Where I live in the south, we very rarely run our furnace.
9 months out of the year require an air conditioner and a good one at best.
The summer months bring extreme heat and humidity and the air conditioner is run heavily all day and night. During the three months that our furnace was needed, it somehow stopped working and we needed to call the local HVAC company to come service it. In the 10 years that we’ve owned this home, we’ve never had to call an HVAC technician to come look at our furnace. The HVAC technician arrived to look at our furnace at a reasonable time and got to work right away. When he was done servicing the furnace, he told us that there was nothing specific that caused the furnace to malfunction. Unfortunately, the furnace was over 10 years old and it had experienced it’s share of wear and tear. Although we didn’t run the furnace often, it was still old. According to our HVAC technician, a furnace not being used enough can sometimes cause faster wear on the equipment. This was surprising to us, so we asked the HVAC technician if there was a different heat source that was better for our location with extreme heat and rare cool temperatures. He suggested we install a heat pump because it circulated refrigerants to cool our home as well. The heat pump would get used all year long even though we weren’t just using it for heat.