Colorado Heating Pros

Heat pump vs furnace in Park County, Colorado

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Which costs less to run in Park County?

A gray outdoor condenser unit with a top-mounted fan grille sits on a concrete pad against dark blue lap siding, with a conduit running to a small wall-mounted disconnect box, photographed at night.

Heat pump

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

A beige gas furnace with louvered panels stands in a dark basement corner beside a metal flue pipe, ductwork, and painted block walls, 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 dimly lit living room with a lit stone fireplace, a navy armchair holding an open book, a cushion and gray fringed throw, a brass table lamp and mug on a side table, and a golden retriever sleeping 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 beige sofa holding light blue and navy pillows and a blue fringed throw, a wooden coffee table with a woven tray and potted plant, a navy built-in bookcase with books, baskets and plants, a table lamp, and a large window showing green trees and white flowering shrubs.

  • No gas line, nothing burning in the house

    It moves heat instead of making it from fire. That means no combustion, no flue and no gas bill for heat.

    A kitchen with a navy blue island topped by a white stone counter holding a black induction cooktop, a white kettle, green apples on a wooden tray and a blue striped towel, with pale grey cabinets, a window, a potted plant and a wooden stool nearby.

Where does a furnace shine?

  • Strong, steady heat in hard cold

    Nights here average 9°F through December, January and February. A furnace burns gas to make heat, so it keeps putting out full, hot air no matter how far the temperature drops outside.

    A dark blue two-story house with a white-trimmed covered porch at dusk, with lit windows, a small lit tree, lanterns along a shoveled walkway, and deep snow on the roof and yard.

  • Pairs with any central AC

    Most central air systems are built around a furnace. The two share the blower, the ducts and the thermostat.

    A bronze-toned floor register vent set in a hardwood floor near a white baseboard, with a sheer curtain lifting above it, a woven jute rug in the foreground and a blue throw at right.

  • 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 an open dark blue door showing snow outside, snow-covered boots on a slate tile floor, a wooden bench with a steaming enamel mug, hanging coats and a plaid scarf, and a sheer white curtain by a window.

Cold is the whole question here

Winters here settle the question before cost does. The overnight low averages 9°F across December, January and February, and that's not a cold snap, that's the season. About 230 nights a year drop to freezing or below, better than half the nights the heat runs. A standard heat pump starts losing ground before it even gets that cold. Below 40°F it puts out less heat than its rating says. Below about 35°F it usually needs backup heat to keep up. Your average winter night here sits at 9°F, well past both of those marks, and every single one of those 230 freezing nights is past them too.

That doesn't rule out a heat pump. It rules out a standard one running alone. A unit built to the ENERGY STAR Cold Climate spec is tested to still make 1.75 units of heat for every unit of electricity it uses at 5°F, and to hold onto most of its capacity at that temperature. Field tests back this up: in occupied homes running prototype cold-climate heat pumps over two winters, backup heat covered only a small share of the load between 0°F and 35°F, and the units rarely leaned on backup alone even above 0°F. So the real choice in Park County isn't heat pump against furnace in the abstract. It's a cold-climate heat pump against a furnace, because anything less is fighting the thermometer here most of the winter.

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 keep the heat on

Run the numbers at Colorado's own prices and the furnace wins on cost. A heat pump built to the federal minimum makes 100,000 Btu of heat here for $1.99. A gas furnace makes the same heat for $1.26. That's natural gas at $10.09 per million Btu against electricity at $43.72, and the gap holds even before you add anything for backup heat on the coldest nights, which the heat pump figure doesn't include. A gas furnace is the cheaper machine to run in this county, by a wide enough margin that it is worth saying plainly.

The furnace has another point in its favor here: it's what the county already runs on. Utility gas heats 43.3% of homes in Park County and propane heats another 30.2%, together better than seven in ten houses. Electricity heats only 15%. If your house already has a gas line, a furnace is the machine built for the fuel already running to it. A heat pump means paying the higher electric rate for most of the winter's heat, and it only holds up through this county's cold if it carries the cold-climate rating built and tested for nights like these. Either way, this isn't a house with a cooling season to weigh against that cost. No month here runs warm enough to call for air conditioning, so the furnace's edge is strength in the cold, not a tradeoff against summer.

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

A navy blue single-family house with white trim and a snow-covered roof, flanked by snowy conifers, with a steep snow-covered mountain and clear blue sky behind it.

Common questions about heat pumps and furnaces

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

    It can, but not on its own in most houses. A heat pump built to the cold climate standard still has to make 1.75 units of heat per unit of electricity at 5°F and hold 70 percent of its warm-weather capacity there, which is well above what a standard heat pump does. Without that rating, or without backup heat to cover the gap, a heat pump will fall behind on the coldest nights here.

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

    Most houses here will need it. Nights average 9°F in December, January and February, and a standard heat pump's output falls short of its rating once it's below 40°F outside and often needs backup below about 35°F. That covers nearly every night the heat runs here, not just the cold snaps.

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

    Yes, and it's a common setup. The furnace handles the nights that drop toward 9°F or below, while the heat pump covers milder weather and adds cooling, though cooling adds little here since no month calls for it. The two share the ductwork, so the furnace stays as the backup heat a cold climate like this one asks for.

  • What if my house heats with oil or propane?

    Propane heats close to one in three houses here, more than gas or electric alone outside the gas-heated majority. Propane ran $24.16 per million Btu in 2024, well above the $10.09 for natural gas, so a house on propane sees a bigger gap in running cost between a furnace and a heat pump than the $1.26 versus $1.99 figures above show. Oil isn't common enough here to have local numbers to point to.

A man in a blue shirt and cap kneels in a basement working on ductwork above a gray furnace, with an open tool bag on the floor beside him and a staircase and water heater in the background.

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