Heating outweighs cooling here by a wide margin. Mount Weather totals 5,302 heating degree days a year against 848 for cooling; Purcellville, the valley comparison for the village, totals 4,942 against 1,050. So when a furnace and air conditioner are replaced together, the heating half deserves most of the thinking. Whether the house sits up the mountain or down in the village changes which set of numbers it lives by.
Your fuel picks the system. Electricity heats 54 percent of owner homes in ZIP 20135, and for those a heat pump system, $8,499 to $21,650 installed, is the like-for-like swap. Propane heats about 14 percent and natural gas about 3, and those houses get a furnace and air conditioner pair. Wood or another fuel covers 24 percent and oil 4. Oil burners are not something we repair or replace; leaving oil behind for a heat pump or a propane furnace is a job we do quote.
About a third of the owner homes here predate 1960, nearly half predate 1980, and the median year is 1981, so the ductwork in many houses is older than the equipment hooked to it. Replacing both machines at once is a sensible moment to ask what shape the supply and return runs are in, so the duct question gets answered once, with the equipment, and not again in a few years.
The furnace half is permit work in both counties. Loudoun County asks for a permit on a gas furnace swap, and a unit with identical BTUs going in the same place has not needed plans since October 2025. In Clarke County, Virginia’s building code exempts only appliances not fueled by gas or oil, so a gas or propane furnace goes through the Building Department in Berryville. Where the air conditioner is the newer half, a furnace alone is $4,285 to $14,040.