Boilers and Furnaces for North Country Homes
A furnace heats air and pushes it through ducts; a boiler heats water and sends it to baseboard, radiators or radiant floors. Adirondack Heat Pumps installs RUUD propane furnaces up to 98% AFUE and RUUD boilers up to 96% AFUE, repairs oil and propane equipment of any brand, and shows Ticonderoga-area homeowners when a Mitsubishi heat pump should carry the load and the boiler should become the backup.
- Mitsubishi Diamond Contractor ELITE
- 12-year parts & labor warranty
- 180-Day Comfort Guarantee
- Veteran-owned · Ticonderoga, NY
Pick the page that matches your house
Furnaces: forced air through ducts
If your house has registers in the floor or ceiling and a blower in the basement, you have a furnace. We install RUUD propane and natural gas furnaces from 95% to 98% AFUE and repair gas, propane and oil furnaces of every brand.
RUUD furnace installationBoilers: hot water to baseboard and radiators
If you have fin-tube baseboard, cast-iron radiators or warm floors, you have a boiler. We install RUUD L-Series combi, FT Series and L-Series heating-only boilers up to 96% AFUE and repair all brands, oil included.
Boiler installation & repairAlready know something is broken? Furnace repair and boiler repair are separate from installation. No heat right now? Emergency service is answered 24/7 at (518) 812-1958.
Why so many Adirondack homes have boilers, and what that means
Drive through Ticonderoga, Port Henry or Elizabethtown and most of the housing stock is 1880s to 1950s: village homes, farmhouses, converted camps. Those houses were built with coal or wood heat and later fitted with an oil boiler and baseboard, because running copper pipe through a plaster-and-lath house is far easier than cutting ductwork into it. The result is that hydronic heat is the majority system in older North Country homes, while forced-air furnaces show up mostly in post-1970 builds, ranches and doublewides.
Each has a trade-off. Baseboard heat is quiet, even and doesn't dry the house out as much, but it gives you no air conditioning and no way to filter the air. Forced air can cool and filter, but the ductwork in an older house often runs through a cold attic or crawlspace and can lose 20 to 30% of the heat before it reaches a register.
Neither one needs to be ripped out to modernize the house. That is the point of the hybrid approach further down this page.
Propane vs. oil in a region with almost no natural gas
Natural gas lines don't run through Essex County outside a handful of streets, so a new furnace or boiler here is a propane appliance. That's not a compromise. Propane burns cleanly, every RUUD furnace and boiler we install configures for LP, and condensing equipment vents through a sidewall with PVC instead of needing a lined chimney.
Oil is what most of the older boilers in our area still burn, and we service them. But a 25-year-old oil boiler typically runs at 60 to 70% efficiency: a third of every delivery goes up the flue. Replacing it with a 96% AFUE condensing boiler, or with a heat pump, is where the real savings live. Our oil conversion page walks through the honest math, including tank removal and the price volatility of both fuels.
Electric baseboard is the third fuel we see constantly in camps and lake houses. It has no boiler or furnace to repair, which sounds nice until the January NYSEG bill arrives. It is also the easiest system in the world to replace with a ductless heat pump.
What AFUE actually tells you
Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency is the share of fuel that becomes heat in your house over a season. The rest goes out the flue. Minimum new equipment is around 80 to 84% AFUE. The RUUD equipment we install runs 95 to 98% AFUE on furnaces and up to 96% AFUE on condensing boilers, which is why they vent in plastic pipe: the exhaust is cool enough that most of the heat has already been captured.
- 60–70%typical efficiency of a 25-year-old oil boiler
- 96%AFUE on RUUD L-Series and FT Series condensing boilers
- 98%AFUE on the top RUUD modulating furnace
- 20–30%heat lost in leaky ducts through unconditioned space
Two cautions. AFUE doesn't count duct losses, so a 98% furnace on bad ductwork is not a 98% system. And AFUE is capped at 100% because a furnace can't make more heat than it burns. A heat pump moves heat instead of making it, which is how it delivers two to three units of heat per unit of electricity even in cold weather.
Keep the boiler. Let a heat pump do most of the work.
This is the setup we recommend more than any other in boiler-heated houses, and it's the one the old version of this page was built around: a Mitsubishi Hyper-Heating INVERTER system as the primary heat, with the existing boiler or furnace kept as backup for the deepest cold and for peace of mind.
