Furnace replacement in Calverton.

Calverton’s own ZIP is post office boxes, so the houses carry Catlett or Midland mail, and natural gas heats almost nothing in either. Across Catlett’s 20119 the Census finds 301 owner homes burning propane and not one on utility gas; in Midland’s 22728, 354 on propane against 12 on gas. So a furnace replacement here is nearly always propane in, propane out, fed from the tank on your lot.

Fauquier County’s code table sets the winter design temperature at 17 degrees, the figure a load calculation sizes the heat against. The nearest NOAA normals station, Warrenton 3 SE about six miles west, averages a January low of 24.8 and close to a hundred nights a year at or below freezing, and it read 3 degrees in January 2014. A furnace copied off the old nameplate either short cycles in the mild weeks or falls behind on a morning like that.

The County’s plan describes an extensive floodplain through the middle of the village, and the NCEI storm record has high water closing or blocking Bastable Mill Road four times between 2014 and 2024, once at Turkey Run and twice near Brookfield Drive. If a heavy rain ever put water in your cellar or crawlspace deep enough to reach the furnace, its maker’s warning is plain: don’t use it, and replace every gas control and control part that sat in the water. On an older furnace, that tips the decision toward a new one.

A propane furnace only heats through an outage if it has power: the igniter, the inducer and the blower all run on electricity. An August 2024 thunderstorm blew numerous trees down near Calverton, and wires come down with trees. If you run a generator, tell us at the measuring visit.