Takes about a minute. No obligation.
Gas heats just over half the homes in Morgan County, electricity heats about three in ten, and propane makes up most of the rest. If your house already has a gas line run to it, a gas furnace is the straightforward replacement. The contractor sizing your install will still need to account for your square footage and your ductwork, not just the fuel type. But starting with the same fuel the house was built for usually means less rework and fewer surprises during the install.
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
Furnaces in Morgan County start running in October and go through May.
Get yours installed in September and it's ready before the first cold morning, not during one.
Natural gas ran Colorado homes $10.09 per million Btu in 2024. That's cheap enough that chasing the highest efficiency rating won't save you much over a mid-range furnace, not with winters this long. A contractor might still point you toward a higher-efficiency model, and that's fine, but the reason should be comfort or venting, not a payback promise. Put the weight on getting the size right and the installation done well. A furnace that's sized to your house and installed correctly will outlast one picked for its efficiency number alone.
Half the homes in Morgan County were built in 1975 or earlier, half later. Neither one calls for anything special. A furnace sized to your square footage and ductwork, installed correctly, is the job here, not a bigger unit or a specialty model.
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Eight months of heat and nights that drop near 16°F put real hours on a furnace here. That's the case for sizing it to your house instead of rounding up. An oversized unit cycles on and off more in weather like this, and that short-cycling is what wears out an igniter or a blower motor before its time. Give the contractor your square footage and let them run the load calculation rather than matching whatever was there before.
The gas line, the vent pipe and the return and supply ducts all come off the old unit before the new one goes in. The installer caps or redirects whatever connected to it. Hauling it out is part of the install, not a separate job you need to arrange.
A different model may need its vent pipe run at a different angle or size, and the ductwork connection at the plenum sometimes needs rework to fit the new cabinet. None of that means something went wrong. It means the installer is matching the new furnace to your house instead of forcing it into the old furnace's footprint.
Estimates for a typical Morgan County home, from EIA household energy data, Colorado fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
The old furnace comes out before the new one goes in, so there's a stretch with no heat in the house while the gas line, vent pipe, and ductwork connections get swapped over. The installer works through those one at a time rather than all at once. Once the new furnace is set and hooked up, it gets fired up and run through a cycle so the flame, the airflow, and the gas pressure can all be checked while it's running, not just at startup. A combustion analyzer at the end confirms it's burning clean and venting properly. Before the installer leaves, walk through the thermostat settings and where the filter sits. That's a lot easier to ask about in person than to figure out later.
