Furnace and heating repair in Quantico.

The Marine Corps air station keeps the closest long-term record, 1.6 miles from the Town, and its 1991 to 2020 normals add up to about 4,000 heating degree days a year. January nights average 28. On about seven days a winter the afternoon never climbs past freezing, and on roughly two nights a year the thermometer reaches 10 or below. It isn’t a brutal winter, which is why a weak igniter or a tired inducer motor can limp along for years and then quit in the one cold week.

The river supplies the wind. The station logged a 58 mph gust in February 2015 and 59 mph in February 2017, and the Arctic front of December 23, 2022 pushed wind chills near the tidal Potomac to about 5 below. Wind that strong leans on everything that vents out of a house. A high-efficiency furnace, the kind with two plastic pipes through the wall, can trip its pressure switch in a hard gust and lock itself out; an older furnace on a chimney can get a downdraft that trips its safety. Both look like a cold house on a windy night, and both are often fixed at the vent, not inside the cabinet.

Prince William County’s address records put 99 homes on 4th Avenue, more than on any other Town street, and the spread on that one street is wide: at least 21 dated before 1940, and attached houses from 2015, 2017 and 2018. In the old ones, the furnace or air handler went wherever there was room after the house was built: under a stairway, in a hall closet, up under the roof. A cramped furnace means a filter nobody changes and a blower that runs hot, and both end in no-heat calls.

Most Town homes are rentals, so the heat is usually the landlord’s to fix: a tenant’s first call is to the owner, and when the owner books us, the price goes to them before any part is replaced. Homes aboard the base are Liberty Military Housing’s, which owns and maintains them. A cold house in base housing is a call to Liberty or the base Family Housing Office, not to us.