Furnace Installation in Zionsville, IN
A new furnace here will run from October through May every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Boone County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Zionsville asks a lot of a furnace
Homes in Boone County need heat from October through May, eight months of the year. Winter nights average 21°F, and a furnace here is lighting and running through most of the year, not just a few cold snaps.
Most homes in the area heat with gas, and any non-weatherized gas furnace built after November 2015 has to meet a federal minimum of 80 percent AFUE. Power matters too. In 2024, 17 percent of Indiana households lost power for 24 hours or more, and the area has seen 10 winter storms and 41 damaging wind events over the last ten years. A furnace installed here should be sized for the cold it will face and set up to come back on its own when the power does.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace is on duty
- 21°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 58%
- 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 $100 a year to run in Boone County compared with a gas furnace.
Estimates for a typical Boone County home, from EIA household energy data, Indiana fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
In Indiana, HVAC licensing for homes is left to the counties and cities.
Boone County sets its own rule for who can do HVAC work, since Indiana leaves that to the counties and cities. That means whether a contractor is licensed, registered, or neither depends on the local office, not on any state record. There is no statewide list to check against for a job in this county.
For a furnace installation, the protection that applies here comes from the permit and inspection most cities and counties require for this kind of job. The local building office issues the permit and sends someone to check the work once it's done, including the gas connection, which is the part that matters most if it's done wrong. In Boone County, 57.5% of homes heat with gas, so that inspection is doing the job a license would do elsewhere.
Sources: Indiana Department of Workforce Development · State of Indiana
- What size furnace does my house need?
- It depends on your square footage, your insulation, your windows, and how the house is laid out, so there is no number that applies to every home. A contractor sizes a furnace with a load calculation, not a chart based on floor area alone. Too big and it short cycles, heating the house in bursts and wearing out parts faster. Too small and it runs constantly through the cold nights here and still cannot keep up. Have a contractor run the calculation for your house rather than going by what the old furnace was rated for, since that unit may have been wrong from the start.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- Age is the first thing to check, along with how often it has needed repair. Watch for signs like rooms that never quite get warm, a furnace that cycles on and off more than it used to, or a heating bill that climbed without an obvious reason. Homes here need heat from October through May, eight months of the year, so a furnace that is struggling has a lot of months left to prove it. If a repair is going to cost a large share of what a new furnace would, replacing it is usually the better call. A contractor can look at the specific unit and tell you which side of that line you are on.
- Is a high-efficiency furnace worth it?
- It depends on how long you plan to stay in the house and how much you run the furnace. Every non-weatherized gas furnace made since November 2015 has to hit at least 80 percent AFUE, so even a standard furnace today is not wasteful. A high-efficiency furnace pulls more heat out of the same amount of gas, and with heat needed eight months a year here, those months add up. The tradeoff is a more complex furnace with more parts that can need service. A contractor can walk through the options with your specific house and how you use it in mind.