Furnace Installation in Pierre, SD
A new furnace here will run from October through May every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Hughes County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Eight months of heat, down to 10 degrees
Furnaces in Pierre run October through May. That's eight months of the year, longer than most places ask of a furnace. Winter nights average 10°F, and it's the cold nights that push a furnace hardest, night after night, for most of the year.
Almost half of homes here heat with gas. Any non-weatherized gas furnace built after November 19, 2015 has to reach at least 80 percent AFUE, so a new installation will meet that mark. Hughes County has also logged 37 winter storms and 135 damaging wind events over the past ten years, the kind of weather a furnace needs to be sized and installed to handle.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace is on duty
- 10°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 80% AFUE
- the federal minimum any new unit must meet
NOAA nClimDiv, 1991–2020 normals
A high-efficiency gas furnace would save about $80 a year to run in Hughes County compared with a gas furnace.
Estimates for a typical Hughes County home, from EIA household energy data, South Dakota fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
In South Dakota, HVAC licensing for homes is left to the cities and towns.
South Dakota does not test or license HVAC contractors at the state level. Whether Hughes County or the city within it licenses furnace installers is a local matter, not something the state tracks or records.
What covers this job instead is the permit process. In most cities and counties, installing a furnace needs a permit from the local building office and an inspection once the work is done. That inspection is what checks the gas connection, since a bad connection is the part of a furnace install that can actually hurt someone. Just under half the homes in Hughes County heat with gas, so that check is not a formality for most of this county.
Source: South Dakota Legislature
- What size furnace does my house need?
- The right size comes from a load calculation, not a rule of thumb based on square footage. A contractor measures your insulation, your windows, your ceiling height, and how the house is laid out, then works out how much heat it loses on a cold night. With winter lows here averaging 10°F, a furnace that's too small will run constantly and still fall behind. One that's too big will short cycle, turning on and off before it heats evenly, which wears out parts faster. Get the calculation done for your specific house rather than going by the size of the unit you're replacing.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- If it's breaking down more than once a season, or the repair bill is climbing close to what a new furnace would cost, replacement usually makes more sense than another fix. Age matters too. Furnaces built to today's standard have to hit 80 percent AFUE, so anything much older is likely burning gas less efficiently than a current model would. Uneven heat between rooms, a furnace that runs longer to hit the same temperature, or a yellow flame instead of blue are also signs the unit is struggling. Homes here need heat from October through May, eight months of the year, so a furnace on its way out doesn't get much of a break to make it worth patching again.
- 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 now to heat it. High-efficiency furnaces cost more upfront but use less gas to produce the same heat, and with eight months of heating season here, that difference shows up on the bill every year, not just during a few cold weeks. Almost half of homes in Hughes County heat with gas, so the fuel savings apply to a lot of houses in this area. A contractor can walk you through the actual efficiency ratings available and price the difference for your home.