Furnace Installation in Queens, NY
A new furnace here will run from October through April every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Queens County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Seven months of heat, most of it on gas
Queens homes need the furnace running from October through April. That is seven months a year, with winter nights averaging 28°F. A new furnace here has to hold up to a long season, not just a cold snap.
Most homes in the area heat with gas, so any furnace installed has to meet the federal minimum of 80.0 percent AFUE, the rule for non-weatherized gas furnaces built since November 2015. The area has also seen its share of winter storms and damaging wind over the past ten years, and outages that follow. A furnace that starts back up on its own once power returns matters when a storm knocks it out overnight.
- 7 months
- October through April, your furnace is on duty
- 28°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 74%
- of homes here heat with gas, so most furnaces here burn gas
- 80% AFUE
- the federal minimum any new unit must meet
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
A high-efficiency gas furnace would save about $110 a year to run in Queens County compared with a gas furnace.
Estimates for a typical Queens County home, from EIA household energy data, New York fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
- What size furnace does my house need?
- The right size comes from a load calculation, not the square footage of your house. A contractor measures your walls, windows, insulation, and ceiling height, then works out how much heat escapes on a cold night to know how much the furnace needs to replace. Put in a furnace too big and it will short cycle, heating the house in bursts and wearing out faster. Too small and it will run constantly through the cold nights here, when lows average 28°F, and still not keep up. Ask whoever quotes the job to walk you through the calculation rather than guessing from the old unit's size.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- Watch how the furnace has been acting, not just how old it is. Rooms that used to heat evenly and now don't, a furnace that cycles on and off more than it used to, or a gas bill that's climbed without any change in how you use the house are all signs it's working harder to do the same job. If a repair is going to cost a large share of what a new furnace costs, replacing it usually makes more sense than sinking money into a unit that's already struggling. That matters here since homes need heat from October through April, 7 months of the year, so a furnace that's failing has a lot of work ahead of it.
- Is a high-efficiency furnace worth it?
- It depends on how long you plan to stay in the house and what your current furnace costs to run. High-efficiency furnaces recover more heat from the fuel they burn, so less of it goes out the flue, which matters more here since homes need heat from October through April. Any furnace made since November 2015 already has to hit 80 percent AFUE at minimum, so the real question is whether stepping up further makes sense for your situation. A contractor can compare your current furnace's efficiency against what's available now and price out the options so you're deciding on real numbers, not a general rule.