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Heat pump vs furnace in Boulder County, Colorado

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Which costs less to run in Boulder County?

An outdoor air conditioning condenser unit with a top-mounted fan grille sits on a concrete pad surrounded by gravel, beside a dark horizontal-lap sided wall with a small electrical disconnect box.

Heat pump

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

A beige sheet-metal furnace with a louvered lower panel stands on a concrete floor against a dark blue painted concrete block wall, with metal ductwork, a flue pipe, gas piping and an electrical box above and beside it.

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?

  • No gas line, nothing burning in the house

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

    A kitchen with navy lower cabinets, white marble-look countertops, white subway tile backsplash and a stainless range hood, with a blue kettle on the cooktop, a wooden cutting board, potted plants, a utensil crock, and a marble island holding a blue mug and a wooden bowl of citrus.

  • Steady, even comfort

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

    A dimly lit living room with a light blue armchair holding an open book and a navy knit throw, beside a lit table lamp, a navy built-in bookshelf, a fireplace with candles on the mantel, a snow-covered view through a window, and a light-colored dog curled asleep on a woven rug.

  • 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 navy sofa, light blue and cream cushions and a fringed throw, a wooden coffee table with a tray and potted greenery, blue built-in bookshelves, and a large window looking onto a garden with trees and flowering shrubs.

Where does a furnace shine?

  • Strong, steady heat in hard cold

    Winter nights here average 17°F, and a furnace puts out the same hot air no matter how cold it gets outside. You won't notice it straining on the coldest night of the year.

    A dark navy two-story house with white trim and lit windows at dusk, with deep snow banked around shrubs and a cleared brick walkway lined with glowing lanterns leading to the front door.

  • Runs on the gas most homes here already use

    Most homes in Boulder County already have gas line run to them. If yours is one of the 69.2%, a furnace just hooks into what's already there.

    A row of wood-sided houses along a snowy sidewalk, with concrete front steps, metal handrails, and an exterior gas meter with pipes mounted on a light blue clapboard wall.

  • Fast, strong heat on demand

    The air coming from the vents feels genuinely hot. That's welcome on a freezing morning.

    A mudroom with coats hung on hooks, a wooden bench with a mug and blanket, a floor vent, snow-dusted boots on stone tile, a jute rug, and a dark glass-paned door showing a snowy yard.

Can a heat pump keep up with winter here

Your heat runs ten months a year here, September through June, and the overnight low averages 17°F in December, January and February. That's the question to answer before anything else, because a heat pump that can't hold the house warm on the coldest nights isn't a real option no matter what it costs to run.

A standard heat pump starts losing ground below 40°F. Below about 35°F it typically needs backup heat to keep up. Boulder County sees about 165 nights a year at or below freezing, over half the nights across the heating season, and every one of them falls below both marks. The average winter night here isn't an edge case for a standard heat pump. It's the normal case.

That doesn't rule out a heat pump, but it rules out a standard one running alone. The fix is a cold-climate model paired with backup heat for the coldest stretches, usually gas or electric resistance. A two-winter field test of prototype cold-climate heat pumps in occupied homes found backup heat covered only a small share of the load between 0°F and 35°F, and running on backup alone was rare even above 0°F. That matters here because only about 7 nights a year drop to 0°F or below. The deep cold that would lean hardest on backup heat is rare. The ordinary cold, the kind in the 17°F to 32°F range, is what a cold-climate heat pump is built to handle on its own.

ENERGY STAR's Cold Climate listing sets the bar: at 5°F the unit has to still produce 1.75 units of heat per unit of electricity and hold onto at least 70 percent of its 47°F capacity. If you're looking at a heat pump for this county, that listing is what separates a unit that was tested for this cold from one that wasn't.

A dark blue two-story house with a white wraparound porch and snow-covered roof, surrounded by deep snow, snow-laden evergreen trees, and a white mailbox, with forested snowy mountains under a clear blue sky behind.

What it costs to run, and what that means for cooling

A gas furnace is cheaper to run here. At Colorado's average fuel prices, a furnace makes the same heat for $1.26 per 100,000 Btu against $1.99 for a heat pump, both built to the federal minimum. That's a real gap, and it holds for all ten months the heat is on.

It's also the number without backup heat added in. A heat pump that leans on electric resistance on the coldest nights will cost more to run than the $1.99 figure on those nights. A cold-climate unit built to stay efficient down into single digits closes that gap more than a standard one would.

Gas is also just what this county already runs on. Utility gas heats 69.2% of homes here, better than two in three. Electricity heats 24.8%, about one in four. A furnace means tying into the fuel most of your neighbors already use. A heat pump means running the house on electricity instead.

Where a heat pump pulls ahead is the other side of the year. A furnace only heats. It has nothing to do for the two months a year it isn't needed, and Boulder County barely runs an air conditioner at all. Days of 90°F or hotter come to about 30 a year, a small slice of the calendar, and the county has no real cooling season to speak of. A furnace answers none of that. A heat pump heats and cools with one system, so if the secondary question is how to handle those 30 hot days, a heat pump answers it as part of the same purchase instead of a separate one.

So the choice comes down to what you're weighing. If running cost and matching the fuel most of the county already uses matter most, a furnace is the cheaper, simpler answer. If you want one system that also covers the warm days, a cold-climate heat pump with backup heat is built for the cold here and gets you cooling in the same box, at a running cost above a furnace's.

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

Snow-covered wooden steps and railing lead to a light blue door on a dark navy board-and-batten cabin, with stacked firewood, a wall lantern, and snowy conifers behind.

Common questions about heat pumps and furnaces

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

    It can, but a standard one struggles here on the coldest nights. Below 40°F a standard heat pump puts out less than its rated capacity, and the average overnight low across December through February here is 17°F. An ENERGY STAR Cold Climate model is built to hold onto more of its capacity at 5°F, so the answer depends on which kind of heat pump you're looking at.

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

    Most houses here will want it. A standard heat pump often needs backup heat once it's below about 35°F outside, and about 165 nights a year here fall to freezing or below, well past that mark. Field testing on cold-climate models found backup heat only carried a small share of the load even between 0°F and 35°F, so the answer also depends on whether you're installing a standard or a cold-climate unit.

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

    Yes, and here that often makes sense. A heat pump handles the mild months on its own, and the furnace carries the house once it's below the 35°F mark where a standard heat pump leans on backup heat. Your furnace is already set up on the gas most homes here use, so it's a natural fit for that role rather than something you're adding just in case.

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

    No, a gas furnace costs less to run here. A furnace built to the federal minimum makes the same heat for $1.26 per 100,000 Btu against $1.99 for a heat pump, at Colorado's average fuel prices. That gap comes from the price of electricity against gas here, not from either machine running inefficiently.

A person in dark blue coveralls and black gloves connects gauge hoses to the brass service valves of a gray outdoor condenser unit on a concrete pad beside a blue-sided house, with wrenches and screwdrivers lying on the soil in the foreground.

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