Vienna’s co-op weather station, 3.6 miles west at about the same height, logs 4,931 heating degree days a year against 964 cooling degree days: the heat does roughly five times the work of the air conditioning. January there averages a low of 23.4 degrees, 99 nights a year reach freezing, and about 4 drop to 10 or below.
Most of that heat burns gas. Fairfax County’s books show gas connected at 546 of the 732 homes in 22027, and at 326 of the 334 detached houses built from 1990 through 2009, each over a full basement where the furnace usually stands. Kings Glen, on Foxmoor Drive, went up from 1985 to 1988, so most of its furnaces are likely replacements by now. Morgan Chase and Arden Oaks date from 2000 to 2003, and some of their basements may still hold the builder’s furnace.
The 102 townhouses, at the Regal Oaks on Journet Drive and Laing at Governors Square on Harithy Drive, are all gas over full basements, so the furnace is usually downstairs, not in an attic. About 2 in 100 owner homes in the ZIP burn propane by the Census count, and a propane furnace gets this same visit with its burner pressure set for propane.
The 1970s streets heat differently. Of the 81 detached houses built here that decade, 70 have no gas on the county’s records, including all 20 at Tysons Grove on Arden Court. Those usually run a heat pump, the same $99 a system. Cold snaps test them: January 2025 brought several single-digit nights, and late January 2026 Extreme Cold Warnings on the 27th, 30th and 31st, when a heat pump leans hard on its electric backup heat.