How to Read a Furnace Quote in Canada: What's Included, What's Missing, and What to Ask Before You Sign

A good equipment line names things. A weak one names a brand.

What you want to see is the manufacturer, the full model number of every component being installed, the input and output capacity in BTU per hour, the efficiency rating, and — where cooling is part of the package — the model numbers of the outdoor unit and the indoor coil as well. That last point is not pedantry. Ratings in this industry are published for matched sets of components, not for individual boxes, and the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute is explicit that a certified reference number belongs to a specific combination of outdoor unit, indoor coil and furnace. The same body draws a distinction worth knowing: equipment "rated in accordance with" a standard and equipment that is "AHRI Certified" are two different claims, and a quote may use language that blurs them.

The practical version of this problem shows up when a quote proposes new equipment on top of an existing indoor coil. Natural Resources Canada's guidance on central air conditioners is unambiguous: "always match the coil to the unit when replacing an existing central air conditioning unit. If the coil is not replaced, the new unit will not operate at its rated efficiency." You can absolutely choose to keep an existing coil for budget reasons. What you cannot do is keep it and also receive the performance printed on the quote, and a contractor should be telling you that rather than letting the rating imply otherwise.

One more small thing that catches Canadian buyers. If a heat pump appears anywhere in your package, any HSPF2 figure lifted from a manufacturer's American specification sheet describes a milder climate region than the one Canada regulates against. Ask whether the number on your page is the Canadian rating.

For a closer look at how to line up competing bids on these specifications, we have a companion piece on comparing HVAC installation estimates.

It is tempting to think of a furnace purchase as buying a box, with the labour as the unavoidable cost of getting it into your basement. The evidence points firmly the other way.

Research summarized by the United States Department of Energy's Building America Solution Center found that between 70 and 90 percent of installed systems carry at least one performance-compromising fault traceable to improper installation or inadequate maintenance, rising to nearly all of them once duct leakage is counted. That is an American figure and Canadian practice may differ, but the mechanism is not country-specific: airflow that was never measured and a refrigerant charge that was never verified will cost you performance in Kingston exactly as they would in Kansas.

The remedy has a name, and it is commissioning — a nitrogen pressure test, a vacuum decay test, refrigerant charge verification, controls verification and airflow measurement, performed after the equipment is in and documented before the technician leaves. In Ontario this is not an optional extra dressed up as a premium service. Commissioning sits inside the legal definition of the trade: Skilled Trades Ontario's description of the residential air conditioning systems mechanic states that the tradesperson "tests, verifies, commissions, and decommissions" the systems they install.

Every claim a contractor makes about their credentials can be checked, for free, from your kitchen table. Very few homeowners do it, largely because nobody tells them the registries exist.

In Ontario, gas work runs through the Technical Standards and Safety Authority, which states that registered fuels contractors "are the only businesses that are legally authorized to do fuels related work" in the province. Its public contractor registry lets you search by company name or authorization number, and authorization numbers appear in a recognizable form beginning with FS-R. Two details are worth carrying with you: the registry is refreshed at the beginning of each month, so a very recent registration may not yet appear, and the authority is careful to note that a listing "does not constitute an endorsement or referral." It confirms a licence, not a standard of workmanship.

The registry also filters by fuel type, and the categories include chimney liner as something distinct from natural gas. This is the sleeper finding in the whole exercise. A contractor can be entirely legitimate for the furnace and hold no authorization at all for the liner that the same job legally requires, which is why a quote may need to name a second trade — and why the sub-trades line in your contract matters more here than almost anywhere else.

Cooling work brings a second layer. Ontario requires an Ozone Depletion Prevention certificate to purchase and handle refrigerants, valid for five years, but the province states plainly on its page about handling refrigerants that the card is not a trade licence: "You cannot work on or fix refrigeration equipment with only an ODP certificate card." A Certificate of Qualification in the relevant trade is a separate credential. If your quote bundles a furnace with an air conditioner, both are in play.

Outside Ontario the institutions change but the logic does not. Quebec's approach is arguably the most informative in the country, because the Régie du bâtiment du Québec not only confirms that a licence "provides you with a financial guarantee in the event of litigation" but publishes, in its public repertory, whether a contractor has outstanding or paid claims against them. No other Canadian jurisdiction surfaces that. Quebec heating work also runs through a second body, the Corporation des maîtres mécaniciens en tuyauterie du Québec, so there are two credentials to confirm rather than one.

