Still hot on radiant heat

Upcoming rule change by state fuels businessman's passion for source of warmth
By MICHELE DERUS - mderus@journalsentinel.com

When Wisconsin regulators revise the state's home-building code on Aug. 1, they could spark new interest in a moribund form of home heating.

Radiant heat - which uses electric panels to heat objects instead of air - had been included in a state requirement that electrically heated homes have 15% more insulation than houses heated by more conventional means.

The rule was enacted in 1987 following sharp price hikes in electric power. One man, and lots of technical data, convinced the state Department of Commerce to make an exception for radiant heat, a very efficient electrical power source.

The August change will mark the success in a long, lonely quest of Milwaukee-area businessman John Koenitzer.

"It's near-impossible for an outsider to change a building code," he said. "So this is quite a dramatic moment for me."

The 75-year-old retired chief executive of Helwig Carbon Products Inc. in Milwaukee has spent 21/2 years and a large part of his personal fortune trying to restore marketability to a heating option popular in his youth.

Several years ago, Koenitzer purchased a Long Island, N.Y., radiant heat product manufacturer and moved what now is Radiant Electric Heat Inc. to Brookfield.

In building his own radiant-heated home in Menomonee Falls, he discovered that Wisconsin would be his hardest-sell state.

Radiant Electric makes ceramic heating products that, like the sun, use long-wave electromagnetic energy to warm objects.

The objects in turn radiate heat in an arc, providing warmth that varies little from ceiling to floor.

"Radiant heat is clean, it's comfortable, it's dust-free, it's maintenance-free and it doesn't require as many Btus (British thermal units, a measure of energy) as gas," Koenitzer said. "Plus, it doesn't blow on you and there's no hot spots."

Radiant electric heat was once considered a miracle product, a harbinger of what futurists said would be an automated life of American household convenience.

Instead, the Arab oil embargo of 1973-'74 hit the world hard, ending the era of cheap electricity.

Electricity became the most expensive energy option and since 1987, Wisconsin's building code has reflected that.
But radiant electric heat is a super-efficient form of electricity, and shouldn't be treated the same as electrical convection systems, Koenitzer said.

He's been arguing that point to the state Department of Commerce, and anyone who might influence its rules, since discovering what he considered the agency's energy prejudice.

"We have talked to him several times," said Tony Hozeny, communications director for the department, which oversees the state building code.

Tom Bawolek put it more bluntly.

"That radiant heat guy who's been all over our backs for three years. He's nothing if not persistent," said the regional consultant to the Wisconsin Energy Star, the government's energy-efficiency certification program.

Koenitzer considers Wisconsin stubbornly resistant to change.

"Radiant electric heat is all over the East Coast, but here, it's always the same: 'I never heard of radiant electric heat. We don't do that here,'" he said.

Koenitzer wants to convert more homeowners to his energy preference.

For now, though, he'll settle for radiant heat not being considered inferior.

"Now it has parity with natural gas and oil," he said of the state's change of heart on radiant heat.

Hozeny didn't agree.

"I wouldn't say that this puts radiant electric panels on par with natural gas. It's hard to know whether the same size house, one heated with natural gas and one with radiant electric heat, would cost the same to fuel, because there's so many variables," Hozeny said.

Wisconsin's Uniform Dwelling Code - the rules for one- and two-family home construction - treat residences as "building envelopes" with performance standards based on overall efficiency, he said.

"You are going to save over other kinds of electrically heated homes. We know that," Hozeny said.

With regulatory penalties for electric radiant heat about to change, Koenitzer expects public recognition to follow. Still, he's glum.

"In time, I believe all our energy is going to be electric. We've got solar, wind, hydro-dams, atomic, all that sort of thing. There will be a breakthrough and then there will be just one fuel coming into homes," he said. "But it won't be soon enough. I'm 75, and won't live to see it."

From the July 13, 2003 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel