Apartment Developer Trying A Hot New Idea For Attracting Renters

Here’s a story Bob Flory and Tom Luttermoser hope will warm the soles of lots of renters in the Spokane Valley.

The builder and heating contractor are cooperating on two projects that will get their BTUs from the floor.

Although twice as expensive to install as conventional heating systems, the two said they hope lower operating costs and the comfort the systems provide will attract tenants in a market peopled by too few tenants and swamped with too many new apartment units.

“You need something to create something different to attract your tenants,” said Flory, who has supervised the construction of hundreds of units in the Spokane area over the years.

One new project on East Mansfield just east of Pines, Eagle Rock, will also have gated access, a gesture Flory said he regretfully made to meet increasing concerns about security in the area.

He and Luttermoser are much more enthusiastic about the in-floor heating, known as hydronics.

Luttermoser, project manager for Moser Inc., said the system has been used exclusively in private homes. The installations at Eagle Rock and Pasadena Ridge, north of the Spokane River off Argonne, are the first he is aware of in multi-family housing in the Spokane area.

The systems are relatively simple.

Each apartment has its own 60-gallon hot water tank fired with natural gas. The tank supplies all the unit’s needs for hot water at temperatures around 110 degrees.

Running through the tank in a separate, closed loop are water lines to about 900 feet of tubing that circulate 70-degree water under the floors.

The tubes are spaced about 12 inches apart in a grid buried in GypCrete, a soft material that conducts the heat into the room more readily than concrete.

“Gyp-Crete acts as the thermal mass,” Luttermoser said.

Tenants can live in their socks, he said. “There’s nothing cold to the touch.”

Each unit is individually metered. Flory said he expects energy bills to run as much as 30 percent below those of conventionally heated units.

The results will be carefully monitored, not only by the owners, but also by Washington Water Power Co., he said.

“It’s going to be very interesting to see what the unit load is,” Flory said. “It’s a real test case.”

A few units built before the decision was made to try hydronics will act as benchmarks, he said.

The first phase of Eagle Rock will be ready in December. If those 104 units fill well, a buildout to 221 units is possible.

Sixty-six units in the second phase of Pasadena Ridge are getting in-floor heat. Those will be ready by year-end, Flory said.

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