A furnace on its own is a job for the houses that burn gas or propane. Inside the City of Manassas that’s a little under half the owner homes; nearly all the rest heat with electricity, which in a City house from the 1980s usually means a heat pump instead. On the county side gas has the edge: by the Census Bureau’s estimates, roughly 720 of Loch Lomond’s 976 owner homes heat with it, about 2,100 of Sudley’s 3,400 and about 1,800 of Independent Hill’s 3,040.
They’re also three ages of furnace. Loch Lomond’s median owner home dates from 1968, so the basement furnace there today is a replacement of a replacement. Sudley’s median is 1977 and close to half its homes are townhouses, where the furnace usually stands in a utility closet and the new one comes in the way the old one leaves. Independent Hill is the young end, half of it built since 2000, and plenty of its houses still run the builder’s furnace.
Keeping the air conditioner makes sense when it’s worth keeping. Read the outdoor unit’s label for its year before anybody quotes. Well short of fifteen and cooling fine, it stays, and the new furnace gets matched to the coil on top of it. Same year as the furnace? Look at the pair’s range too, $8,898 to $23,000 installed; the HVAC replacement cost estimator prices both ways.
Buckhall is the propane corner of Manassas: roughly 460 of its 5,968 owner homes burn it, more than anywhere else on this page. Propane furnaces are ours to replace as much as natural gas ones: the new one gets its burner and gas valve changed over for propane before the first fire, and the written quote names the fuel.