If you live in Winchester — particularly in the blocks bounded roughly by St. Lawrence Street, the hospital, and County Road 31 — there's a good chance your home is heated by propane. Look at your neighbour's house: that beige cylinder beside the foundation is the giveaway. Most of the post-war and 1960s residential subdivisions in this area never got connected to natural gas.
This isn't an accident, and it's not a temporary situation. Here's the why and the what-to-do-about-it.
Why the gas line stops where it stops
Enbridge's distribution mains in this part of SD&G generally follow the main provincial and county roads — Highway 31, County Road 38, and a few of the larger trunk lines. Bringing a gas service to a specific home requires a lateral connection from the main, which is paid for by either Enbridge (if the economics work for them) or the homeowner (if they don't).
For most of the residential side streets in central Winchester, the economics never worked. The lots were already built before gas service expansion was contemplated, the houses are relatively small, and running a new lateral 200-300 feet from the nearest main costs more than the projected gas usage will recoup over 20 years.
The practical result: if you're on propane today, you're going to stay on propane unless you decide to do something different.
Why this matters financially
Propane in our area runs around $1.10/litre delivered. A typical Winchester home of 1,500-2,000 sq ft uses somewhere between 2,500 and 3,500 litres per winter. That's $2,750 to $3,850 per year in heating fuel alone.
The same home heated by natural gas (if it were available) would cost roughly $1,200 to $1,700 per year. The difference — call it $1,500 to $2,200 annually — is the price you're paying for the misfortune of being on a street the gas line never reached.
Three options, ranked
We've talked to enough Winchester homeowners about this to know there are three viable paths.
Option 1: Stay on propane, optimize what you have
This is the right answer if your furnace is less than 10 years old, well-maintained, and you're not planning to be in the house for another decade.
Things to do:
- Make sure you're on a competitive propane supply contract (compare three providers every two years — rates drift apart)
- Upgrade to a high-efficiency furnace (95%+ AFUE) if yours is below that threshold
- Add a smart thermostat with setback scheduling
- Schedule annual maintenance
This doesn't change your fuel cost dramatically, but it does eliminate waste. You're still paying propane prices.
Option 2: Add a cold-climate heat pump alongside the propane furnace
This is a hybrid system. The heat pump does most of the heating for the year — typically October through May down to about -15°C — and the propane furnace takes over below that, plus provides backup if the heat pump ever has a problem.
Why this works well for hospital-area Winchester homes:
- Most of these homes already have ductwork, so the heat pump integrates with the existing air handler
- You keep the propane furnace as redundancy (a fail-safe for extreme cold and equipment failure)
- The heat pump provides free central AC in summer, which most of these older homes don't have currently
- Federal Greener Homes Grant and IESO rebates apply
Typical install: $9,000 to $13,000 before rebates, $5,500 to $8,500 net. Typical fuel savings: 60-70% reduction in winter propane consumption.
Option 3: Full heat pump conversion, decommission the propane
The boldest option — install a properly sized cold-climate heat pump as the only heating source, remove or repurpose the propane tank, and use an electric resistance backup coil for the few extreme-cold nights per winter.
This works for newer, well-insulated Winchester homes (post-1990 construction with good windows). It does not work for the older brick row houses near Main Street that have minimal wall insulation.
We assess this on a per-home basis. About 60% of Winchester homes we look at qualify for full conversion; the other 40% are better suited to Option 2.
What "best" actually depends on
Three factors decide which option fits you:
- Age of your current furnace. If it's 15+ years old, you're going to replace it within a few years anyway — that's the natural moment to convert to a heat pump system.
- Time horizon in the home. If you're moving in two years, the payback math doesn't favour a major investment. If you're staying ten, it does.
- Insulation envelope quality. A 1960s home with original windows and minimal wall insulation will benefit from insulation upgrades before a heat pump. We'll tell you honestly which order to do things in.
Why we keep writing about this
Because in Winchester specifically, the heat pump conversion math is among the strongest we see anywhere in our service area, and most homeowners don't know it. Propane prices have been brutal for three winters straight, and there's no scenario where they go back to where they were in 2018.
If you want to know whether your specific Winchester home is a good candidate, give us a call or request a free in-home assessment. We've done enough of these that we can usually tell you within 20 minutes on-site whether the math works for your situation.
And if you're elsewhere in our service area, the same analysis applies — see our Chesterville, Morrisburg, and Iroquois pages for area-specific notes.