Furnace repair, replacement and tune-ups in Gloucester

Beacon Hill and Blackburn Hamlet were built in the 1960s and 1970s as complete communities, with bungalows, split-levels and two-storeys that have changed little since. Riverview Park and Cyrville are a decade older in places, and Hunt Club filled in through the late 1970s and 1980s. The first furnaces are long gone. What is in the basements now is mostly 80 percent mid-efficiency units from the 1990s and early 2000s, with a scattering of early high-efficiency furnaces that are now past twenty years.

Because the houses are original, the ducts are original too, and in most of them that is good news. 1960s and 1970s sheet metal was generously sized, and a correctly chosen 96 percent furnace moves air through it without trouble. The exception is the finished basement, where the ducts were boxed in during a renovation and the returns were never extended, and the fix there is a duct adjustment, not a larger furnace.

The common call in Gloucester is a mid-efficiency furnace that has started short-cycling, or a high-efficiency unit from the first wave that needs its second control board. We give you the repair price and the replacement price together and explain which one we would pay for ourselves. Gloucester is on Enbridge natural gas, is scheduled with Orléans and the east end, and has no travel charge.

• Beacon Hill and Blackburn Hamlet: 1960s and 1970s homes, original ducts, mid-efficiency furnaces at end of life
• Riverview Park and Cyrville: older bungalows, oversized replacements, short cycling
• Hunt Club: late 1970s and 1980s two-storeys, first-wave high-efficiency furnaces past twenty years