speed air handlers?
- Radiant heat runs warm water through loops in the floor, heating from the feet up almost silently. Variable-speed air handlers ramp gently instead of cycling on and off, keeping the house quiet and even. Both are common on the custom side and rare on the speculative one.
- Where does Hobbs build?
- Across the Hamptons, New York City, New Jersey, and the Fairfield County and Litchfield County area of Connecticut. See our work.
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To hear Scott Hobbs on the mechanical side, watch the conversation on Boroughs and Burbs.