After much mulling over with our mechanical consultant, we decided it would be best to remove the forced hot air systems in Liane’s house, and go with an all hydronic system. The first thing the plumbers (FAI) needed to do was to remove the leaky oversized ducts, which also made it possible to walk around the basement without hitting one’s head. The sheetmetal was eventually picked up for recycling. Below is the old 2nd floor return duct which had been located inside the 1st floor hallway at the back door. No wonder the 2nd floor could never get proper air mixing and balancing. 
The next thing was to decide what to do with 1 old hydronic boiler, 2 forced hot air furnaces that made a racket and blew dry hot air most unpleasantly–and 3 not-so-efficient domestic hot water heaters? Well, we gave them to the electrician (except for the ancient boiler). 
This way they could be repurposed for the electrician’s shop use, and Liane could go with a very efficient, quiet, hydronic, combined space heating and dhw system. The system we selected with the help of our mechanical consultant, was a Heat Transfer product called the Phoenix Evolution–a combined space heating, and domestic hot water–modulating, condensing unit. It is compact and very energy efficient, and can be easily integrated with solar hot water panels, which Liane would like to install in the next phase of this project, perhaps next year. There are some good tax credits for solar at this time.
Here is the Phoenix arriving.
Here it is out of it’s packaging–it’s pretty small, but pretty smart. One of those protruding boxes is a computer, and the other has rather elegant plumbing.
The Phoenix does weigh something though, and here it is being slid carefully through the basement bulkhead.
Rick, from Synergy was helping out with bringing the Phoenix to the basement, and he is at the base of the bulkhead steps in this image.
Once inside, it is positioned near a basement window through which it will vent and receive combustion air.
Now John and Bobby, the plumbers from FAI can start getting to work, to get all the domestic hot water switched over to the Phoenix.
Next, John from Boudreau Electric wires up what's necessary.
The supplier's representative and John look over the installation.
