Furnace Installation in Sisseton, SD
A new furnace here will run from September through May every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Roberts County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Nine months of heat, nights near 6 below
A furnace in Sisseton works from September through May. That is nine months of the year, and winter nights average 6°F. Close to half the homes here run on propane, and whatever fuel yours uses, it has to hold up through months of hard cold, not just a few cold snaps.
Roberts County has logged 54 winter storms and 115 damaging wind events over the past ten years. A new furnace installed here has to start reliably on the coldest nights and keep running through what the season brings. Any non-weatherized gas furnace built since November 2015 has to reach at least 80.0 percent AFUE, so a new installation is already starting from that baseline.
- 9 months
- September through May, your furnace is on duty
- 6°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 propane furnace would save about $190 a year to run in Roberts County compared with a propane furnace.
Estimates for a typical Roberts 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.
Roberts County has no county HVAC license, and South Dakota has no state license either. Whether a furnace installer holds any license at all depends on the city or town where the house sits. Some set their own licensing or registration rules for contractors working inside their limits, others do not, and there is no state list that covers it either way.
For this job, the protection that most often applies is the permit. In most cities and counties, replacing a furnace needs a permit from the local building office and an inspection once the work is done. That inspection is what catches a bad gas connection or a vent that is not run right, which is the part of a furnace install that can actually hurt someone. The building office does not test the installer's skill the way a state license would. It checks the finished work.
Source: South Dakota Legislature
- What size furnace does my house need?
- The right size depends on your square footage, your insulation, your windows, and your layout, so there's no number that works for every house. A contractor sizes it by running a load calculation on your home rather than going by rule of thumb. With winter lows here averaging 6°F, a furnace that's undersized will run constantly and still fall behind, and one that's oversized will short cycle and wear out faster. Get the calculation done rather than matching the size of the furnace you're replacing, since the old one may not have been sized right either.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- If your furnace is struggling to keep up, cycling on and off more than it used to, or needing repairs more often, it's time to start looking at replacement. Age matters too. A furnace pushed hard for 9 months of the year, which is what heating season looks like here, wears down faster than one that only runs a few months. Rising bills with no other explanation, uneven heat between rooms, and a furnace that won't hold a temperature are also signs the unit is losing the fight. If yours is old and needs a repair right now, ask the contractor whether replacement makes more sense than fixing it again.
- Is a high-efficiency furnace worth it?
- It depends on how much you heat and what you're paying for fuel now. Since homes here need heat from September through May and close to half heat with propane, a more efficient furnace burns less fuel over a long season, and that adds up more here than it would somewhere with a short winter. Any new non-weatherized gas furnace has to hit at least 80 percent AFUE, so the real question is whether to spend more up front for a unit rated higher than that. A contractor can walk you through the options for your house and your fuel type, since the payoff depends on numbers specific to your situation.