The prairie provinces run the same delegated-regulator model. In Saskatchewan, the Technical Safety Authority licenses gas fitters and contractors, and the contractor is the party required to submit an installation permit before work begins.

The habit of checking credentials before signing applies well beyond heating, and our playbook for hiring a roofer in Canada uses the same approach on a different trade.

Almost every article you will read on this subject tells you that a quote without a permit charge is a red flag. In Canada, that advice can send you in the wrong direction.

The City of Toronto publishes a list of projects that do not require a building permit, and it includes, in plain language, replacing a furnace or boiler in a house, along with adding a cooling system. Installing or modifying heating systems more broadly does require one, and the city is careful to say its list is not exhaustive and that the owner remains ultimately responsible for compliance. But a like-for-like furnace swap in Toronto with no building-permit line on the quote is not evidence of a corner being cut.

The important correction is that a building permit is only one of the instruments involved, and it is often not the relevant one. Gas work carries its own authorization, and so does electrical work. British Columbia makes this unusually clear: Technical Safety BC advises that most heating installations require an electrical permit and a licensed electrical contractor, and separately that "if you are modifying or removing a natural gas furnace or boiler, you will need a gas permit." Removing your old furnace is itself regulated and separately permitted there, which means a British Columbia quote silent on decommissioning has an unpriced, licensed scope item buried in it.

Alberta arranges things differently again. Permits are issued not by the province directly but by municipalities accredited under the Safety Codes Act or by the provincial safety codes authority, with gas and electrical as separate instruments carrying separate fees and inspections. Either the contractor or the homeowner may obtain them, which is precisely why your contract needs to say which.

As for what a permit should cost, hard published figures are scarce, but New Brunswick offers one useful benchmark: its gas installation permit schedule charges $65 for the replacement or addition of an appliance up to 400,000 BTU, against $125 for a new installation. A residential furnace replacement sits in the lower tier. That is one province's schedule rather than a national rule, but it establishes the order of magnitude — a permit is a small, checkable line, and a large one deserves a question.

There is a second rule here that matters enormously in a heating emergency, and very few homeowners know it exists. Furnaces and air conditioners head Ontario's list of products that cannot be offered or sold at your home unless you initiated the transaction. Crucially, the province's guidance on door-to-door sales and home service contracts states that if you called for a repair, maintenance or an assessment, "the business cannot enter into a new contract with you. They will only be able to leave information about the products and services they offer." A contract signed as a result of restricted door-to-door marketing is void, you may keep the goods without obligation, and the business must reimburse third-party charges such as removal fees. The exceptions are real and worth knowing — you can invite a business specifically to contract with you, and an existing supplier may offer a restricted product if it discloses that intention before the visit and you agree to hear it — but the default protects you at exactly the moment you are least able to think clearly.

Four provinces now restrict this kind of selling for heating equipment, and British Columbia's version is the newest and the most far-reaching. Since 1 August 2026, section 20.1 of its consumer protection legislation provides that a supplier "must not offer for sale by direct sales contract, or enter into a direct sales contract with a consumer for the supply of" a furnace, an air conditioner, a water heater and several related items, with heat pumps added by regulation. The British Columbia statute goes further than the others by forbidding the supplier to extend or arrange credit in respect of such a contract at all, and by making both the contract and any associated credit agreement non-binding on the consumer. Manitoba and Quebec have comparable prohibitions, with Quebec extending the cancellation window to a full year. Alberta has no product-specific rule of this kind at all.

The payment schedule is a term of your contract, not an administrative afterthought, and it is where a surprising amount of your protection lives.

Ontario's guidance for home renovations and repairs sets out what a contract must contain, and the list reads like a checklist for exactly this job: the contractor's name and contact information, a thorough description of the work and materials, a clear description of any warranties, the total cost and terms of payment, a work schedule with start and completion dates, a payment schedule including the deposit amount, responsibility for clean-up, and — the line that matters most on a furnace job — all sub-trades that will be contracted out and who will pay for them. The same guidance recommends keeping down payments to no more than ten percent, advises never paying in full before the work is done, and states the principle that should govern how you read your quote: if something is not written in your contract, you may not get it.

