Inside the town limits the Town names Columbia Gas of Virginia as its gas company, not Washington Gas, and gas heats about six in ten owner homes. Columbia Gas tells customers to have the furnace checked and serviced regularly by a qualified professional, and it makes a point that every natural gas appliance needs ventilation bringing it fresh air. That second line matters in the Town’s townhouses, about a third of its homes, where the furnace often stands in a closet.
A standard furnace with a metal flue burns the air around it, and a louvered door or a vent in the wall is how a closet furnace gets that air; a high-efficiency one piped out the side wall brings in its own. Over the years doors get swapped and closets fill with boxes, and a furnace short of air tends to give itself away once the tune-up runs it through a full cycle, with flames lifting off the burners or a safety switch tripping.
Across 20169 gas heats close to two thirds of owner homes, and close to half of all homes went up from 2000 to 2009. A two-story Dominion Valley or Piedmont house from those years often has a second furnace in the attic heating the bedrooms. It’s the one nobody visits: up the ladder, through the hatch, its flue running out through the roof. Each furnace is its own tune-up at $99, and the attic one deserves the same readings as the basement one.
Propane heats about one owner home in fifteen across the ZIP, close to 600 houses, and about one in eight in Bull Run Mountain Estates, where natural gas heats only about one in ten. The tank in the yard and the regulator on it usually belong to whoever fills it; the furnace from its gas valve on is the tune-up’s. Close to four in ten mountain owners heat with electricity instead, which usually means a heat pump, and a heat pump on the mountain gets its fall tune-up for the same $99.