Furnace Installation in Ashland, VA
A new furnace here will run from October through April every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Hanover County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Ashland asks a lot of a furnace
Ashland homes need heat from October through April, seven months of the year. Winter nights average 28°F, so a furnace here spends most of the year cycling on and off to keep up.
Most homes in the area heat with electricity, and storms in Virginia have knocked out power for 22% of households for at least a day in 2024 alone. Over the last ten years the region has seen 23 winter storms and 84 damaging wind events. A new furnace installed here needs to hold up to that, and if it runs on gas, federal rules require it to reach at least 80 percent AFUE.
- 7 months
- October through April, your furnace is on duty
- 28°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 80% AFUE
- the federal minimum any new unit must meet
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
Virginia requires HVAC contractors to hold a state license.
Virginia's Board for Contractors tests contractors and keeps a record of them. The license covers the contractor, not each job, so it follows them from one furnace install to the next rather than getting issued fresh each time. The one exception is small jobs. Work under $1,000 does not legally need a licensed contractor in Virginia, though a furnace installation runs well past that.
For this job, the license tells you the contractor was tested and is on record with the state. What checks the work itself is separate. In most cities and counties, replacing a furnace needs a permit from the local building office and an inspection once the work is done, and that is likely true in Hanover County as well. That inspection is what looks at the gas connection, since a bad connection there is the dangerous part of the job.
Sources: Virginia General Assembly · Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation
- What size furnace does my house need?
- There's no set number that works for every house. It depends on your square footage, how well the house is insulated, your ceiling height, how many windows you have, and even which way the house faces. A contractor sizes it with a load calculation, not a chart based on square footage alone. Putting in a furnace that's too big or too small for the house causes problems either way, so this is worth getting right rather than guessing.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- Watch for uneven heat between rooms, a furnace that cycles on and off more than it used to, or a rise in your heating bills without a reason. An older furnace is working harder to do what it once did easily. If you're calling for repairs more than once a season, or a technician tells you a part that's failing is expensive to replace, that's usually the point where replacing it costs less over time than keeping it going. Homes here need heat from October through April, so a furnace that's struggling has seven months of work ahead of it, not just a cold snap.
- Is a high-efficiency furnace worth it?
- It depends on how long you plan to stay in the house and what you're paying to heat it now. Furnaces made since November 2015 already have to hit 80 percent AFUE at minimum, so even a standard new furnace is more efficient than an older one. A high-efficiency model uses less fuel to make the same heat, which matters more here since homes need heat for seven months of the year. A contractor can look at your current furnace, your house, and your fuel type and tell you what the difference would actually mean for you.