Furnace Installation in Concord, NH
A new furnace here will run from September through May every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Merrimack County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Nine months of heat, and winters that test the system
In Concord, a furnace runs from September through May. That is nine months of the year it has to work, with winter nights averaging 14°F. A furnace sized and installed for a few cold snaps will not hold up here. It needs to be sized for a long season of real cold.
About a third of homes in the area heat with fuel oil, so the fuel type matters when you are replacing what you have or switching to something else. Any new gas furnace also has to meet the federal minimum of 80 percent AFUE. And with 35 winter storms and 79 damaging wind events recorded here over the past decade, and 22 percent of New Hampshire households losing power for a day or more in 2024, it is worth asking how your new furnace starts back up once the power does.
- 9 months
- September through May, your furnace is on duty
- 14°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 80% AFUE
- the federal minimum any new unit must meet
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
New Hampshire has no state license for HVAC contractors.
There is no state board behind this job and no state record of who does it. New Hampshire does not test HVAC contractors, does not license them, and does not keep a registry of who is working in Merrimack County. Anyone can put a truck on the road and call themselves a furnace installer here.
What stands in for that here is the permit process. A furnace installation in most Merrimack County towns needs a permit from the local building office, and the finished work needs an inspection before it's signed off. That inspector is checking the gas connection, the venting, and whether the furnace was set up the way it's supposed to be. That's the check this job gets.
Source: New Hampshire General Court
- 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's no single number that fits every home. A contractor works this out with a load calculation, not a guess based on your old furnace's size. Putting in one that's too big or too small wastes fuel and wears out faster, so it's worth having that math done rather than matching what's already there.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- If your furnace is struggling to keep up on the coldest nights, cycling on and off more than it used to, or needing repairs more than once a season, it's time to start looking at replacement. An older furnace works harder than it used to just to do the same job. With winter lows here averaging 14°F and heat needed from September through May, a furnace that can't keep up isn't something to wait out.
- Is a high-efficiency furnace worth it?
- It depends on how long you plan to stay in the house and how much you're paying for fuel now. Homes here need heat from September through May, so a furnace spends most of the year working, which is more time for efficiency to matter than in a place with a short winter. Every non-weatherized gas furnace made since November 2015 already has to hit at least 80 percent AFUE, so the real question is whether going higher than that baseline makes sense for your house, and a contractor can walk through that against your fuel costs.