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Heat pump vs furnace in Pitkin County, Colorado

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Which costs less to run in Pitkin County?

An outdoor air conditioning condenser unit on a concrete pad beside a dark blue horizontal-lap sided wall at night, with a wall-mounted disconnect box and insulated refrigerant lines running to the unit.

Heat pump

To heat your home here$1.99per 100,000 Btu

A beige sheet-metal furnace with ducting and a metal flue stands in a basement corner with dark blue painted walls, a concrete floor, and a bare hanging light bulb overhead.

Furnace

To heat your home here$1.26per 100,000 Btu

At Colorado's gas and electricity prices, a gas furnace makes the same heat as a heat pump for at least 36% less.

Btu stands for British thermal unit, the standard measure of heat energy.

Where does a heat pump shine?

  • Steady, even comfort

    It eases up and down with the weather. There are fewer swings between too warm and too cool.

    A dark blue armchair with an open book and gray fringed throw sits beside a lit fireplace and a lamp-topped side table, with a golden-colored dog curled asleep on a patterned rug and snowy trees beyond the window.

  • No gas line, nothing burning in the house

    A heat pump runs on electricity alone. Nothing burns inside the house.

    A stainless steel stovetop kettle sits on a black induction cooktop set into a white marble counter, with navy cabinets below, a white subway tile backsplash, a crock of wooden utensils, and blue hydrangeas in a glass vase near a window.

  • Heats and cools in one system

    Winter and summer are covered by the same outdoor unit. That's one machine to service instead of two.

    A living room with a beige sofa holding navy and light blue cushions and a fringed knit throw, beside a window overlooking a green garden, with a dark blue built-in bookshelf on the left and a wooden coffee table holding a mug, wooden tray and a vase of white flowers.

Where does a furnace shine?

  • Strong, steady heat in hard cold

    Winter nights here average 10°F, and a furnace burns gas to make heat, so it keeps putting out hot air no matter how far the temperature drops. You won't notice it working harder on the coldest night of the year.

    A blue two-story house with lit windows and a snow-covered roof at dusk, with a cleared paved walkway between deep snowbanks, a lamp post at left, and snow-laden conifers behind.

  • Runs on the gas most homes here already use

    Half the homes in Pitkin County already heat with gas, so the line is probably run to your house already. A furnace just taps into that instead of asking you to set up something new.

    A row of attached townhouses with brick and painted facades, front stoops with black metal railings, and exterior gas meters, beside a sidewalk with patchy snow and bare trees.

  • Fast, strong heat on demand

    Turn the heat up and the furnace answers right away. There's no long wait for the house to catch up.

    An entryway with a navy door, sheer curtain, coats and a tote bag on hooks, a wooden bench with cushion and steaming mug, wicker baskets beneath, a blue fringed throw, and snow-dusted boots on a dark rug over tile.

What the cold here does to a heat pump

Winters in Pitkin County are the whole question. The overnight low averages 10°F across December, January and February, and it falls to freezing or below on about 220 nights a year, over half the nights in the year. A standard heat pump starts losing ground before it even gets that cold. Below 40°F its heat output falls short of its rating. Below about 35°F it often needs backup heat to keep up. Ten degrees is under both marks, and so is every one of those 220 nights.

That doesn't mean a heat pump won't heat the house. It means the machine doing the work most nights is running below the number on its spec sheet, with backup heat carrying part of the load. About 25 nights a year drop to 0°F or below, and a standard heat pump built to the federal minimum is not the machine that handles those well. A unit carrying the ENERGY STAR Cold Climate mark is built for this: it has to deliver 1.75 units of heat for every unit of electricity at 5°F and hold onto 70 percent of its 47°F capacity at that temperature, checked by outside testing, not the manufacturer's own numbers. If a heat pump is on the table here, that's the mark to look for, not just the word "heat pump" on the label.

Field tests back this up. Watched over two winters in occupied homes, cold-climate heat pumps covered the load down to 0°F with backup heat filling in only a small share of it, and running on backup alone was rare even above 0°F. That is the cold-climate version doing the job. A standard, federal-minimum heat pump was not the one being tested.

A two-story navy blue house with light blue trim, a covered front porch and snow-covered roof, flanked by snowy conifers with a snow-covered mountain ridge behind it under a clear blue sky.

What it costs to run, and what that means for your choice

Run the two side by side at Colorado's own fuel prices and the furnace costs less to operate: $1.26 per 100,000 Btu against $1.99 for the heat pump, so the furnace runs for at least 36 percent less. That gap is with the heat pump given credit for its full seasonal rating and nothing added for the backup heat it is likely to lean on during your coldest nights, so on the nights that matter most here, the real gap runs wider than the number shows.

Gas is also just what more houses in this county run on. Half the homes here heat with utility gas, against about two in five on electricity, and that split roughly matches the rest of Colorado. If your house already has a gas line in, a furnace uses infrastructure that's already paid for and already common here.

A heat pump still has a real case. It cools the house too, in one system, with nothing burning indoors, and it delivers heat evenly rather than in the bursts a furnace cycles through. Pitkin County has no real cooling season, so that second system a heat pump replaces is mostly idle here anyway, which narrows the advantage to the comfort and the no-flame part of the case. If what you want is the lowest cost to heat this house through a winter that averages 10°F overnight, the furnace is the cheaper machine to run, built for the cold you actually get. If you want a single system for heat and the rare warm stretch, and you're buying a cold-climate heat pump rather than a standard one, it can do the job here. A standard heat pump, bought for its upfront price alone, is the one choice the facts don't support.

Sources: NOAA nClimDiv · NOAA 1991–2020 seasonal normals · EIA SEDS 2024 · 10 CFR 430.32 · Census ACS 2020–2024 · PNNL Building America guide · PNNL-37127 field study · ENERGY STAR product criteria

A small navy-blue house with white trim, a covered porch and light blue front door, with a cleared paved walkway through deep snow, pine trees on either side and snow-covered mountains under a clear blue sky.

Common questions about heat pumps and furnaces

  • Can a heat pump heat a house through a Colorado winter?

    Yes, but check what kind before you count on it. A standard heat pump's output falls short of its rating once it's below 40°F outside, and the overnight low here averages 10°F in December, January and February. A heat pump built to the ENERGY STAR Cold Climate spec is tested to hold at least 70 percent of its capacity at 5°F, so that distinction matters more here than in most places.

  • Do I need backup heat with a heat pump here?

    Most homeowners install it, and the numbers here explain why. A standard heat pump often needs backup heat once it's below about 35°F outside, and the overnight low here averages 10°F across the winter months, with about 220 nights a year at or below freezing. Field testing on cold-climate models found backup heat covered only a small share of total heat between 0°F and 35°F, so the size of that backup system still depends on the heat pump behind it.

  • Can I keep my furnace and add a heat pump?

    Yes, that pairing is called a dual fuel system. The heat pump carries the heat down to the point where its output or efficiency drops off, then the furnace takes over for the coldest stretches. Here that means the furnace is doing real work on a lot of nights: about 220 nights a year fall to freezing or below, over half the year.

  • Is a heat pump cheaper to run than a furnace in Pitkin County?

    No, a furnace costs less to run here. A gas furnace makes the same heat for $1.26 per 100,000 Btu against $1.99 for a heat pump, both at Colorado's average fuel prices. Gas already heats half the homes in Pitkin County, close to the statewide share, while electricity heats about two in five.

A person's arm in a light blue shirt reaches to adjust a round thermostat on a dark blue wall above a light switch plate, with a tool bag in the foreground and a living room visible through a doorway.

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