Furnace Installation in Rapid City, SD
A new furnace here will run from September through May every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Pennington County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Nine months of heat, and nights that drop to 13 degrees
A furnace here works from September through May. That is nine months of the year carrying the load, not just the deep winter stretch. On the coldest nights it is holding against a low near 13°F, and it does that for months at a stretch, not just a handful of cold snaps.
Pennington County has logged 167 winter storms and 420 damaging wind events over the past ten years. A new furnace has to keep running through that, on the nights it matters most. Most homes here heat with gas, and any non-weatherized gas furnace built since November 2015 has to reach at least 80 percent AFUE. That is the floor. What you install should be sized and installed to hold up to what the winters here actually do.
- 9 months
- September through May, your furnace is on duty
- 13°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 59%
- 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 $80 a year to run in Pennington County compared with a gas furnace.
Estimates for a typical Pennington 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.
Pennington County does not run its own contractor license either, so whether the person in your basement is licensed comes down to whatever the nearest city or town requires. There is no statewide test or record to check against, and no county list standing in for one. In most cities and counties here, a furnace replacement needs a permit from the local building office, along with an inspection once the work is done.
For this job, that permit and inspection are the protection, not a license. Someone from the building office checks the venting and the gas connections after the furnace is in, because a bad gas connection is the part of this job that can hurt someone. Gas heat runs 58.8% of the homes in Pennington County, so that inspection is doing real work here.
Source: South Dakota Legislature
- What size furnace does my house need?
- It depends on your square footage, how well the house is insulated, your ceiling height, and how many windows you have facing north. There's no shortcut number that works for every home, even two houses the same size can need different sized furnaces. A contractor will do a load calculation, checking the walls, windows, insulation, and layout, to find the right size for your house. Going too big wastes fuel and wears out the furnace faster from short cycling. Too small, and it will run constantly through a Rapid City winter and still struggle to keep up when it hits 13 below.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- Watch for uneven heat between rooms, a furnace that cycles on and off more than it used to, or a rise in your gas bill without a reason. Rust near the burner, a yellow flame instead of blue, or the smell of gas are signs to get it looked at right away, not signs to wait on. Homes here need heat September through May, nine months of the year, so a furnace that is struggling now is a real risk once the cold sets in. If you're calling a repair tech more than once a season, replacement usually costs less over time than another repair.
- 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 to heat it now. Every furnace sold new today has to hit at least 80 percent AFUE, but high-efficiency models go higher, meaning less of the gas you pay for is lost out the flue. With heat needed nine months a year here and close to 6 in 10 homes in the county heating with gas, that difference shows up on more bills than it would somewhere milder. A contractor can walk through the actual efficiency numbers against what you're running now and let you weigh the difference for your house.