Furnace Installation in Virginia City, NV
A new furnace here will run from October through May every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Storey County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Eight months of heat, and power that doesn't always hold
Virginia City needs a working furnace from October through May, eight months of the year. Winter nights average 25°F, so the furnace has to start reliably at that temperature, night after night, for most of the year.
Storey County has logged 99 winter storms and 200 damaging wind events over the past ten years. Across Nevada, 13% of households went at least 24 hours without power in 2024. That matters here, where 43% of homes heat with propane. Whatever fuel a new furnace runs on, it needs to be installed with those outages in mind. Any non-weatherized gas furnace built since November 2015 has to reach at least 80.0 percent AFUE. That is the legal minimum, not a target to aim for.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace is on duty
- 25°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 80% AFUE
- the federal minimum any new unit must meet
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
Nevada requires HVAC contractors to hold a state license.
The Nevada State Contractors Board tests and licenses HVAC contractors before they can take on work like this. The license belongs to the contractor, not to any single job, so it follows them from one house to the next rather than getting issued fresh each time.
For a furnace installation in Storey County, that state license is what stands behind the person doing the work. On top of it, most cities and counties require a permit for a furnace replacement and an inspection once the job is finished, which is a separate check from the local building office.
Sources: Nevada Legislature · Nevada State Contractors Board
- What size furnace does my house need?
- The right size comes from a load calculation, not the square footage of your house alone. A contractor measures your insulation, window area, ceiling height, and air leakage, then runs those numbers to find how much heat your house actually loses on a cold night. With winter lows here averaging 25°F, a furnace that's undersized will run constantly and still fall behind, and one that's oversized will cycle on and off too fast to heat evenly. Ask the contractor sizing your job to show you the calculation rather than a guess based on the last furnace.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- Watch for rooms that won't get warm, a furnace that cycles on and off more than it used to, or repair calls that keep coming back. Homes here need heat from October through May, eight months of the year, so a furnace that's struggling has little time off to recover before it's needed again. An older furnace that can't keep up on a 25°F night is telling you something a repair won't fix. A contractor can check whether the issue is a fixable part or the furnace itself reaching the end of its life.
- Is a high-efficiency furnace worth it?
- Every non-weatherized gas furnace sold new today has to reach at least 80.0 percent AFUE by law, so the real question is whether to go higher than that baseline. With eight months of heating a year here, a furnace burns fuel for most of the year, and higher AFUE means less of that fuel goes out the vent instead of into your house. A good number of homes here heat with propane, which costs more per unit of heat than natural gas, and that makes efficiency matter more on that fuel. A contractor can walk through the actual models and AFUE ratings available for your fuel type and furnace size.