Warrenton is an incorporated town with its own government and its own permit office, sitting as the seat of Fauquier County. If your address is in town, the town inspects a furnace replacement. Just outside it, the county does. Establish that before anyone quotes you.
The other thing to establish is fuel. In town, most houses are on natural gas. Outside it, service does not reach every road, and those properties run on propane, on oil in some cases, or all-electric with a heat pump. That single fact changes the economics of everything below.
What heats a Warrenton house
Old Town and the older streets. Houses that predate central heating, running whatever was fitted into them later. Tight mechanical spaces, ductwork threaded through closets, venting through masonry, and occasionally a boiler with radiators that somebody converted from oil decades ago.
The 1960s through 1990s neighborhoods. Gas furnaces with central air, second or third furnace by now, original ductwork.
The newer subdivisions. Sealed combustion furnaces venting out a side wall, two systems in the larger houses, heat pumps in a share of the townhouses.
Rural properties around the town. Propane, oil, or all-electric with a heat pump, on wells and septic.
What breaks
It lights, runs a few seconds, shuts off, tries again. Flame sensor. $95 to $180 to clean, and our most common no-heat call anywhere, on any fuel.
Clicking with no flame. Hot surface igniter, $240 to $410.
Runs and quits after fifteen minutes. Overheating on restricted airflow. Filter first, then the blower wheel at $300 to $440.
Water near a high efficiency furnace, or it will not start. Condensate trap, $175 to $420.
One cold radiator or clanking. Air in the loop, if you have a boiler. Bleed it. Routine, and not a dying boiler.
Heat pump iced over and staying that way. Defrost board most often, $450 to $1,150. Emergency Heat and call before the ice reaches the fan.
A smell of exhaust, or a carbon monoxide alarm. Turn it off, open windows, leave, call from outside. Virginia requires carbon monoxide alarms in new construction with fuel burning appliances and has no retrofit rule, so Old Town houses have one only if somebody bought it.
- Diagnostic visit: about $99.
- Flame sensor cleaned $95 to $180; igniter or sensor replaced $240 to $410.
- Condensate drain or trap $175 to $420. Thermostat $300 to $640.
- Blower wheel cleaned $300 to $440. Blower motor $670 to $2,400.
- Control board $550 to $1,180. Inducer motor about $1,950.
- Heat pump defrost board $450 to $1,150.
Replacing, and the fuel question
A furnace alone runs $4,498 to $12,300 installed; a furnace and air conditioner together $8,898 to $23,000 by system size. The estimator prices it by size in about two minutes with no phone number.
If you are on natural gas in town, Washington Gas is currently paying $500 on a furnace at 95.1 to 96.9 percent efficiency and $700 at 97 and up, through contractors in its network. If you are on propane or oil outside it, that money is not available to you, and the efficiency decision rests on your own fuel cost. Propane and oil generally cost more per unit of heat than natural gas, so a higher efficiency furnace is usually worth more per year to you than it would be to a customer in town. Ask for both tiers priced and do the math on your delivered price.
If you are in an older house and the furnace and water heater share a masonry chimney, a high efficiency replacement that vents out the side wall leaves the water heater alone on an oversized flue. Code requires that chimney to be examined before the new appliance goes in, and the fix is a liner or a power vent water heater. It belongs in the quote.
Common Heating System Failures and Repair Costs
Run the heat for an hour. Check propane or oil levels before the first cold week rather than after. Confirm a generator, if you have one, actually covers the furnace circuit. Change the filter. And put a carbon monoxide alarm on each sleeping floor.
SwiftPro repairs heating systems across Warrenton and Fauquier County. Call (703) 997-9757, book online, or see the Warrenton furnace repair page.
