Colorado Heating Pros

Heat pump vs furnace in Mesa County, Colorado

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Which costs less to run in Mesa County?

An outdoor air conditioning condenser unit on a concrete pad beside a dark horizontal-lap sided wall at night, with an electrical disconnect box mounted on the wall above.

Heat pump

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

A beige sheet-metal furnace with louvered vent panels and side gas piping stands in a basement corner against dark blue painted walls, with a galvanized flue pipe rising to the ceiling and a bare 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?

  • 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 beige sofa holding navy and light blue cushions under a large window overlooking green trees and white hydrangeas, a wooden coffee table with a woven tray, potted plant and candle, a navy bookcase at right, and a striped armchair in the foreground.

  • 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

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

    Kitchen with white subway tile backsplash, stainless range hood, a stainless kettle on a black cooktop set in a light countertop above navy cabinets and a wall oven, with a potted plant, utensil crock and wooden cutting board nearby and a dining area with pendant light in the background.

Where does a furnace shine?

  • Strong, steady heat in hard cold

    Mesa County nights average 18°F in December, January and February, and a furnace keeps putting out the same hot air no matter how cold it gets outside. That steady heat is what carries the house through those long winter nights.

    A dark navy clapboard house with a snow-covered roof and lit windows at dusk, with a shoveled path, a lantern in the snow, and snow-laden evergreen and bare trees around it.

  • Runs on the gas most homes here already use

    Most homes in Mesa County already have a gas line run to them, since 73.5% heat with utility gas. If yours is one of them, a furnace just uses what's already there instead of asking for new electrical work to run a different system.

    A row of brick houses with dark blue painted porch columns and stone front steps, with a gas meter and piping beside the stairs and snow covering the ground along the sidewalk.

  • Fast, strong heat on demand

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

    A mudroom with a wooden bench over dark blue paneling, woven baskets underneath, a knit blanket and steaming mug, coats on hooks, snow-dusted winter boots on a stone floor, a floor vent emitting visible steam, and a white door with a window showing snow outside.

What the cold here does to a heat pump

Winters here decide this. The heat runs nine months a year, September through May, and the overnight low averages 18°F in December, January and February. That number matters because a standard heat pump starts losing ground below 40°F and often needs backup heat below about 35°F. Here, both marks sit above your average winter night, not below it. About 135 nights a year drop to freezing or colder, roughly half the nights in heating season, and every one of them is already past both marks.

That doesn't mean a heat pump quits. It means a standard one leans on backup heat for a large part of the winter, not just a few cold snaps. If you're looking at a standard heat pump, expect that backup heat, usually electric resistance, to carry real weight on half your winter nights.

A cold-climate heat pump is built for exactly this. To earn the ENERGY STAR Cold Climate label, it has to keep making at least 1.75 units of heat per unit of electricity at 5°F, and hold onto 70 percent of its 47°F capacity at that same temperature, checked by outside testing. In field tests of prototype cold-climate units running in occupied homes over two winters, backup heat covered only a small share of the heat needed between 0°F and 35°F, and the units running on backup alone was rare even above 0°F. That is the gap between a standard heat pump and one built for this kind of cold. Only about 3 nights a year here reach 0°F, so even a cold-climate heat pump is rarely pushed to its hardest mark.

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.

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

Run the numbers at Colorado's own prices and a gas furnace wins on cost. A furnace built to the federal minimum turns gas into heat at $1.26 per 100,000 Btu. A heat pump built to the federal minimum, at Colorado's electricity price, runs $1.99 for the same heat, and that figure doesn't add anything for the backup heat a standard unit leans on during the coldest half of winter here. So the real gap for a standard heat pump, in a cold snap, is wider than $1.99 against $1.26. Three in four homes here already heat with gas, which is usually a sign the gas line is already run to the house, worth checking if you're deciding between extending it and going electric.

None of this touches your summers. Cooling only runs about two months here, July and August, with 65 days a year reaching 90°F or above. A furnace has nothing to do with that. It only heats, so for the other three months outside heating season it sits idle while something else, usually a separate air conditioner, handles the heat. A heat pump handles both jobs with one system, which is its real case here: it won't just be a cheaper way to cool your house, since a furnace was never heating it anyway, but it means one piece of equipment instead of two.

So the choice comes down to what you're optimizing for. If keeping your winter heating bill down matters most, and you already have gas to the house, a furnace does that job for less, and you'd pair it with a separate air conditioner for your two months of cooling. If you'd rather not run a gas line, or you want one system doing both jobs, a cold-climate heat pump holds up through this county's cold better than a standard one and costs a bit more to run than gas. A standard heat pump is the weakest fit here: it's cheaper up front than a cold-climate model, but it spends half of every winter leaning on backup heat in a climate that asks for exactly that, often.

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

A dark blue single-story house with a light blue door, white trim and a covered porch, surrounded by deep snow, conifers and snow-covered mountains under a clear blue sky, with a shoveled path leading to the steps.

Common questions about heat pumps and furnaces

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

    A standard heat pump can fall short on the coldest nights here without backup heat. Below 40°F its output drops under its rating, and below about 35°F it often needs that backup, and Mesa County's winter overnight low averages 18°F. An ENERGY STAR Cold Climate model is built to do better, holding at least 70 percent of its capacity down to 5°F, but still worth checking against what backs it up.

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

    Most likely, yes. A standard heat pump often needs backup heat once it's below about 35°F outside, and that happens on roughly half the nights heat runs here, about 135 a year. Check what backup heat came with your system, since that's what would carry those nights.

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

    Yes, and here that pairing makes sense. Mesa County's overnight low averages 18°F in winter, well below the mark where a standard heat pump's output falls short of its rating, so the furnace would carry the house on the coldest nights while the heat pump handles the milder ones and does your cooling all summer.

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

    No, a furnace costs less to run here. Gas runs $1.26 per 100,000 Btu of heat against $1.99 for a heat pump, both at Colorado's average fuel prices and each machine built to its federal minimum. That gap holds for the roughly nine months a year heating runs in Mesa County.

A hand in a navy sleeve adjusts a round wall-mounted thermostat on a gray-blue wall, with a living room and an open tool bag of screwdrivers visible through a white doorway.

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