Heating outweighs cooling here close to five to one. Purcellville’s 1991 to 2020 normals, the nearest long record to the village, count about 4,940 heating degree days a year against 1,050 cooling, and in 20184 the furnace half of the pair burns propane: the Census finds no owner home there on utility gas. Summer still has teeth. That same station averages 86 degrees on a July afternoon and about 30 days a year at 90 or higher, and on July 20, 2019 the Weather Service put heat indices past 110 across northern Fauquier.
Hail is the hazard that’s particular to this stretch of Route 50. NOAA’s storm records place golf-ball hail near Upperville twice, in August 2011 and on August 10, 2021, the second time about half a mile southwest of the village. Stones that size can mash the thin aluminum fins on an outdoor coil flat, and a coil that can’t move air can’t shed heat. If yours took that beating and has struggled every summer since, put it in the repair or replace math.
The trees are the other one. The state’s register describes the village as shaded by masses of trees for its whole length, and the wind keeps testing them: dozens of trees, branches and wires came down around Upperville on August 7, 2023. Before a new condenser goes on the old pad, look up. A spot out from under the big limbs is worth a few more feet of line.
Most whole-system jobs in the village are in the twentieth-century houses. The historic district’s survey counts four Minimal Traditional houses from about 1945 to 1955 and thirteen ranches, a style that kept going up here into the late 1900s. Houses like those were built with ductwork, so the furnace and the air conditioner come out and go in as a pair, with one permit for the furnace and one visit.