Furnace Installation in Syracuse, NY
A new furnace here will run from October through May every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Onondaga County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Eight months of heating in Onondaga County
Your furnace runs from October through May here, eight months of the year. Winter nights average 18°F, so it is doing real work most of that stretch, not just taking the edge off.
Most homes in the area heat with gas, and any new non-weatherized gas furnace has to reach at least 80.0 percent AFUE under the federal minimum. Power matters too. The region has logged 22 winter storms and 186 damaging wind events over the last ten years, and in 2024, 11 percent of New York households went at least 24 hours without power. If a furnace needs electricity to start and run, an outage takes the heat down with it.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace is on duty
- 18°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 70%
- 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 $150 a year to run in Onondaga County compared with a gas furnace.
Estimates for a typical Onondaga 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 a guess based on square footage. A contractor measures your insulation, your windows, your ceiling height, and how the place is laid out, then runs those numbers to find the actual heat loss. A furnace that's too big will short cycle and wear out faster. One that's too small will run constantly and still leave rooms cold when it's 18 degrees outside. Ask whoever quotes the job to walk you through the calculation rather than just naming a number.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- Watch for uneven heat, rising gas bills, or a furnace that's running most of the day without keeping up. Homes here need heat from October through May, so a furnace on its way out gets exposed fast once the nights drop toward 18 degrees. Frequent repairs are another sign, especially if a contractor has already replaced the same part more than once. A furnace that can't hold up through a full winter here is worth replacing before it fails on a cold night.
- Is a high-efficiency furnace worth it?
- It depends on how much you heat and how long you plan to stay in the house. Every non-weatherized gas furnace built since November 2015 has to reach at least 80 percent AFUE, so even a standard model today isn't wasteful. A high-efficiency furnace burns less gas to make the same heat than one at that baseline, and with 8 months of heating a year here, that difference gets used a lot. A contractor can price a higher-efficiency model against a standard one for your specific house.