More of our Ashburn visits are about replacing a heating and cooling system than in any other town where we work regularly, and water heaters come up more than almost anywhere. Seven homes in ten here date from 2000 or later, and the newer neighborhoods were built out section by section. Every house on a street finished in the same season started its furnace and air conditioner the same month, and they’ve run the same hours ever since.
You can read that calendar off the Census. Broadlands' typical owner home went up in 2004 and Belmont’s in 2005, so original pairs there are around twenty. Brambleton’s is from 2011 and Loudoun Valley Estates' from 2013, which puts theirs between twelve and fifteen, the age when an outdoor unit’s first big repair tends to show up.
Ashburn Farm and Ashburn Village are a generation ahead. The typical owner’s house there is from 1998, about half the homes went up from 1980 through 1999, and most are on their second furnace and air conditioner already, not always bought in the same year. If yours were replaced at different times, look at the pair and the furnace alone, $4,285 to $14,040, side by side. When the younger half is within a few years of the older one, replacing both gets a coil, a furnace and an outdoor unit chosen to work together, not a new half bolted to a tired one.
The new outdoor unit will likely be bigger than the old one, so in Ashburn the pad matters. Ashburn Village’s architectural guidelines say as much about high-efficiency units and send any move to a new spot around the house to the review committee. In Brambleton a unit set back where the old one stood needs no application. Check that the pad takes the new cabinet before the order goes in.