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Heat pump vs furnace in Montezuma County, Colorado

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Which costs less to run in Montezuma County?

An outdoor air conditioning condenser unit with a top-mounted fan sits on a concrete pad beside a dark blue horizontal lap siding wall with an electrical disconnect box above it, photographed at night.

Heat pump

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

A beige residential furnace with louvered front panels stands in a basement corner with dark blue painted walls, connected to a galvanized metal flue pipe and flanked by vertical pipes, lit by a bare ceiling bulb.

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

    A heat pump runs long and low instead of blasting on and off. Rooms hold an even temperature all day.

    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.

  • Heats and cools in one system

    A heat pump runs the same way all year. It pulls heat into the house in winter and pushes it out in summer.

    A living room with a light gray sofa holding navy and pale blue pillows and a navy fringed throw, a rustic wood coffee table with a woven tray and hydrangeas in a white vase, a navy built-in bookshelf at left, and large windows showing green trees and flowering shrubs.

  • No gas line, nothing burning in the house

    There's no gas line to the unit and no flame anywhere in it. Carbon monoxide isn't part of the picture.

    A kitchen with navy cabinets, white marble-look counters and backsplash, a stainless range hood over an induction cooktop with a kettle, a wall oven with a striped towel, utensils, cutting boards, potted plants, a bowl of green apples and blue hydrangeas in the foreground.

Where does a furnace shine?

  • Strong, steady heat in hard cold

    Nights here average 19°F through December, January and February. A furnace burns gas to make heat, so the air coming out of your vents stays just as hot no matter how far the temperature drops outside.

    A two-story dark blue house with white trim, lit windows, a balcony and a stone chimney at dusk, with a shoveled path through deep snow lined by small lanterns, bare trees at left and a snow-covered evergreen at right.

  • Pairs with any central AC

    A furnace's blower and ducts carry cooled air too. Adding central AC uses the same system.

    A rectangular metal floor vent set in a hardwood floor near a window with a sheer white curtain, a navy wall, a round wooden table with a mug and white hydrangeas, and a light blue upholstered chair with a knit throw.

  • 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.

    A mudroom with a navy glass-paned door covered by a sheer white curtain, snow-dusted boots on a tiled floor, a woven rug, coats hanging on a rail, and a white bench with a wooden top holding a blue mug.

Winters here are long and cold enough to matter

Heat runs eight months a year in Montezuma County, October through May. That is the real backdrop for this decision. Whatever you install will spend far more of its life heating this house than cooling it.

The average overnight low in December, January and February is 19°F. That is not an occasional dip. Across the heating season, about 170 nights a year fall at or below freezing, more than half the nights the furnace or heat pump will run at all. Only about 4 nights a year reach 0°F.

A standard heat pump starts losing ground before it gets anywhere near that cold. Its heat output falls short of its rating once it is below 40°F outside, and it often needs backup heat once it drops below about 35°F. Nineteen degrees is under both marks. So is every single one of those 170 nights at or below freezing. A standard heat pump in this county is working below its best range most of the winter, not on rare bad nights.

That does not rule out a heat pump. ENERGY STAR's Cold Climate models are built and tested for exactly this: a Cold Climate unit has to produce at least 1.75 units of heat per unit of electricity at 5°F and hold on to at least 70 percent of its 47°F capacity at that temperature. A two winter field test of prototype cold-climate heat pumps in occupied homes backs this up. Even between 0°F and 35°F, backup heat covered only a small share of the load, and running on backup alone was rare even above 0°F. If a heat pump goes in here, it needs to be a model built for cold, not the standard version.

Snow-covered wooden porch and steps leading to a light blue front door on a dark navy board-and-batten cabin, with a lit lantern sconce, stacked firewood, a small barrel, and snowy conifers behind.

What it costs to run, and what's already in the walls

Run the two machines on Colorado's own fuel prices and the furnace is cheaper. A gas furnace at the federal minimum efficiency makes the same heat for $1.26 per 100,000 Btu against $1.99 for a heat pump at its federal minimum, no backup heat added in. That is a gas furnace costing at least 36 percent less to run, before you even get to the cold nights that push a standard heat pump into backup.

Cooling does not change that math much. The summer here is short and mild next to the winter: about two months of cooling against eight of heat, and only about 30 days a year reaching 90°F. A furnace does not cool at all, so if you want air conditioning you are pairing it with a separate central AC system. A heat pump does both jobs in one system, which matters more in a place where cooling runs half the year than in one where it barely runs two months.

Fuel already in the house is worth checking before you decide anything. Utility gas heats about two in five homes in this county and propane heats a little over one in four, both well ahead of the 16 percent of homes here that heat with electricity. If your house already has a gas line and a furnace, replacing it with another furnace is usually the simpler job. If you are on propane, compare its cost against electricity directly. Colorado propane ran $24.16 per million Btu in 2024 against $43.72 for electricity, so propane is still cheaper than running a standard heat pump on electric rates alone, though not by as much as natural gas is.

Put together, the case here is straightforward. A furnace costs less to run and handles the cold nights that make up most of this county's winter without needing a backup system. A heat pump can do the job too, but only a Cold Climate model, and even then you are paying more per Btu for the convenience of one system that both heats and cools. If your summers mattered more here, that trade would be worth it. With two months of cooling against eight of heat, for most houses in this county it is the furnace that matches the weather.

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

A dark blue wood-sided cabin entry with a light blue door, timber-framed porch roof, stacked firewood, and snow-covered railings and steps, with snowy conifers behind.

Common questions about heat pumps and furnaces

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

    It can, but how well depends on the heat pump and the night. A standard heat pump puts out less than its rated capacity below 40°F, and keeps only a fraction of that rating in the teens. A cold-climate model, certified to hold at least 70 percent of its capacity at 5°F, handles the four nights a year here that reach 0°F far better than a standard one, which is why the model matters more than the question of whether heat pumps work in cold climates at all.

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

    Most likely, yes. A standard heat pump's heating efficiency drops below about 35°F outside, and its heat output falls short of its rating below 40°F. The average overnight low here runs 19°F across December, January and February, and about 170 nights a year drop to freezing or below, so a standard heat pump here would be working below that 35°F mark on most winter nights.

  • 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 temperature where it stops keeping up, then the furnace takes over for the coldest nights. Here the overnight low averages 19°F in December, January and February, well below the 35°F mark where a standard heat pump leans on backup heat, so the furnace would still have real work to do.

  • What if my house heats with oil or propane?

    A heat pump replaces the heat, not the fuel line, so switching means running on electricity instead. Propane heats about 28.9% of homes in Montezuma County, and at Colorado's average prices propane runs $24.16 per million Btu against $43.72 for electricity. Whether a heat pump costs less to run than propane here depends on those two prices and the heat pump's output at your winter temperatures, not just which fuel you start from.

A man in a dark blue shirt and jeans kneels in a basement, working on white PVC pipes beside a furnace and sheet-metal ductwork, with an open tool bag on the floor nearby.

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