Inside the town limits, the Town names Columbia Gas of Virginia as the gas company, not Washington Gas, and gas heats about six in ten owner homes. Nearly four owners in ten use electric heat, which in a town house built around the 1995 median usually points to a heat pump with resistance strips for backup. Thirty years on, the furnace or heat pump in most of them is a replacement, not the original.
The county side is younger and leans on gas: across 20169 the median owner home dates to 2006, and gas heats close to two thirds of owner homes. The builder’s furnace in a Dominion Valley or Piedmont house is around twenty years old, the age when the small motor that clears the flue and the circuit board start wearing out. A flame sensor on that furnace is still worth cleaning. Before a blower motor at $670 to $2,400 or a board at $550 to $1,180, put the replacement beside it: a furnace alone, keeping your AC, runs $4,285 to $14,040 installed.
Up on Bull Run Mountain the fuel changes. In Bull Run Mountain Estates oil heats about four in ten homes and propane about one in eight, and across the whole ZIP about one owner home in twenty still burns oil. Propane is a delivered fuel, so on a propane house the first no-heat question is the simplest one: how full is the tank? Prince William County wants a permit to replace a gas or propane furnace even like for like.
Two utility choices shape a dual fuel setup here. The Town lists Dominion and NOVEC as its electric companies and Columbia Gas for gas, and the point where burning gas beats running the heat pump shifts with each of those rates. Our dual fuel guide runs the numbers for Columbia Gas customers on each electric company. The rebate in it comes from Washington Gas, so a Columbia Gas account can’t claim it.