Furnace Installation in Layton, UT
A new furnace here will run from October through May every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Davis County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Layton asks a lot of a furnace
Winter nights here average 22°F, and once October comes your furnace won't shut off for the season until May. That's 8 months of run time a year, so the burner and blower are working most of the year, not just a few cold weeks.
Most homes in Davis County heat with gas, and any new furnace installed now has to meet the federal minimum of 80 percent AFUE. Power still matters even with a gas furnace, since the blower and controls need electricity to run, and the area has logged 48 winter storms and 59 damaging wind events over the past ten years.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace is on duty
- 22°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 86%
- 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 $90 a year to run in Davis County compared with a gas furnace.
Estimates for a typical Davis County home, from EIA household energy data, Utah fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
Utah requires HVAC contractors to hold a state license.
Utah's Division of Professional Licensing tests and records the contractors it licenses. That license belongs to the contractor, not to any single job. Utah also carves out an exception. Work under $7,000 does not need a licensed contractor at all. A furnace installation runs well past that threshold, so the contractor doing this job is expected to hold the state license.
That license covers who is allowed to do the work. It does not cover whether this particular job gets checked once it is done. In Davis County, as in most places, a furnace installation needs a permit from the local building office and an inspection when the work is finished. That inspection is what catches a bad gas connection, which is the part of this job that matters most. In Davis County, 86.4% of homes heat with gas, so that inspection is checking a gas appliance more often than not.
Sources: Utah State Legislature · Utah Department of Commerce
- What size furnace does my house need?
- It depends on your square footage, your ceiling height, how much insulation you have, and how many windows face north. There's no single number that works for every house on your street, even if the houses look the same. A contractor sizes a furnace by running a load calculation on your specific house, not by going off the old unit's size or a rule of thumb. Since homes here need heat from October through May, and winter nights average 22°F, getting the size right matters. A furnace that's too big will short cycle and wear out faster. One that's too small will run constantly and still leave you cold on the worst nights.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- If your furnace can't keep the house warm on the coldest nights, or it's cycling on and off more than it used to, that's a sign. Rising repair bills are another. If you're calling a contractor out more than once a season, the cost of patching it keeps adding up against the cost of replacing it. Age matters too. Furnaces manufactured after November 2015 have to hit at least 80 percent AFUE, so if yours predates that, it's likely running less efficiently than what you'd get today. With heat needed here eight months a year, a furnace that's struggling has a lot of months left to fail in.
- Is a high-efficiency furnace worth it?
- For a house that heats from October through May, a high-efficiency furnace has a lot more months to earn back what it costs than it would somewhere with a short winter. Gas is how most homes here heat, 86.4 percent of them, so the efficiency rating on a gas furnace is worth paying attention to. A higher AFUE furnace burns less gas to produce the same heat, month after month. Whether the higher upfront cost makes sense for your house is something a contractor can walk through with you, since it depends on your current furnace, your gas usage, and how long you plan to stay in the house.