Furnace replacement in Fredericksburg.

On this side of the Rappahannock, Fredericksburg mail means Stafford County, and the furnaces split by ZIP. In 22405, Falmouth and Ferry Farm, roughly four owner homes in ten heat with natural gas and about half with electricity. In 22406, heading west on Warrenton Road, gas climbs to about 45 percent and propane heats about one owner home in nine. Stafford’s economic development office names Columbia Gas of Virginia as the county’s gas company for homes, so expect that name on the bill.

Falmouth is the old end of the address. The Census place around the village holds about 1,550 owner homes, typically built in 1983, half of them before 1980, and better than half burn gas. A furnace there is rarely the house’s first, and an older one may still send its exhaust up a masonry flue it shares with a gas water heater. A high-efficiency replacement vents sideways through the wall in plastic pipe, so the quote should spell out how the water heater will vent once the furnace stops warming that flue.

22406 is the young end: its typical owner home dates to 2004, and about 2,750 of its 7,500 owner homes went up between 2000 and 2009. A furnace the builder set in one of those is closing in on twenty winters, the stretch where small parts start failing in turn and each fix buys a little less.

Winters here ask more of a furnace than people expect this far south. NOAA’s 30-year normals for its Fredericksburg station, at 60 feet beside the river five miles south of the two ZIPs’ center, add up to about 4,300 heating degree days, with January lows averaging 25. Late January 2026 was the hard test: more than a week of Arctic air, with Extreme Cold Warnings on the worst nights. A furnace that needed resetting that week was telling you something.