Degree days measure how hard a house works to stay comfortable over a year. NOAA’s normals for the station near Warrenton, about 12 miles south, give roughly 4,685 heating degree days against about 1,018 cooling ones, more than four to one. So the furnace is sized to the house’s heat loss and the air conditioner to its heat gain, and the furnace’s blower has to move the air the new coil is rated for.
Summer still has its days. The same normals count about 21 afternoons a year at 90 or hotter, with a July average high near 85, and NOAA’s storm records for northern Fauquier include heat index readings above 115 in July 2011 and above 110 in July 2019. An air conditioner past fifteen shows its age on exactly those afternoons.
A furnace and air conditioner is the propane household’s system here. Of 589 owner homes in 20198, 134 heat with propane and 16 with utility gas; most of the rest use electricity, usually a heat pump. When both halves date from the same year, replacing them together means one County permit for the fuel-fired half, one trip into the closet where the coil sits on the furnace, and a matched pair. Rather stop heating with propane? A heat pump system runs $8,499 to $21,650 installed.
Mind where the new outdoor unit sits. NOAA logged 65 knot gusts that brought dozens of trees and wires down along Halfway Road and The Plains Road in August 2023, and a flash flood that September left roads near Marshall and The Plains blocked by standing water. Set the condenser back from the drip line of big trees, on a pad above wherever the yard holds water.