Rectortown is too small for Census figures of its own: 66 of its 74 homes fall in ZIP 20115, so that ZIP stands in, Marshall included. Of the ZIP’s 2,109 owner homes, 1,357 heat with electricity and 424 with propane, while utility gas reaches 8. Most of those electric houses around the village run a heat pump, and swapping one is its own job, $8,499 to $21,650 installed. The air conditioner swapped alone belongs to a propane house, where the coil sits on the furnace and the condenser outside does nothing but cool.
Wood changes the math. The same ZIP counts 160 owner homes heating mainly with wood, and where a stove carries the winter, the propane furnace is the backup, lighting on the nights the fire burns low. A furnace that runs that little often outlasts the air conditioner on top of it, which works every July. When the condenser quits first, replacing it and its coil while the furnace stays is often the right size of job.
The House of Burgesses established Rectortown in 1772, making it the oldest town in the county, and the state’s register dates 25 of its 54 surveyed properties to 1880 through 1910. The newest are the likeliest to have been built with ducts: block ranches from about 1958 and 1965, a brick Colonial from about 1988, a frame house from about 2000. In that last one, a builder’s condenser still running would be past twenty summers, and most likely on R-22.
Warrenton 3 SE, at 500 feet to the village’s 514, averages about 21 days a year at 90 or above, while Mount Weather, ten miles north on the Blue Ridge, logs about a sixth less cooling load. On July 16, 2025 a large tree came down at Rectortown Road and Frogtown Road, under a mile out, and many village yards are edged in stone walls. Keep the new pad clear of heavy limbs, with room to work; a new spot is Fauquier County permit work.