Keep Above
Repair or replace the furnace
A furnace that won't fire — or keeps needing another visit — comes down to the same two-sider as any failing appliance: what a repair would cost against what a replacement would. Each side is counted over its own expected span to a cost per year, the only figure the two share. The years are your estimates, and no winner is declared.
Your estimate, not the page's
Not counted while this is $0
Your estimate, not the page's
Not counted while this is $0
Comes off the replacement
Put in what the fix would cost and what a replacement would cost. Nothing here is read from your accounts, and nothing is saved.
| Repairing | Replacing | |
|---|---|---|
| Up front | — | — |
| Running costs over its life | — | — |
| Total over its life | — | — |
| How long that covers | — | — |
| Cost a year | — | — |
| Cost a month | — | — |
This is one of the tools built into Keep Above
Keep Above is a budgeting app where you enter your bills and income and it works out the balance you need to keep — so you can see what's safe to spend. No bank connection, no ads on your data.
About this calculator
What counts as the repair cost for a furnace?
The full quote for this visit — call-out, the ignitor, blower motor, board or exchanger part that failed, and labour. The cost per year divides that whole amount by the extra years you think the fix would buy, so the complete figure is the one that fits the box.
What goes into running costs a year here?
Heating is where running costs can genuinely differ: where the old furnace and a replacement would burn noticeably different amounts of fuel or power across a year, that difference is a real yearly figure for the boxes. Where they'd run much the same, both can stay at $0.
What is the matching time?
The number of years the repair would have to carry the furnace for its cost per year to match the replacement's — a position in the arithmetic, nothing more. When running the old one already costs more each year than the whole replacement does all-up, no length of time would match, and the page says so.
What about selling or scrapping the old one?
Whatever the old furnace would fetch — scrap, or a trade-in where an installer offers one — comes off the replacement's cost. For many units that is close to nothing, and at $0 the box simply does nothing.