At the NOAA co-op in Purcellville, the nearest long-record station, the year averages 4,942 heating degree days and 1,050 cooling degree days. Summers still bite: on July 28, 2023, mesonets across Western Loudoun measured heat indices above 110. The furnace gets sized to the winter heat loss and the air conditioner to the summer gain: two numbers, not one guess off old labels.
Across 20180 the Census counts 781 homes built in the 2000s and 503 in the 2010s, and the typical owner’s house dates from 2001; inside the town limits, 2007. Another 671 went up in the 1980s and 1990s, and most of those are on a second furnace and air conditioner, not always installed the same year. If the outdoor unit is from 2016 and the furnace from 1998, the job may be the furnace alone, $4,285 to $14,040.
Look in the closet before pricing anything. A furnace has a burner and a flue: a metal vent pipe, or two white plastic pipes out the wall. An air handler has neither, just a fan, a coil and electric heat strips, and then the outdoor unit is a heat pump, priced as a heat pump system at $8,499 to $21,650. The two run nearly even here: across the ZIP about 46 owner homes in 100 heat with propane and about 41 with electricity.
The oldest houses need the ducts checked first. In town 88 homes date from 1939 or earlier; across the ZIP, 268. Their ductwork usually came long after they were built, snaked through closets and an attic, so we measure the supply and return before choosing a size.