That page also carries the single most actionable sentence in this article, and it concerns the estimate. Under Ontario law the final price cannot exceed the original estimate by more than ten percent unless you have agreed to new work or a new price — but the protection depends on something you have to do. The estimate must be incorporated into the contract. An estimate that sits outside the agreement, as a separate quotation you were emailed and never referenced again, carries no ceiling at all.

Provincial variation here is sharper than most people expect, and it does not run the way you would guess. Alberta caps the same overrun at ten percent to a maximum of one hundred dollars, which on a nine-thousand-dollar furnace job is dramatically tighter than Ontario's percentage. Quebec's fixed-price rule holds the agreed price even where the terms of performance change. Saskatchewan uses a qualitative test rather than a number, asking whether the final charge is substantially higher than the estimate.

Saskatchewan does, however, publish the clearest deposit rule in the country. Its Financial and Consumer Affairs Authority states that direct sellers of home renovation products or services "are prohibited from requiring a consumer to pay more than 15 per cent of the total contract price" until the ten-day cancellation period has expired. British Columbia caps a direct sales contract down payment at the lesser of one hundred dollars or ten percent. Quebec goes furthest, barring an itinerant merchant from taking any payment — or performing the installation — before the cancellation period ends. Ontario and Alberta have no statutory ceiling on home services, which makes Ontario's ten-percent recommendation the practical benchmark there.

If your quote promises a rebate, the sequence in which things happen matters more than the amount.

Ontario's Home Renovation Savings Program, delivered by Enbridge Gas and the Independent Electricity System Operator, states the rule without ambiguity on its rebate pages: "Pre-approval is mandatory. Installations done before approval are not eligible for rebates." Only participating contractors may offer the rebate, and as of early September 2026 the program also carries a notice that contractor registrations are paused and no new applications are being accepted.

Read those two facts together and a practical consequence falls out that most quotes will not spell out for you. Your choice of contractor and your eligibility for the rebate are not two separate decisions — they are one decision. A contractor who is not currently on the participating list cannot simply join in order to unlock your rebate, and an installation booked before written pre-approval arrives has already forfeited it, however sincerely it was promised at the kitchen table. If a rebate is material to whether you can afford this project, confirm the pre-approval date in writing before you agree to an installation date.

It is also worth knowing that verifying your own eligibility is formally your responsibility rather than your contractor's, so a promise made verbally during a sales visit is not something you can later rely on.

Programs differ considerably across the country and change often, which is why we maintain a separate province-by-province breakdown of heat pump rebates in Canada alongside this guide.

Two things can go wrong after the technician has driven away, and both are quiet enough that homeowners typically discover them years later.

The first is warranty registration. Manufacturers commonly condition their longer parts coverage on registering the equipment within a short window after installation — sixty days for several major brands, ninety for others — and missing that window typically drops parts coverage from ten years to five. Neither tier generally covers labour, which makes your contractor's own labour warranty a separate and negotiable term. One manufacturer's guidance is refreshingly blunt on where responsibility sits, advising owners to never assume the dealer is registering the product. Treat these as common industry practice to confirm against the specific brand on your quote rather than as universal rules, and note that Quebec residents are exempt from the registration condition under at least two major manufacturers' terms.

Warranty documents can also contain conditions about who installs the equipment. Carrier's published consumer warranty terms state that the product "must be installed properly and by a licensed HVAC technician" — which turns the credential check earlier in this guide from a matter of prudence into a matter of coverage.

The second issue reaches further into the future, and it concerns your home's title. Where heating equipment is leased or financed rather than purchased outright, the arrangement has historically sometimes been registered against the property. Ontario changed this: on 6 June 2024 the Homeowner Protection Act banned the registration of notices of security interest for consumer goods, which the province defines as goods installed in a home for personal or household purposes, expressly including furnaces. It also deemed existing consumer registrations expired, and the province's page on notices of security interest notes that while they may still appear on title documents, "the land is not affected."

Two caveats travel with that. The ban does not cancel an existing contract, does not eliminate the underlying security interest, and does not prevent a supplier from pursuing remedies or, in some circumstances, repossessing the equipment. And it is an Ontario rule — the equivalent registration provisions in British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba remain intact. If your quote involves a lease or a financing arrangement rather than an outright purchase, ask directly whether anything will be registered against your property, and get the answer in writing.