Replacing a heating system in Arlington costs more than it does two towns west, and it is not an Arlington premium. It is what happens when equipment has to be carried up a narrow staircase, craned onto a roof, or fitted into a closet that was sized in 1948.
Arlington is really two heating markets sharing a county line, and which one you live in decides almost everything about what breaks and what it costs to fix.
Heating Repair Challenges Across Arlington’s Diverse Architecture
North Arlington and the older single family streets. Capes, colonials and bungalows from the 1930s through the 1950s, in neighborhoods like Lyon Park, Ashton Heights, Cherrydale and Waverly Hills. Heating here is a gas furnace in a basement, sometimes a boiler with cast iron radiators that has been converted from oil, and in the renovated houses a high efficiency furnace squeezed into the same footprint as the one it replaced. Small lots mean the outdoor unit sits three feet from the neighbor’s fence, and attic air handlers are common because there was nowhere else to put one.
The corridor: Rosslyn, Courthouse, Clarendon, Ballston, Pentagon City. Mid and high-rise condos, fan coils and water source heat pumps, packaged rooftop units on the smaller buildings. Here the question before any repair is which parts of the system you own and which the building does, and the answer changes by building. We do this work, and the first call is usually as much about coordinating with building management as about the equipment.
What goes wrong in a 1940s Arlington house
The furnace short cycles and the bedrooms never warm up. Usually an oversized furnace on undersized ductwork. Somebody replaced a 1950s furnace with a modern one and matched the old unit’s BTUs instead of measuring the house, so it blasts, satisfies the thermostat near the hallway, and shuts off before the far rooms catch up. Nothing is broken. The system is wrong, and no repair fixes it.
Radiators that clank, or one cold radiator. Air in the loop or a stuck valve. Routine. It is not the boiler dying, and you should not be quoted a boiler for it.
A furnace or boiler in a converted basement with no combustion air. We see this constantly in finished Arlington basements: an appliance that used to sit in an open unfinished space is now behind a door in a small room, and a gas appliance needs air to burn. Symptoms are soot, a pilot that will not stay lit, or a furnace that runs poorly when the dryer is on. The fix is a combustion air path, and it is a safety item, not a comfort one.
Attic air handler, water stain on a bedroom ceiling. The condensate drain backed up and the float switch did its job, or did not. Everything in an attic drains by gravity through a line that runs a long way, and in an Arlington house that line is usually the first thing to clog. $175 to $420.
Ice on the outdoor unit that never clears. If you have a heat pump, frost is normal and a full block of ice is not. Defrost board most often, $450 to $1,150. Turn the thermostat to Emergency Heat and call, because running it frozen bends the fan and eventually costs the coil. More on heat pump symptoms here.
What it costs in Arlington
Our Northern Virginia repair prices, which do not change by zip code:
- Diagnostic visit: about $99.
- Flame sensor cleaned: $95 to $180. Igniter or sensor replaced: $240 to $410.
- Thermostat replaced: $300 to $640.
- Condensate drain or trap: $175 to $420.
- Blower wheel cleaned: $300 to $440. Blower motor: $670 to $2,400.
- Control board: $550 to $1,180.
- Capacitor: $240 to $370. Contactor: $290 to $425.
Two Arlington specifics on price. A crane or a roof hoist on a condo or a townhouse changes the number, and it should be quoted before the day of the work, not discovered on it. And in a house where the mechanical room is behind a finished wall, access time is real time; a good quote says so out loud.
When to stop repairing
ENERGY STAR’s line for thinking about replacement is a furnace or boiler over fifteen years and a heat pump over ten. Ours is simpler: if the repair is more than a third of a replacement and the equipment is past fifteen, replace it. A furnace alone starts at $4,498 installed, a furnace and air conditioner together at $8,898, and Washington Gas is paying $500 to $700 toward a high efficiency furnace this cycle when a network contractor does the work.
The furnace and AC estimator gives you your range in two minutes without a phone number. If the house has no ducts and never will, the ductless estimator prices the room by room option, which is the right answer in a lot of Arlington row houses and additions.
Before the first cold snap
Run the heat for an hour now and listen. Change the filter. If you have a boiler, bleed the radiators before you need them rather than during the first freeze. And if your basement has been finished since the furnace went in, have someone look at combustion air this fall, because that is the Arlington problem that turns into a carbon monoxide problem.
SwiftPro repairs heating systems across Arlington County. Call (703) 997-9757 or book online. Neighborhood pages: Clarendon, Ballston, Rosslyn.
