Furnace Installation in Aurora, IL
A new furnace here will run from October through May every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Kane County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Aurora asks a lot of a furnace
Winter nights here average 18°F, and homes need heat from October through May. That's 8 months a year the furnace has to work.
A new gas furnace installed today has to reach at least 80 percent AFUE, the federal minimum for non-weatherized models. Most homes here already heat with gas, so that number is the floor to plan around, not the ceiling.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace is on duty
- 18°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 86%
- 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 $130 a year to run in Kane County compared with a gas furnace.
Estimates for a typical Kane County home, from EIA household energy data, Illinois fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
In Illinois, HVAC licensing for homes is left to the cities and towns.
Whether the person installing your furnace is licensed comes down to whether your city or town has its own rule. Illinois leaves that decision to local governments, so one town over the answer could be different, and there is no state record to check either way.
What usually stands in for that is the permit process. In most cities and counties here, a furnace installation needs a permit from the local building office, and the finished work gets inspected before it is signed off. That inspection is what catches a bad flue connection or a gas line that was not sealed right, the part of this job that actually matters. With 86.1% of homes in Kane County heating with gas, that inspection is doing real work.
Source: Illinois General Assembly
- What size furnace does my house need?
- The right size depends on your square footage, your insulation, your windows, and your home's layout, so there's no single number that works for every house. A contractor sizes a furnace with a load calculation that looks at all of this, not just square footage. Going too big wastes fuel and wears out the furnace faster from short cycling. Too small and it will run constantly on the 18°F nights here and still struggle to keep up.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- Age is the first thing to check, along with how often you're calling for repairs. If repairs are getting more frequent or more expensive, that is a sign the furnace is wearing out rather than having one bad part. Watch for other signs too. Rooms that won't heat evenly, a furnace that cycles on and off more than it used to, or a gas bill that keeps climbing without a reason. Homes here need heat from October through May, so a furnace that's already struggling early in that stretch is telling you something about how it will hold up later on.
- Is a high-efficiency furnace worth it?
- It depends on how long you plan to stay in the house and what furnace you have now. Furnaces built since November 2015 are already required to hit at least 80 percent AFUE, so if yours is newer, the gap between it and a high-efficiency model is smaller than people expect. If you're running an older furnace, moving up to a high-efficiency model matters more here because homes need heat for 8 months of the year. A contractor can walk through the actual numbers for your furnace against a new one before you decide.