Furnace Installation in Conway, NH
A new furnace here will run from September through May every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Carroll County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Nine months of heat, and nights that drop to 12°F
Conway asks a lot of a furnace. Heat runs from September through May, nine months out of the year, and winter nights average 12°F. That is a long season with real cold behind it, not just a few hard weeks.
A new furnace here also has to hold up through the storms that come with that cold. Carroll County has seen 103 winter storms and 70 damaging wind events over the past ten years. Storms like that knock out power, and in New Hampshire, 22% of households lost power for at least 24 hours in 2024. Any new gas furnace has to meet 80.0 percent AFUE, the federal minimum. But getting the size right for a nine-month season and 12°F nights matters just as much as the number on the label.
- 9 months
- September through May, your furnace is on duty
- 12°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.
New Hampshire leaves HVAC contractors off any state list. There is no license to earn and no registration to file, so there is no exam behind the work and no state record to check against a name. Whether someone is fit to install a furnace is not a question the state answers at all.
What stands in for that here is the permit process. In most cities and counties in New Hampshire, installing a furnace 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 or a flue that was not run right, since that is the part of the job that can hurt someone. The permit and inspection depend on the town this furnace is going into.
Source: New Hampshire General Court
- What size furnace does my house need?
- The right size depends on your home's square footage, insulation, window count, and layout, so there is no single number that works for every house. A furnace that is too big will short cycle and wear out faster. One that is too small will run constantly and still leave rooms cold on a 12°F night. A contractor will run a load calculation on your specific house before recommending a size, and with winter lows here in the single digits, getting that number right matters more than it does in milder places.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- Watch for rising repair calls, uneven heat between rooms, and a furnace that struggles to keep up on the coldest nights. Homes here need heat from September through May, so a furnace that is already faltering early in that stretch is a bad sign for the months still ahead. If yours is old enough that parts are getting harder to find, or a repair would cost a large share of what a new unit costs, replacement usually makes more sense than another patch. A contractor can look at its condition and tell you which side of that line you're on.
- Is a high-efficiency furnace worth it?
- It depends on how long you plan to stay in the house and how much you currently spend heating it. Every new non-weatherized gas furnace sold today has to hit at least 80 percent AFUE by law, so the real choice is between that baseline and a high-efficiency model rated higher. With heat needed here nine months a year, a more efficient furnace has more months to earn back the difference than it would somewhere with a short winter. A contractor can walk through the options with you against your actual heating bills.