Furnace and heating repair in Upperville.

Upperville’s winter figures come from the Purcellville co-op station, within 50 feet of the village’s height. NOAA’s 1991 to 2020 normals there average a January low of 24.5 degrees, around 115 nights a year at or below freezing, about five at 10 or colder and close to a dozen days when the high never gets past 32. Fauquier County’s building rules size heat for 17 degrees outside, so on the few nights colder than that, a heat pump leaning on its backup strips is doing its job.

The Census sample for 20184 is small, but it counted no owner home on natural gas: about two in three heat with electricity, the rest with propane. That’s a heat pump, sometimes backed by a propane furnace, or a propane furnace paired with central air. A propane furnace typically uses the same igniter, flame sensor and control board as a gas one, just set up for LP, so the repairs are familiar: a flame sensor cleaned for $95 to $180, an igniter for $240 to $410, a control board for $550 to $1,180.

Snow is the big test. The Weather Service put the January 2016 blizzard at 24 to 36 inches across northern Fauquier, and observers at Bluemont and Middleburg, about eight miles north and east, measured 36 and 34. A high-efficiency propane furnace breathes through two plastic pipes low on a side wall, and a drift over them trips the pressure switch and shuts the burner down. Brush both clear, then switch the furnace off and on. Still no flame, and it’s a call.

Ice is the other: a February 2016 storm glazed northern Fauquier two to three tenths of an inch deep, enough to seal a heat pump’s coil and bow the limbs over a village shaded end to end by masses of trees. Defrost melts frost, not freezing rain. If the outdoor unit is encased, set the thermostat to emergency heat and phone us. When wires come down, the heat goes with the lights.