Furnace Installation in Naperville, IL
A new furnace here will run from October through May every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers DuPage County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Eight months of heat in DuPage County
Your furnace runs from October through May here, eight months of the year. Winter nights average 19°F, and most homes in the area heat with gas. A furnace installed here works through the coldest part of the year for longer than it rests.
Power does go out. Illinois saw 16% of households lose power for at least a day in 2024, and DuPage County has logged 15 winter storms and 180 damaging wind events over the past ten years. A new furnace still needs power to run, whatever fuel it burns. Any furnace installed today has to meet 80.0 percent AFUE, the federal minimum for non-weatherized gas furnaces built since late 2015.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace is on duty
- 19°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 83%
- 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 DuPage County compared with a gas furnace.
Estimates for a typical DuPage 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.
Illinois leaves HVAC licensing to the towns and counties, so whether your installer needs a local license depends on where in DuPage County the house sits. There is no state license behind any of it, and so no state record to check either way.
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 gas connection, which is the part of this job that actually puts a house at risk. In DuPage County, 83% of homes heat with gas, so that inspection is doing real work.
Source: Illinois General Assembly
- What size furnace does my house need?
- A contractor has to calculate that with a load calculation, not a chart based on square footage. That calculation looks at your insulation, your windows, your ceiling height, and how the house is laid out, because two homes the same size can need different furnaces. Going too big is as much a problem as going too small. An oversized furnace cycles on and off more, which wears out parts faster and leaves rooms uneven, so the right number matters more than a round one.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- Look at the age first. Furnaces generally last 15 years or more, and if yours is getting close to that or past it, a repair now is a patch on a system near its end. Watch for repairs that keep coming back, a furnace that runs longer to hit the same temperature, or a heat exchanger issue, since that part isn't safe to patch. With lows here averaging 19°F and heat needed October through May, a furnace that's already struggling now is one you don't want to gamble on through the winter.
- Is a high-efficiency furnace worth it?
- It depends on how long you plan to stay in the house and what your current furnace is costing you to run. Every non-weatherized gas furnace made since November 2015 has to hit at least 80 percent AFUE, so even a standard replacement today is more efficient than an older unit. A high-efficiency model pulls more heat from the same gas, and with heat running 8 months a year here, that difference adds up over a season more than it would somewhere milder. A contractor can walk through the actual models and what each one costs installed for your house.