Fauquier County sizes a heating system for an outdoor low of 17 degrees. The nearest long-running thermometer at the village’s height, the Purcellville co-op station, averages a January low of 24.5, about 115 nights a year at or below freezing, five or so at 10 or colder, and close to a dozen days when the high never gets above freezing. Mount Weather, on the ridge just north, runs colder, but the village at 557 feet belongs with the valley figure.
The Census survey of ZIP 20184 found more owner homes heating with electricity than with propane, and none on utility gas. Electric heat here usually means a heat pump, which pulls warmth from the outdoor air until that air gets too cold to give enough, then calls in its backup: electric strips or a paired propane furnace. Late January 2026 put that to the test, with Extreme Cold Warnings on the coldest nights. The tune-up brings the backup on while the tech watches, and a heat pump is the same $99 a system.
The rest burn propane from a tank on the property. A propane furnace is dead without electricity, since the igniter, the inducer and the blower all run on it, and Upperville’s trees take the lines down: an ice storm in February 2016 glazed northern Fauquier with up to three tenths of an inch, and the March 2018 nor’easter brought trees and wires down across the county, many onto houses. If the furnace won’t light once the power’s back, or lights and quits, call us.
The oldest houses on the old turnpike, stone, brick and a few built around log rooms, went up long before anybody planned for central heat, so the furnace lives wherever it fit later: a cellar corner, a crawlspace, a back closet. Where a propane furnace or boiler still exhausts up an old masonry chimney, draft is the reading to watch, and the tune-up proves the spill safety shuts the burners off when the flue stops pulling. A propane boiler is the same $99 too.