Furnace Installation in Beaver Dam, WI
A new furnace here will run from October through May every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Dodge County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Beaver Dam asks a furnace to run eight months of the year
From October through May your furnace is the thing standing between your house and a 14°F night. That is eight months of the year it has to work, not just a few cold snaps. A furnace sized and installed right for that kind of stretch matters more here than in a place where winter is short.
Any non-weatherized gas furnace built after November 19, 2015 has to hit at least 80 percent AFUE by law, so that is the floor, not a selling point. Power matters too. In 2024, 18% of Wisconsin households went at least 24 hours without power, and the area has seen 18 winter storms and 79 damaging wind events over the past ten years. Worth asking how your furnace and its controls hold up when the power drops on a night that cold.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace is on duty
- 14°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 $100 a year to run in Dodge County compared with a gas furnace.
Estimates for a typical Dodge 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.
Registration puts a contractor's business on file with the Department of Safety and Professional Services. Nobody tested their work to get on that list. The state does not track how their jobs turn out. Wisconsin also keeps this the same everywhere. Counties and cities, including Dodge County, cannot add their own HVAC license on top of it. So the registration is the whole of the state's involvement, no matter where you live in Wisconsin.
For a furnace installation, the protection that matters comes from the local building office, not from the state. Most cities and counties require a permit for a furnace replacement, and an inspection once the work is done. That inspection is what checks the gas connection and venting. That is the part of this job where a mistake is dangerous. In Dodge County, 59% of homes heat with gas, so that inspection is doing real work here.
Sources: Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau · Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services
- What size furnace does my house need?
- It depends on your square footage, your insulation, your ceiling height, and how many windows you have facing the cold. A contractor works this out with a load calculation, not a chart based on house size alone. Too big and the furnace short cycles, heating fast then shutting off before the house evens out. Too small and it runs constantly through the coldest nights and still can't keep up. Get the calculation done. It's the only way to know for sure.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- Age is the first thing to check. A furnace working hard for 8 months a year, October through May, wears out faster than one that runs only a few months, so an older furnace is worth having evaluated. Rising repair bills are the second sign. If you're calling for service every winter, or a repair is priced close to what a new furnace would cost, replacement makes more sense than another patch. Uneven heat across the house, a furnace that runs longer than it used to, or a yellow flame instead of blue are also worth having looked at.
- Is a high-efficiency furnace worth it?
- Any furnace made since late 2015 has to hit at least 80 percent AFUE, so the real question is whether it's worth going higher than that. With 8 months of heating season here and winter nights averaging 14°F, a furnace running that long gets more chances to make back the difference in efficiency than one running a shorter season would. A high-efficiency furnace also vents differently, through PVC pipe instead of a metal flue, which matters if your house isn't already set up for it. A contractor can walk through what that changes for your specific setup and price it out.