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Heat pump vs furnace in Morgan County, Colorado

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Which costs less to run in Morgan County?

An outdoor condenser unit on a concrete pad at night beside a dark horizontal-lap sided wall, with a wall-mounted disconnect box and refrigerant line above it, lit from overhead.

Heat pump

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

A beige gas furnace standing on a concrete basement floor against a dark blue wall, with galvanized metal flue ductwork above it and gas piping and a flexible conduit at its right side.

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?

  • Heats and cools in one system

    One machine handles the heat in winter and the cooling in summer. There's no second system to buy or keep up.

    Living room with a white-framed sash window overlooking a green garden, a potted plant and books on a wooden bench below, a navy built-in bookcase at left, and a pale sofa with a navy knit throw and blue table lamp at right.

  • Steady, even comfort

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

    A golden retriever sleeps on a woven rug in a living room with a navy plaid armchair holding an open book and a gray fringed throw, beside a dark fireplace, potted plants, a lit table lamp and mug, and a frosted window at night.

  • 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 navy blue cabinets, white marble-look counters and backsplash, a stainless steel kettle on a black cooktop under a range hood, a potted plant, bowl of lemons, wooden utensils and cutting board, and a light blue mug on a foreground island beside a sink.

Where does a furnace shine?

  • Strong, steady heat in hard cold

    Winter nights here average 16°F, and that's the kind of cold where a furnace just keeps putting out hot air without slowing down. You won't notice it working harder, the heat stays steady no matter how far the temperature drops.

    A dark navy two-story house with white trim, lit windows, a covered porch and brick chimney, surrounded by deep snow with a cleared paved walkway leading to the front steps at dusk.

  • Runs on the gas most homes here already use

    More than half the homes in Morgan County already heat with gas. If yours is one of them, the line is already run, and a gas furnace just uses what's there.

    A row of wood-sided houses with covered porches, stone columns and an exterior gas meter along a snow-covered street, with a person in dark clothing walking on the sidewalk in the distance.

  • Proven, simple, easy to get serviced

    The design is simple and well understood. That keeps service calls short.

    A gloved hand holds a white pleated air filter in front of a furnace and ductwork, with shelving holding a storage bin, watering can, mug, folded towels and a basket in the background.

What the cold here does to a heat pump

Your winter low here averages 16°F, and that matters more than the running-cost numbers above. A standard heat pump starts losing heating capacity below 40°F, and below about 35°F it usually needs backup heat to keep up. Here, every one of the roughly 170 nights a year at or below freezing falls under both marks. That's not a cold snap a few times a winter. That's most of the heating season.

On top of that, about 11 nights a year drop to 0°F or below. A standard heat pump still makes some heat down there, but only a fraction of what it's rated for, which is exactly when your house needs the most. That gap gets filled by backup heat, usually electric resistance, and electric resistance heat is expensive to run.

There's a real exception. A heat pump built to the ENERGY STAR Cold Climate standard has to prove it still makes 1.75 units of heat for every unit of electricity at 5°F, and holds onto at least 70 percent of its warm-weather capacity at that temperature. Field tests of these units in occupied homes found backup heat carried 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 changes the math in this county. A standard heat pump and a cold-climate one are not the same purchase here.

A dark navy one-and-a-half-story house with a white-trimmed covered porch, light blue door and porch railings, surrounded by deep snow with a shoveled path leading to the front steps and vehicles parked at right.

Running cost and the rest of the year

Even before backup heat is added in, a gas furnace is cheaper to run here: $1.26 per 100,000 Btu against $1.99 for a heat pump, both at Colorado's average fuel prices. That gap is the heat pump at its best case, with nothing added for the backup heat it will actually use on those 170 nights below freezing. The real difference in your bills is wider than the band above shows.

Heat is also the main job in this county. Heating runs about eight months a year here, October through May, while cooling runs about three, June through August, and only about 50 days a year reach 90°F. A furnace does nothing for you in summer. A heat pump cools your house for those three months the same way it heats it the other eight, which is one system instead of two.

Gas is already the common choice here. Utility gas and propane together heat about two out of three homes in Morgan County, and gas is cheaper to run than electricity at today's prices. If your house already has a gas line, a furnace keeps you on the fuel your neighbors use and keeps the lower running cost. If it doesn't, or if you want cooling and heating from one piece of equipment, a cold-climate heat pump is built for a winter like this one. A standard heat pump, the kind the $1.99 figure assumes, is not.

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

A two-story dark blue house with a covered front porch, light blue door and railing, surrounded by deep snow, with a shoveled path to the street and a snow-covered car parked beside it.

Common questions about heat pumps and furnaces

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

    Yes, a cold climate heat pump can do this, and field testing backs it up. In a two winter test of prototype cold climate heat pumps in occupied homes, backup heat covered only a small share of the heat needed between 0°F and 35°F, and the units rarely ran on backup alone above 0°F. That's the range that matters here, since the overnight low only reaches 0°F or below about 11 nights a year.

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

    Most likely, yes. A standard heat pump's output falls below its rating once it's under 40°F outside and often needs backup under about 35°F, and the average overnight low here in December, January and February is 16°F. An ENERGY STAR Cold Climate model holds onto more of its capacity in deep cold, but Morgan County still sees about 11 nights a year at 0°F or below where backup heat matters.

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

    Yes, and it's a common way to do this here. The furnace stays as backup for the nights that drop below freezing, which is about 170 a year in Morgan County, and the heat pump carries the milder stretches on both sides of winter. Nobody has to run a heat pump down into single digits if the furnace is already in the house.

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

    No, a furnace costs less to run here. At Colorado's average fuel prices, a gas furnace makes the same heat for $1.26 per 100,000 Btu against $1.99 for a heat pump, a furnace built to the federal minimum burning gas at 80 percent efficiency, a heat pump built to the federal minimum making 7.5 Btu of heat per watt hour. Gas is just cheaper per Btu here than electricity, and that's before any backup heat a heat pump might need on the coldest nights.

A gloved worker in a dark blue jacket connects refrigerant lines and copper piping at the side of a gray outdoor heat pump unit mounted on a concrete pad beside a blue lap-sided house, with a tool bag and wrench in the foreground.

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