Furnace Installation in Baraboo, WI
A new furnace here will run from October through May every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Sauk County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Baraboo winters keep a furnace working eight months of the year
From October through May your furnace is the thing standing between your house and a night that averages 13°F. That is eight months of the year it has to start reliably and keep running. A new furnace here needs to be sized and installed for that stretch, not just the coldest week of it.
56.1 percent of homes in this area heat with gas, and any new gas furnace has to meet the federal minimum of 80 percent AFUE. Sauk County has seen 12 winter storms and 61 damaging wind events over the past ten years, and across Wisconsin, 18 percent of households went at least 24 hours without power in 2024. A furnace installed here should be matched to that reality, not just the square footage of the house.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace is on duty
- 13°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 56%
- 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 Sauk County compared with a gas furnace.
Estimates for a typical Sauk County home, from EIA household energy data, Wisconsin fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
Wisconsin requires contractors to register with the state.
That registration puts the business on file with the Department of Safety and Professional Services, nothing more. No exam stands behind it, so it is not a license and it is not proof the contractor knows the trade. Wisconsin also keeps counties and cities from adding their own HVAC license on top of it, so this registration is the only state-level record that exists anywhere in the state.
For a furnace install, the protection that actually matters here is local. Most cities and counties require a permit before the work starts and an inspection once it is done, and that inspection is what checks the gas connection and the venting, the part of this job that can hurt someone if it is wrong. Whether that permit applies at this address depends on the local building office, not the state. In Sauk County, 56.1% of homes heat with gas, so a furnace like this one is common ground for that inspection to cover.
Sources: Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau · Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services
- What size furnace does my house need?
- There is no way to answer that without measuring your house. A contractor works out the load room by room, looking at square footage, insulation, window area, and ceiling height, then sizes the furnace to match. Going bigger than that number does not mean more comfort. An oversized furnace heats the air fast, shuts off, and leaves the house swinging between too warm and too cold, and it wears out the switch that turns the burner on and off sooner. With winter nights here averaging 13°F, getting this number right matters more than in a milder place, since the furnace has to hold steady through a real winter, not just take the edge off.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- Age is the first thing to check. An older furnace running past its expected life starts showing it, with parts wearing out faster and efficiency dropping even while it still runs. Watch for rooms that will not get warm anymore, a burner that cycles on and off more than it used to, or a gas bill that climbed without a change in how you use the house. If a contractor has told you the heat exchanger is cracked, that is not a repair, that furnace needs to come out. Homes here need heat from October through May, eight months of the year, so a furnace on its way out gets tested hard and often.
- Is a high-efficiency furnace worth it?
- It depends on how long you plan to run it and what your current furnace costs you to operate, and a contractor can walk through those numbers for your house. What's true everywhere is that any furnace installed new today, high-efficiency or not, has to hit at least 80 percent AFUE by law. High-efficiency models go well past that, pulling more heat out of the same amount of gas, which matters here since 56.1 percent of homes heat with gas and the furnace runs eight months a year. The higher-efficiency units also vent through PVC pipe instead of a metal flue, which changes what the installation involves.