Headwaters Hydronics Co. installs residential hydronic radiant floors, glycol snowmelt slabs, and ASME mod-con boilers — one named loop at a time — for custom homes and gut renovations across the Gallatin Valley and the Bridger, Madison, and Tobacco Root ranges.
Operating from a single bay on Griffin Drive in Bozeman since 2011. Six people, two installation trucks, one rolling commissioning kit, and a job book that runs the year clockwise from the first hard frost.
We do one thing and we publish it. Hydronic radiant for the floor; glycol snowmelt for the driveway and the front walk; modulating-condensing boilers in the basement to drive both; the manifolds, mixing valves, hydraulic separators, circulators, sensors, and outdoor-reset controls that make the system actually behave when it's -22°F outside.
We are not a service truck for the entire trade. We don't repipe houses, we don't unclog drains, we don't set water heaters by themselves, we don't replace fixtures. What we do is design, install, and commission hydronic heat and snowmelt to the load — and stay on call through the heating season for the systems we built. The submittal binder we leave behind is the same binder we read from when the call comes in at 2 a.m. in February.
The practice runs on a job book. Every install is a numbered track with a name, a load calculation, a manifold map, a boiler model number, an outdoor-reset curve, and a date stamp at commissioning. The same book lives on this site — open to anyone, the way Caleffi's Idronics is open, the way the ASHRAE Handbook is open in the bookstore. Read it, audit it, hold us to it.
The full scope reads as a track listing on the scope page. Six offerings, ranked by share of our annual hours. Every detail page publishes a typical loop count, a typical sqft, a typical BTUH load, an ASME boiler class, and a price band. We do not gate scope by intake form.
Every loop in every system we install gets a name written on its manifold tag in DYMO embossed tape and registered in the binder. Loop C-6, primary bath slab. Loop B-1, mudroom slab — note: 9″ o.c. tight at the bench seat. Loop F-2, stair landing return — dual-pass per Caleffi 663 mixer.
The names are not whimsy. When a homeowner calls and says the spare bedroom over the garage is cold, we open the binder, find the loop on the master, walk to the manifold, and turn the right actuator. The name is what makes that walk possible at 2 a.m. on a Saturday.
The job book is also a credits page. Every install lists who designed it, who pulled tube, who set boiler, who commissioned, who signed off. Read the crew credits; read the job book; read the daybook for what happens in the cold snaps.
Read the full job book. Three commissioned tracks below, with the field-data line for each.
New construction, 6,200 sf, two-story timber-frame with full radiant on slab below and staple-up above. Twelve manifolds, 38 loops.
Driveway and walk, 1,850 sf of glycol snowmelt over a 320-foot run; dedicated condensing plant with its own outdoor-reset curve.
Conversion of a 1908 cast-iron radiator system to a mod-con plant with new outdoor reset, restored original radiators, deletion of three monoflo loops.
Hydronics is a calendar-bound trade. The slab gets poured before the boiler arrives; the loops get pulled before the carpenters set the joists below; the manifolds get hung before the drywaller arrives in the mechanical room. We schedule six months ahead because that is the rhythm of new construction and major retrofit work, not because we are precious.
For everyone else: we are honest about what we don't do. We don't replace tank water heaters as their own job. We don't unclog kitchen drains. We don't move toilets. If you need any of those, our standing referral list is on the visit page. Plumbers we trust on the same patch.
Read the colophon for our licenses, insurance carrier, surety bond, and the full reference list. Read the about page for the story of the shop. Or just come by Griffin Drive — the coffee pot is on Mondays through Fridays, 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Selected entries from the daybook. The whole cold-snap log lives there, including the night the Cottonwood manifold actuator failed at –22°F and we replaced it from the truck at 03:15.
We design from a Manual J load calculation against the actual envelope, sized to the actual coldest hour the building will see. The first conversation costs nothing and ends in a one-page submittal sketch.
The about page explains who built the shop and why. The scope ledger lists everything we do. The atlas documents the parts we put on every job. The colophon lists what we cite and how to verify us.