Furnace Installation in Kent, OH
A new furnace here will run from October through May every year. Tell us about the house, and a licensed contractor who covers Portage County will get in touch.
Tell us about the job
It takes about a minute.
Kent asks a furnace to run eight months a year
Winter nights here average 21°F. Homes need heat from October through May, eight months of the burner cycling on and off. Most homes here run on gas. A furnace built for that kind of use has to hold up year after year.
Power is part of the picture too. Close to a fifth of Ohio households went at least 24 hours without power in 2024, and the last ten years brought 12 winter storms and 93 damaging wind events to this area. A new furnace should be sized and installed with that in mind. Federal rules set a floor already. Any non-weatherized gas furnace built since November 2015 has to reach at least 80 percent AFUE.
- 8 months
- October through May, your furnace is on duty
- 21°F
- the average winter night it heats against
- 64%
- 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 $150 a year to run in Portage County compared with a gas furnace.
Estimates for a typical Portage County home, from EIA household energy data, Ohio fuel prices and NOAA climate normals. Your home will differ.
In Ohio, HVAC licensing for homes is left to the counties.
In Portage County, whether a contractor needs a license depends on the county rule where the house sits, since Ohio itself does not set one for home HVAC work. What the state does define is a home contractor as a business carrying at least $250,000 in liability insurance. That is not a license and nobody tests for it. It just sets a floor for what the business must carry.
For a furnace installation here, the protection comes from the local building office rather than a license. Most cities and counties require a permit before the furnace goes in and an inspection once it is done, and that inspection is what catches a bad gas connection, which is the part of this job that can hurt someone. Gas heats 63.7% of the homes in this county, so that inspection step is doing real work here, not just paperwork.
Source: Ohio Legislative Service Commission
- What size furnace does my house need?
- A contractor has to work that out with a load calculation, not a chart based on square footage. That calculation looks at how much heat your house loses through its walls, windows, attic and ductwork, along with your local winter temperatures. With lows here averaging 21°F, undersizing leaves you cold on the worst nights, and oversizing makes the furnace short cycle instead of running steady. A properly done load calculation is the only way to get the right number for your house.
- How do I know it's time to replace my furnace?
- The clearest sign is a furnace that can't keep the house warm anymore, especially on the coldest nights. Rising repair frequency is another. If you're calling for service more than once a season, or a repair costs a large share of what a new furnace would, replacement makes more sense than another fix. Homes here need heat from October through May, eight months of the year, so a furnace that's struggling puts a long stretch of the year at risk. Any furnace showing cracks in the heat exchanger or producing carbon monoxide needs to be replaced right away, no question.
- Is a high-efficiency furnace worth it?
- It depends on what you're comparing it to. Every non-weatherized gas furnace made since November 2015 already has to hit at least 80 percent AFUE, so a higher-efficiency model means less gas wasted as exhaust heat instead of warming the house. With most homes here on gas heat and eight months of the year needing it, that difference gets used a lot. A contractor can walk you through the actual models and what each one would cost to install in your house.