In my house, the heater basically stops working every year and my dad put some like “bandaid” solution over it with manipulating some wiring, idk what they do. But like, every year, the heater would stop working like several times throughout the winter and constanly needs to be fixed. But this year it just stopped working completely. Like I google it and those heaters are like $2000 to $2500 brand new, so yea, I get it, parents want to save money, but like, having the heat stop few times a year feels like living in a developing country tbh 😓. So now I’m basically just relying on those portable heater things to stay warm, and my cat is feeling too cold so she’s staying in bedrooms most of the time because its where the portable heaters are at, when she normally just wanders the entire house.
My house has two furnaces: one gas (methane, or city gas) which I only use for water heating (showers, etc) and one wood pellet. They both warm up water in the heaters circuit, and can be used at the same way.
The gas one is more expensive to run (400€/month), but require zero maintenance, except some predictive maintenance like cleaning filters once a year in summertime.
The wood pellet one is way cheaper to operate (1.5k€/year, for 9 months of operation) but require weekly cleaning and daily fuel loading. Also for this one once a year maintenance is mandatory, deep cleaning, replacing some perishable parts and so on.
So, yes, every furnace require periodical maintenance to operate properly, and should work just fine for 10 or even 20 years if you are careful and do the proper maintenance.