Furnace Installation in Quincy, IL
A new furnace here will run from October through April every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Adams County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Quincy asks a lot of a furnace
Winters here bring nights that average 22°F, and homes need heat from October through April, seven months of the year. That is a long stretch for one machine to carry alone.
Most homes in Quincy heat with gas, and any non-weatherized gas furnace built since November 2015 has to reach at least 80 percent AFUE by federal rule. That is the floor, not a target, so it is worth knowing where a new unit falls above it. Adams County has also logged 11 winter storms and 48 damaging wind events over the past ten years, the kind of weather that knocks out power along with the heat. Across Illinois, 16 percent of households lost power for 24 hours or more in 2024, long enough for a house to go cold if the furnace has no way to run without it.
- 7 months
- October through April, your furnace is on duty
- 22°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 59%
- 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 Adams County compared with a gas furnace.
Estimates for a typical Adams 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.
Adams County does not license HVAC contractors itself. Whatever rule applies comes from the city or township the house sits in, so two homes a few miles apart can answer to different offices, or to none at all.
What generally applies here is the permit process. A furnace swap gets a permit from the local building office and an inspection once it is hooked up, and that inspection is what checks the gas connection and venting rather than any state license. Gas heat runs 58.8% of the homes in Adams County, so that inspection is doing real work in most houses here.
Source: Illinois General Assembly
- What size furnace does my house need?
- The right size depends on your square footage, how well the house is insulated, your window count, and your ceiling height, so there is no single number that fits every home. A contractor works this out with a load calculation, not a chart based on square footage alone. Going bigger than what the calculation calls for does not mean better heat. An oversized furnace cycles on and off more, which wears on it faster and leaves rooms uneven. With winter lows here averaging 22°F, getting the size right matters more than it would somewhere milder.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- Age is the first thing to look at. Older furnaces need more frequent repairs, and the risk of a breakdown on a cold night goes up the longer you push past that point. If yours is shutting off on its own, short cycling, or the burners are burning yellow instead of blue, those are signs the furnace needs attention now, not later. Since homes here need heat from October through April, seven months of the year, a furnace that is struggling in fall is one you want looked at before the coldest nights hit, not during them. A contractor can tell you whether a repair still makes sense or whether the furnace is past that point.
- Is a high-efficiency furnace worth it?
- It depends on how much heating you actually need and how long you plan to stay in the house. Furnaces built since November 2015 are already required to hit at least 80 percent AFUE, so even a standard furnace today is not inefficient. A high-efficiency model wastes less fuel as exhaust than that minimum, and that difference adds up over seven months of heating a year like homes here see. The tradeoff is usually higher upfront cost against lower fuel use over the furnace's life, and a contractor can walk through what that balance looks like for your house.