This crazy-looking thing is our heater. It connects to our super efficient hot water heater (see photo below), and pumps hot water through special tubes in our basement floor.
It's AWESOME.
We turned it on last night for the first time since before Christmas. It's radiant heat, so it takes a couple of hours to kick in, but once it kicks in, the whole house gets toasty. And the floors are SO warm against bare feet. : )
These steam punk looking thing is the "brain" for our radiant floor heat. Somehow it interfaces with our hot water heater to get the water to flow into the tubes in the concrete floor.We got it from a DIY heating supply that our contractor found. We were supposed to install it this time last year, but then we had all those permit issues, so it's been sitting in a box in the back bedroom all this time. Let's hope it works...
The water heater that came with the house leaked. A lot.We want to be eco-friendly where possible, so Rob did some research and chose the AO Smith GDHE-50 to replace it. Down the road, we plant to use it for hydronic radiant floor so that we can get rid of the monstrosity in our living room. 
The AO Smith is supposed to be even more efficient than a tankless water heater. By a fluke, our first gas bill covered up to the day before we installed it, so in a few weeks we will be able to do a pretty accurate comparison. It was pretty expensive but, thankfully, it's eligible for the federal tax credit.
While we were in escrow, we learned the house couldn't be sold because it didn't have a heat source -- a pretty significant problem in Southern California in July. Because it was a short sale, the owner refused to do any work on the property. The listing agent had a heater installed, but we didn't have any say on where it went. It now cuts up the only wall in our living room that would hold a book shelf, and the contractor's sloppy work left the floors the mess they were in my previous post. Sigh. And to think we're just going to rip the damn thing out at the first opportunity.