Here's why it works in the North Country. A Mitsubishi H2i outdoor unit delivers 100% of its rated heating capacity at 5°F and keeps running to -13°F, and H2i Plus models to -22°F. That covers the overwhelming majority of heating hours in Ticonderoga, where the design temperature is about -10°F. On the few nights Lake Placid or Saranac Lake drops to -25°F, the boiler fires. The rest of the season it sits idle while the heat pump runs at a fraction of the cost of oil or propane, and in summer you have air conditioning in a house that never had it.
- Room-by-room thermostats instead of one boiler thermostat guessing for the whole house
- Rebates through NYS Clean Heat (NYSEG and National Grid) and Efficiency Vermont apply to the heat pump; we confirm your amount at the estimate
- 18 months 0% financing on qualifying installs
- No fuel deliveries for most of the winter, and a boiler that lasts longer because it runs less
When replacement time comes, compare both
If your boiler or furnace is 20-plus years old, rusting, or needing its second repair this winter, you are about to spend real money either way. A new RUUD boiler or furnace gets no state incentive. A Mitsubishi heat pump gets NYS Clean Heat rebates, 0% financing, and adds cooling. Run the calculator against your actual fuel bill, then book a free estimate and we'll price the furnace or boiler replacement, the heat pump, and the hybrid side by side.
If the answer is a RUUD furnace or boiler, that's fine. We install them properly and stand behind them with the same 180-Day Comfort Guarantee.
Explore Mitsubishi heat pumps
Repair, maintenance and scheduling
We repair furnaces and boilers of all brands across Essex, Clinton, Franklin and northern Warren County. Annual tune-ups keep warranties valid and are priced on the maintenance pricing page. Schedule a repair, book annual maintenance, or request a free replacement quote.
Boiler and furnace questions
What's the difference between a boiler and a furnace?
A furnace heats air and a blower pushes it through ductwork to registers. A boiler heats water and a circulator pump sends it through pipes to baseboard, radiators or radiant floor tubing. Most pre-1960 North Country homes have boilers; most newer ranches and manufactured homes have furnaces.
Can I get natural gas in Ticonderoga?
Almost never. Utility gas does not serve most of Essex County, so a new furnace or boiler here runs on propane. Every RUUD model we install is available configured for LP.
Is a 96% boiler worth it over a standard one?
Usually, yes. Going from a 65% oil boiler to a 96% condensing propane boiler means roughly a third less fuel energy for the same heat. Actual savings depend on the price spread between oil and propane, which we work through with local numbers at the estimate.
Can a heat pump work alongside my existing boiler?
Yes, and it's our most common recommendation for boiler homes. The Mitsubishi system carries the heating load down to -13°F (-22°F on H2i Plus), the boiler covers the coldest nights, and you gain air conditioning. The heat pump portion qualifies for NYS Clean Heat rebates.
Do you repair oil boilers and oil furnaces?
Yes. We service oil equipment of all major brands, including nozzle, filter and electrode tune-ups and combustion adjustment.
How long does a boiler or furnace replacement take?
Most straight replacements are done in a day. Jobs that add venting, convert fuel, or change near-boiler piping or ductwork can run two days. We give you a timeline before work starts.
Rebates Available
North Country homeowners switching from oil, propane, wood or electric baseboard to a Mitsubishi cold-climate heat pump qualify for NYSEG or National Grid rebates through NYS Clean Heat, and Addison County, Vermont homes qualify through Efficiency Vermont plus utility bonuses. Rebate amounts change by program and tier — we tell you exactly what your home qualifies for at the free in-home estimate and handle the entire application for you.
★★★★★“We had Mark, Rolland, and Matt help get mini splits installed in our first home. They worked with us to make sure we had the right system for our home. This team provided amazing professionalism, customer service, and expertise!”
★★★★★“Been doing business with Gerry and his crew for close to 10 years and always totally satisfied with their product and customer service.”
★★★★★“This is our second Mitsubishi heat pump … to heat the 30x40 insulated metal building with a single head we put up but handles it great. … they had to order and install the system in a little over 2 weeks to get it done by 12/31 to qualify for a large rebate and they got it done.”
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No heat, no cooling, or a system acting up?
Local technicians based in Ticonderoga, NY. Call now or book a repair visit online — we service Mitsubishi heat pumps, furnaces, boilers, central AC and water heaters across the North Country.
A live person answers Mon–Fri 8–5. Nights, weekends and holidays our assistant takes your details and the on-call office calls you back. No heat right now? Start here.