Furnace tune-ups in Orlean.

Hardly anyone around Orlean heats with natural gas. In ZIP 20115, the Census area that takes in the village, roughly 64 percent of owner homes heat with electricity, nearly always a heat pump backed by electric strips, and roughly 20 percent burn propane. So the fall visit is two different jobs. A propane furnace gets its gas pressure read for propane, then the temperature rise, the safeties and the order it lights and shuts down. A heat pump is the same $99 a system, run through heating so the backup strips get a turn before January needs them.

NOAA’s 1991 to 2020 normals from its station outside Warrenton, about 12 miles east-southeast, average a January low of 25, with about 98 nights a year at or below freezing and about five at 10 or lower. Fauquier County’s building criteria set the winter design temperature, the cold a heating system is sized for, at 17 degrees. Below that a well-sized system can run nearly nonstop and a heat pump leans hard on its strips, which is when a weak igniter, a tired blower capacitor or a dead strip shows itself.

Last winter showed it. A storm on January 25 and 26, 2026 left about seven and a half inches of snow and sleet at the CoCoRaHS gauge a little over two miles north-northeast of the village, and six inches still lay on the ground through the Extreme Cold Warnings of January 30 and 31. On February 1 the Hume weather station, about four miles northwest, logged a wind chill of 8 below. Nobody wants to learn that week that the flame sensor is coated.

Wind is the other hazard. The March 2, 2018 nor’easter brought about 1,100 emergency calls in Fauquier County, mostly for trees and wires down. A propane furnace still needs electricity for its igniter, blower and controls, and a heat pump needs it for everything. When the power comes back, watch the first cycle: if it short-cycles, blows cool air or trips its breaker, shut it off and call us after the storm to check it all.