Not that many of years back when I when wholesaling properties, both of us came across this appealing old home that an older lady was ready to sell. While walking through the lake house I observed radiators were being used to heat the home. This is official in older homes where steam heat systems would heat the lake house instead of the new forced air heat from your traditional HVAC system. A idea such as this can be really cost effective when it comes to your heating bill, plus there are people who will not put any other heating idea in their homes. Yes, there are some people who refuse to put a forced air heat HVAC idea on their homes. Reason being, radiator heat works wonderful to where they hold the home to the exact temperature the temperature controls are set on. Also with radiator heating, depending on how the idea is installed, valves can be located in the basement to allow you to manually adjust the amount of water going through a certain radiator. An example of how this could be helpful is saying you are having a Winter storm plus the wind is blowing harder on 1 side of the house, making it colder. All you would have to do to rectify this is turn up the valves for those radiators, increasing the heat. By having an option such as this, you have much more control of the heating of your lake house better. The reason you notice most homes now are equipped with forced air HVAC systems is that they are cheaper to install. Your official HVAC idea runs roughly $12-$15k for full replacement. An official replacement cost for radiated heat can run roughly $20-$30k depending on the size of the lake home plus the boiler idea you decide to go with.