Furnace Installation in York, PA
A new furnace here will run from October through May every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers York County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Eight months of heat a year, in cold that tests a furnace
York County needs a furnace running from October through May. That is eight months a year, with winter nights averaging 24°F. A furnace here does not get much rest between seasons.
51.2 percent of homes in the area heat with gas, and any non-weatherized gas furnace built since November 2015 has to meet 80 percent AFUE at minimum. That is the floor, not a target, and it is worth knowing when you are comparing what a new furnace can do. The county has also logged 15 winter storms and 205 damaging wind events over the past ten years, the kind of weather that knocks out power along with the heat. A furnace that comes back on by itself once power returns matters here.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace is on duty
- 24°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 51%
- of homes here heat with gas, so most furnaces here burn gas
- 80% AFUE
- the federal minimum any new unit must meet
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
A high-efficiency gas furnace would save about $120 a year to run in York County compared with a gas furnace.
Estimates for a typical York County home, from EIA household energy data, Pennsylvania fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
Pennsylvania requires contractors to register with the state.
That registration puts the business on file with the state and nothing more. There is no trade exam, and nobody checks a contractor's gas work or their installations before they're allowed to take your job. Pennsylvania also blocks York County and its cities from layering on their own HVAC license, so this registration is the only state-level record that exists for whoever you hire.
With a gas furnace, the connection is the part that can hurt someone, and here that gets checked by the local building office rather than by the state. In most cities and counties, installing a furnace needs a permit, and the work gets inspected once it's done. That inspection is what stands between you and a bad hookup, not the registration. In York County, just over half of homes heat with gas, so this is the check that furnace installs like this one rely on.
Source: Pennsylvania General Assembly
- What size furnace does my house need?
- It depends on your square footage, insulation, ceiling height, and how many windows you have, so there is no single number that fits every house. A contractor works this out with a load calculation, not a chart based on square footage alone. Going by size alone leads to a furnace that is too big or too small, and either one costs you comfort. With winter lows here averaging 24°F, getting this right matters more than it would somewhere milder, since an undersized furnace will struggle to keep up on the coldest nights.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- Age is the first thing to look at. The older your furnace gets, the more often it tends to need repairs, and parts get harder to find for it. If yours is breaking down more than once a season, or the repair bill starts approaching what a new furnace would cost, replacement makes more sense than another patch. Uneven heat between rooms, a furnace that runs longer than it used to, or a yellow flame instead of blue are also signs worth having looked at. Homes here need heat eight months of the year, October through May, so a furnace on its way out has a lot more work ahead of it than it would somewhere with a shorter season.
- Is a high-efficiency furnace worth it?
- It depends on how long you plan to stay in the house and what your current furnace costs to run. Furnaces made on or after November 19, 2015 have to reach at least 80 percent AFUE, and high-efficiency models go well above that minimum. The higher the AFUE, the more of the fuel you burn turns into heat in your house rather than going out the vent. With 51.2 percent of homes here heating with gas and eight months of the year needing heat, that difference shows up on a lot of heating bills. A contractor can walk you through the actual numbers for your house and your current system.