Heating in Edmonton: furnaces, boilers, gas permits and contractors

Quick answer: Edmonton is overwhelmingly a furnace city: 79% of households heat with a forced-air furnace and 8% with a boiler, according to Statistics Canada’s 2023 survey. A gas permit is required under Alberta’s Safety Codes Act to install or alter a furnace or other gas equipment, and the City charges $120 plus a $4.80 safety codes fee for most standalone residential permits in 2026. The City’s Clean Energy Improvement Program is near capacity, with a waitlist.

If you have a boiler in Edmonton, you are probably in an older house in a central neighbourhood, a home with in-floor heating, or an apartment building. This guide covers what Edmonton homes actually use, the City’s gas and heating permits, the heat standards for rented homes and the financing available in 2026.

What Edmonton homes actually use

Main heating system (2023)	Edmonton	Alberta	Canada
Forced-air furnace	79%	78%	46%
Boiler with hot water or steam radiators	8%	7%	7%
Electric baseboard heaters	Too unreliable to publish	3%*	23%

*Use with caution (Statistics Canada). Natural gas is the main heating energy for 74% of Edmonton households. For the difference between the systems, see boiler or furnace.

Edmonton gas and heating permits

The City of Edmonton issues permits under the provincial Safety Codes Act. Its residential pages say:

Rule	What the City says
Gas permit	Required when installing, altering or relocating gas equipment such as furnaces, water heaters, meters, piping, fireplaces and space heaters
Heating and ventilating permit	Required under the Safety Codes Permit Bylaw when installing, repairing or altering any heating, ventilation or air conditioning
New gas lines	A homeowner may not install a new gas line; only a qualified contractor may do the work
Homeowner gas permits	Only for renovations or re-testing of an existing gas system in a single detached house the homeowner owns, lives in and works on themselves
Furnace replacement	Needs a separate details form with the permit application
Fee	$120 plus a $4.80 safety codes fee for residential permits issued outside a “House Combo Permit”, until 31 December 2026

After the work reaches the right stage, you or your contractor must ask for a safety codes inspection. Ask the contractor to include both the gas permit and, where needed, the heating permit in the quote.

Heat standards for rented homes

Alberta’s Minimum Housing and Health Standards, enforced by Alberta Health Services, require a rented home’s heating to be able to reach 22°C in all living spaces and to keep at least 16°C in very cold weather (Centre for Public Legal Education Alberta summary). Tenants can call 811 to reach an inspector. See also boiler problems in a rented home.

Financing in 2026

Edmonton’s Clean Energy Improvement Program (CEIP) finances between $3,000 and $50,000 of upgrades, repaid through the property tax bill over up to 20 years at a fixed rate of 6%. The City says the programme is nearing capacity and new pre-qualification submissions go on a waitlist, handled first come, first served. It also says high-efficiency gas furnaces are not eligible in Edmonton unless combined with a heat pump. We did not find a current City or Alberta-wide rebate for a new boiler.

Federal money: what has closed

Two federal schemes that older articles still mention are no longer available to new applicants. The Canada Greener Homes Grant closed earlier, and CMHC says the Canada Greener Homes Loan portal has been closed to new applications since 2 October 2025. The replacement, the Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program, offers no-cost retrofits such as insulation and heat pumps to low-to-median-income homeowners and tenants, but only through participating provinces. Alberta is not currently listed as a participating province.

Typical prices

We have not found an Edmonton-specific boiler price survey. A Calgary contractor, Comfort Union, puts a new boiler in Calgary at $8,000–$20,000, which is the nearest local benchmark we found, and HomeStars puts a natural gas furnace at $4,000–$6,750 and an air-source heat pump at $6,000–$12,000 nationally. All figures were checked in September 2026; see our Canada boiler costs guide.

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We are a comparison and referral service, not a heating engineer. We do not guarantee a quote, a price or a response time. Anyone working on gas appliances in the UK must be on the Gas Safe Register; check the engineer's ID card before work starts.

How to choose a heating contractor in Edmonton

Ask who pulls the gas permit and for the gasfitter’s Alberta certificate.
Get the inspection booked and the permit closed.
For CEIP, check the waitlist position before you commit and use an eligible contractor.
Compare like for like. See comparing boiler quotes like for like and repair or replace your boiler.

Boiler and heating firms in Edmonton

These businesses appear in public business listings for Edmonton, and each has its own website describing boiler, hydronic or heating work. We have not checked their work, prices, licences or insurance, and they have not paid to appear. Ask for the gasfitter’s certificate and the permit number yourself.