Furnace and heating repair in Great Falls.

A heating call in Great Falls starts with a question most towns never need: what does the house burn? A little under half the owner homes are on natural gas from the main, and about four in ten heat with electricity, mostly heat pumps. Then come the fuels that arrive by truck. About one in twelve burn propane from a tank in the yard, and about one in eighteen burn heating oil. Across Fairfax County, propane and oil together heat about one owner home in thirty-four. Here it’s about one in seven.

A propane furnace is a gas furnace set up for propane, and it breaks the same ways: a flame sensor gone dirty, a cracked igniter, an inducer motor wearing out. The one failure natural gas never has is an empty tank. If the furnace tries, clicks and gives up in a long cold stretch, check the tank gauge first. If it’s near empty, call your propane supplier before you call us, and have them check the lines before anything is relit.

Oil heat comes with upkeep of its own, all of it an oil heat company’s work, and here it shares the lot with something else. Close to a quarter of the private wells the Health Department has mapped in Fairfax County are inside the Great Falls Census area, and the department lists a leaking fuel oil tank among the things that can foul one. We don’t work on oil burners; when one wears out for good, a heat pump or a propane furnace in its place is ours to price, and the HVAC estimator gives the installed range first.

The houses are big, so the heat is usually split. By the county’s tax records the middle Great Falls house has about 3,700 square feet above ground, plus a basement, and that’s two or three systems: often a furnace in the basement for the lower floors and a second furnace or a heat pump air handler in the attic for the bedrooms. When one floor goes cold, the other system keeps running, so check every thermostat before you call. It tells us which unit to open first.