In 1948, engineer Avy Miller formed Laars Engineering as a company dedicated to the concept of heating water quickly by passing the water through finned copper tube heat exchangers. Miller realized that moving water at high velocity through "low-mass" heat exchangers such as finned copper tubing could heat water up to nine times faster than through cast iron vessels. Miller designed specialized manufacturing techniques to support this new concept, and the "low-mass" technology found a warm reception in the U.S. market.

First applied to the swimming pool heater market that emerged rapidly in California after WWII, the heat exchanger designs that Laars developed also proved to work well with space-heating boilers and hot water boilers. After all, if a Laars heat exchanger could work well with swimming pool water with all of the chemicals and impurities, it could also work even better with clean domestic hot water and closedloop hydronic systems.

The Laars heat exchangers with their higher velocity water flow also solved another problem - that of scale build-up in the tubes. By controlling flow rates, lime and scale were prevented from forming on tube walls, thereby keeping the heat transfer process clean and efficient.

Today, Laars Heating Systems operates as a subsidiary of the Bradford White Corporation with manufacturing in Rochester, NH and a distribution center Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. Laars serves a diverse base of customers located in many countries all over the globe, and Laars product lines have expanded over the years to cover the large range from 50,000 to 5,000,000 BTU's. Laars' residential and commercial products serve the hydronic, radiant floor heating, volume water heating and industrial process markets with over 17 different product lines and many accessories and controls to support these primary lines.