Newest dream-home must-haves: Majestic boilers and designer pipes...

No longer exiled to dank basements, high-efficiency — and high-design — heating and cooling equipment has become something homeowners show off.
By Gwendolyn Bounds of The Wall Street Journal

In June, Peter and Sara Starr gave dinner guests a tour of their new Bayside, Calif., home. There’s the designer kitchen fitted with free-standing ergonomic furniture, and the valley views, complete with majestic redwoods. But the pièce de résistance sits just off the living room: a 100-square-foot nook otherwise known as the boiler room.

Inside hums the heart of about $70,000 in state-of-the-art heating and electrical equipment. Rooftop solar panels feed a sleek hot-water tank and an array of batteries storing electricity and feeding excess power back to the grid. Hanging nearby, a petite black boiler provides radiant heat while hundreds of feet of copper piping snake outward, delivering warmth and water to the 1,800-square-foot house.

“It looks like the 'Star Trek' Enterprise,” says Peter Starr, 61. “It’s really a little focal point and a sign of pride.”

Say goodbye to the scary room, that dank, dark spot where boilers and water heaters work among the spiders, with human visits taking place only when something — "Honey, there’s no hot water!" — goes wrong. As homeowners begin to in renewable energy and other high-efficiency equipment, some are spiffing up the mechanical room and, in some cases, trying to make the air conditioner a showpiece. (Bing: Federal tax credits for energy efficiency)

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