Furnace Installation in Farmington, ME
A new furnace here will run from September through June every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Franklin County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Farmington asks a furnace to run almost year round
Homes here need heat from September through June, ten months of the year. Winter nights average 8°F from December through February, and a furnace has to hold up to that stretch, not just a few cold weeks.
More than half of homes in this area heat with fuel oil. The county has logged 97 winter storms and 34 damaging wind events over the past ten years, and across Maine, 54 percent of households lost power for at least 24 hours in 2024. A furnace needs electricity to run no matter what fuel it burns, so that outage record matters. If you're installing a gas furnace, federal rules require any non-weatherized model made on or after November 19, 2015 to reach at least 80 percent AFUE.
- 10 months
- September through June, your furnace is on duty
- 8°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 80% AFUE
- the federal minimum any new unit must meet
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
- What size furnace does my house need?
- There's no single number that fits every house. It comes down to a load calculation, a room by room measure of your square footage, insulation, windows, and ceiling height. A furnace that's too big will short cycle and wear out early. A furnace that's too small will run constantly and still leave rooms cold when it's 8°F outside, which is a normal winter night here. A contractor will run this calculation on your actual house before recommending a size.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- Start by watching how it performs, not just how old it is. Uneven heat between rooms, a furnace that runs longer to hit the same temperature, or a rise in fuel use without a reason are all signs it's losing ground. Repairs that keep coming back are another. With homes here needing heat from September through June, a furnace that's struggling is worth having looked at before it fails outright at 8°F. Over half the homes here heat with fuel oil, so a drop in efficiency shows up fast in fuel use.
- Is a high-efficiency furnace worth it?
- It depends on how much your home actually uses heat, and here that's 10 months a year. Every non-weatherized gas furnace made since November 2015 has to hit at least 80 percent AFUE, so even a standard model isn't wasteful anymore. A high-efficiency model burns less fuel to produce the same heat, and with that many months of heating a year, the difference gets more use than it would somewhere with a short winter. A contractor can walk through the options and their upfront cost against your specific home.